THE FIGHTING GHETTOS

This authentic background to so many stories of the personal persecution and survival of the Jews has been retrieved and collected in the Ghetto Fighters House near Haifa during the last 15 years, and it is the story of the underground fight of a people ""marked for extermination"". From the time when, in 1939, they were encircled within the ghettos and were acceptant of the restrictions imposed, as well as blind to their implications, they later adopted a program of active resistance and revolt. While the Warsaw uprising was a symbol, it was ""not the most difficult"" as later chapters reveal the rebellion of the Jews in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Sobivor. The annals here trace the struggles of the partisans first within the ghettos, then in the forests, then the camps. Arms are smuggled in and members out, supplies are secured- against odds, sectors are defended-and in one instance a German garrison attacked, and there are cases of individual heroism- and endurance- even that of a young David who joined a partisan platoon. There are extensive appendices on the members, leaders, organizers and contributors here, and the book provides a collective portrait of a people whose spirit was not shattered by the apotheosis of man's inhumanity to man.