
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Armed Jews vs. Nazis - yummyfajitas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/10/the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-armed-jews-vs-nazis/
======
dalke
What an odd opinion piece. It seems to suggest that the Jews of Nazi occupied
countries were merely missing arms in order to significantly deter the
Wehrmacht that was taking on the combined forces of the Soviet, British, and
US military.

Yet it doesn't explain why the French people in Nazi occupied countries, who
had a larger gun culture, were so (relatively) easily subdued and kept
pacified.

If the thesis is correct, it would seem to suggest that the two-state solution
might be achieved by simply delivering massive amounts of arms to the
Palestinians. But I can't help in reading it that it's an advocacy piece
supporting a certain US view towards the right to bear arms, and subject to
'hypothesis myopia', where 'investigators fixate on collecting evidence to
support just one hypothesis; neglect to look for evidence against it; and fail
to consider other explanations.' (Quoting [http://www.nature.com/news/how-
scientists-fool-themselves-an...](http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-
fool-themselves-and-how-they-can-stop-1.18517) .)

As evidence of one thing I think is odd, I'll note that the quote from the
1967 "International Society for the Prevention of Crime", which concluded
"defensive measures are the most effective means for the prevention of
genocide" only appears in a handful of web search results, many by the same
author as this, and the others from US sources which appear to want minimal
gun controls.

That's hardly suggestive of a wide-spread agreement that that view is correct.

I attempted to verify the quote, to learn the context, but found very little
even about the organization/meeting. DDG at
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22International+Society+for+the+P...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22International+Society+for+the+Prevention+of+Crime%22&t=ffsb)
only finds 6 matches, including this WaPo opinion piece. Ditto for Google.
Only one is not derived from this opinion piece, that being the author's
earlier paper at
[https://www.saf.org/journal/19/kopel.pdf](https://www.saf.org/journal/19/kopel.pdf)
.

That paper in turn references 'V.V. Stanciu, “Reflections on the Congress for
the Prevention of Genocide,” in Yad Vashem Studies on the European Jewish
Catastrophe and Resistance, vol. 7, ed., Livia Rothkirchen (Jerusalem, Israel:
Yad Vashem, 1968), p. 187'. The only other paper I found which cites that
reference is David Caplan, in "Weapons Control Laws: Gateways to Victim
Oppression and Genocide", at
[http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-5974-4_1...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-5974-4_18)
, which also appears to argue for weak gun controls.

(I verified that the cited source does exist; see
[http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/studies/issue...](http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/studies/issues/index.asp#!prettyPhoto)
. Stanciu appears to have been a French lawyer and criminologist.)

Using a reference from 1967 from what appears to be an obscure source make me
think it's a result of quote mining. Is this view an outlier specifically
chose to back a predetermined hypothesis? Why reference something that's older
than I am - is there really nothing newer?

Given the number of genocides since 1967 (Rwanda, Red Terror in Ethiopia,
Cambodian Genocide, 1971 Bangladesh atrocities, and the Nigerian Civil War all
seem ways to test that thesis), surely those would provide additional insight
the relationship between strong gun control laws and genocide. Could we have
prevented the genocide in Rwanda by air-dropping a bunch of arms on those
being killed?

Indeed, I found just such a paper when trying to find out more about Stanciu.
This paper is "Rethinking Approaches to Prevention under the Responsibility to
Protect Agency and Empowerment within Vulnerable Populations" at at
[http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10....](http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/1875984x-00604007)
.

> The paper considers a number of historical case studies in which targeted
> groups were able to leverage their own agency, often with assistance from
> others, to reduce this vulnerability. These include cases that culminated in
> genocide, namely the experiences of German and Austrian Jews under Nazi
> rule, and negative cases studies in which a demonstrable risk of mass
> atrocities was not realised, such as the experiences of Yemenite Jews in the
> first half of the twentieth century and those of the Bahá’í community in
> Iran since the 1979 Iranian revolution. These cases suggest that assisting
> persecuted populations to empower themselves can be an effective way to
> promote resilience to mass atrocities.

