Essay On Passive Resistance

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1. Introduction The Holocaust was one of the most terrible periods in world history. More than six million Jews, Roma, homosexual men, and others were systematically murdered – and they were not only murdered in death camps. The Einsatzgruppen murdered over a million Jews in Eastern Europe by 1943.1 In the ghettos, there was intentionally not enough food for everyone who was forced to live there, so that thousands of Jewish men, women, and children died from hunger, illness, and malnutrition. The mass shootings of Jews had caused serious psychological problems for the Einsatzgruppen, and it was easier for the Nazis to simply refuse to give the Jews in the ghettos enough to eat.2 For the Nazis, however, starvation and malnutrition was not fast …show more content…

Everything from boycotting to hiding persecuted people falls under the definition of passive resistance. It is called “passive” due to the lack of direct action against the oppressors. Passive resistance is still resistance, and can be extremely successful, but it is not what people often imagine when they hear the word “resistance.” Thus, it 's very important to clarify that passive resistance is resistance, and just what it entails, even though there is no direct action taken. Some believe that much passive resistance is not “proper” resistance, but that couldn 't be further from the truth. Passive resistance is just as important as active resistance, as both hinder oppressive powers. In an oppressive regime, all resistance – passive just as much as active – come at some danger to those who dare resist. During the Second World War, many people resisted passively against the Nazis. In the majority of European countries, Jewish people could only hide themselves – this only with the help of non-Jewish people, who they had no choice but to trust with their lives. It was almost impossible in many countries for Jews to fight against the Third Reich; they had no other option but to hide themselves and to hope to live out the war

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