and the author of that piece has done a lot of research on genocide
[http://ro.uow.edu.au/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Mayersen...](http://ro.uow.edu.au/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Mayersen%22%20author_fname%3A%22Deborah%22&start=0&context=119687)
.

~~~
douche
Last week, one of the U.S. presidential candidates made a rather ignorant
statement about gun control and the Holocaust. The Warsaw Ghetto revolt is the
immediately obvious example to look at.

This piece is really an advertisement for the author's upcoming book, and this
piece seems pretty obviously cribbed from one of his chapters. It reads less
oddly if you read the title of the book, and go look at the description on the
Amazon link, and realize that it fits into a philosophical work on the
justifiable use of force in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

~~~
pronoiac
Yup, it's sort of a response to Ben Carson, who also got a more directed
rebuttal: [http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123080/ben-carson-
wrong-a...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123080/ben-carson-wrong-about-
holocaust-jews-did-fight-back)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
It's actually a rather common sentiment:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_theory)

------
Throwawayxtu
Ben Carson's comments weren't in a void: it's long been an NRA hobbyhorse that
the holocaust wouldn't have happened if only the Jews had guns. He's just
repeating a long-stated claim.

The problem is that for those events in WWII where such a claim can be tested
-- for example, the Ghetto Uprising -- the claim fails miserably. In the
Ghetto Uprising, the Nazis lost 300 soldiers and the Jews lost at least 13,000
people, perhaps far more.

I think what we're seeing in this article is an attempt to redefine the
metric:

> Nearly every Jew who participated was eventually killed — but they were
> going to be killed anyway. By choosing to stand and fight, the Warsaw Jews
> diverted a significant amount of Nazis resources from battlefields
> elsewhere, thus hastening the Nazi defeat.

So according to the author, Jewish deaths don't really count as a metric
because they were "going to be killed anyway". And the metric instead should
be about whether "significantly resources were diverted", a highly dubious
claim in and of itself. Essentially the uprising would be considered
"successful" if it hastened the end of the war, not if the people in the
Ghetto were saved.

Whether true or not, the problem with this claim is that it doesn't help the
gun lobby's agenda, which is used to justify arming people in the US: that
having guns would have prevented the immediate deaths of those with the guns.
The whole article reeks of misdirection.

~~~
merpnderp
But significant resources were diverted. Around 2,000 Nazi soldiers were tied
down by around 1,000 Jewish resistance fighters armed with ancient revolvers
and molotov cocktails. And they were tied down for longer than it took the
German army to conquer all of Poland and France.

Holding up 2,000 soldiers for a month isn't a big deal in the scheme of
millions of soldiers. But when it's done by only 1,000 incredibly poorly armed
civilians, it shows what could have been done with more and better armed
civilians.

~~~
dalke
Had the Germans been facing more and better armed civilians, they would have
used different and more effective tactics.

Instead, the Germans decided to deport the Jews. Had they just gone from the
start shelled/bombed the ghetto, and set it on fire, they would have lost many
fewer soldiers and taken less time.

Also, the Wikipedia page says the backbone of the German troops were '821
Waffen-SS paramilitary soldiers from five SS Panzergrenadier reserve and
training battalions and one SS cavalry reserve and training battalion'. These
are not the prime troops that would be on the front lines.

That's not to say there was no effect, but I don't think it's reasonable to
say "significant".

Also, a complete tally would need to subtract from the 2,000 count the number
of German soldiers that were used to maintain the ghetto.

------
ufmace
I tend to think that these kinds of summaries kinda miss the point. Yes, it's
technically true that if the oppressed Jews had a lot more guns, they might
have lasted longer, or took more Germans with them, or survived the war or
something. But the real issue is more the mindset and culture they had than
the weapons and the laws around them.

First, it bears repeating that the vast majority of Jews killed were Polish,
not German. This never really was a matter of not paying attention to the
political progress of anti-semitism in your own country, but rather that your
crazy neighbors get crazier and crazier and eventually invade your country and
turn it upside-down.

The real problem is that the Polish Jews always had to deal with a relatively
low-level anti-semitism, and their strategy of being meek and going along
always worked well enough for them. They had been doing it for so long that
even when the Nazis invaded and changed everything virtually overnight, there
was no real widespread movement for resistance until it was much too late. If
it had been legal for them to buy and own guns, they wouldn't have bothered,
and if they had them, they would have given them up without a peep long
before.

I suppose you could say that the even deeper root of the problem is the belief
that It Can't Happen Here. The Nazis did indeed try hard to hide the facts of
what they were doing, but they were greatly helped by the fact that pretty
much nobody really believed that such industrialized mass-murder could happen
in a first-world, civilized country. Even with the massive levels of
documentation produced, there are plenty of people who still don't believe
that it happened.

But the facts on the ground there went on to fuel history in another
direction. Jewish shame at how passively they were led to the slaughter in
Europe fueled their will to flout British colonial immigration laws in moving
to what was then British Palestine, found a nation and an army, desperately
build or buy weapons from any possible source, and successfully defend it
against all comers over and over again. They were also helped in no small part
by Western diplomatic backing, fueled by shame at not having done enough to
prevent the Holocaust from happening.

In the end, having the materiel and skills to defend yourself is good, but
having the knowledge that you might need to and the will to go through with it
is more important. Without that, any armaments you do have will evaporate
before they can make a difference, and with it, you can find a way to buy or
make some kind of weapons, even if it wouldn't be as good as if you had gotten
them beforehand.

~~~
dalke
I think it's hard to argue about specific Jewish mindset when it comes to the
Holocaust.

While some six million Jews were massacred, there were another five million
non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders.

Any thesis that depends on the mindset and culture of Jews must necessarily
fail to explain the millions of non-Jewish Ukrainians that were murdered.

------
DanielBMarkham
Historical note: it needs to be remembered that the allies did a great
disservice to Poland after the war. The war was ostensibly started over
Poland, the allies promised to liberate it, and in the end it was given out as
spoils of the conflict.

~~~
powera
Technically the Soviet Union was one of the allies, and if you asked the
Soviet Union they would say they "liberated" Poland.

If you remember, there was a large conflict between the US and the Soviets for
much of the 20th century over exactly these types of claims.

~~~
gambiting
I always have a problem with this argument, because the war started by both
Germany and Russia invading Poland. Just because things went sour between them
and in the end Russia helped defeat the nazis doesn't mean that the act of
giving Poland away to the Soviet Union wasn't any less disappointing.

------
jakozaur
Semi-related. If you ever visit Warsaw (Poland). I highly recommend museum:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POLIN_Museum_of_the_History_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POLIN_Museum_of_the_History_of_Polish_Jews)
[http://www.polin.pl/en/](http://www.polin.pl/en/)

There is amazing/modern/interactive exhibition of 1000 years Jewish history in
Poland. Most of it is very positive and peaceful. You are invited!

------
mozumder
The implication here is that an armed American population would be able to
defeat a tyrannical US government.

This is the same US government that's armed with nuclear weapons, tanks with
composite armor, a hacker network that would make Google blush, and populist
democratic backing.

Additionally, this is the same US government has killed over 600,000 of its
own citizens before for rebelling.

It is the height of sociopathic narcissism to think individuals or small bands
of "freedom fighters" would be able to defeat such a system.

Smart people would instead work WITH the system to achieve their objectives,
instead of working against it like a buffoon.

Personal firearms should be removed throughout a modern society.

~~~
ianamartin
Is that the same well-armed and powerful U.S. Military that has repeatedly had
its ass handed to it by small groups of fighters with little more than small
arms and IEDs in the Middle East? Is that the all-powerful, unbeatable
military force you're speaking of?

Your argument sounds quite a lot like what was being said around the time the
US wanted independence from England. What? We're going to fight them? With
their army, and their artillery, and their guns, and their funding, and their
navy, and all that?

This argument has nothing at all to do with working with or against the system
as it currently exists. The argument is about what happens when a system is so
completely broken that it is shamelessly murdering a lot of people.

Even the staunchest advocates for guns in the US go out and vote. They
participate in the system. It's not a binary choice. You can choose to
participate now and hedge your bets for later. Those things are not mutually
exclusive.

If you think guerilla warfare doesn't work against superior forces, you
haven't paid much attention to, well, anything.

~~~
mozumder
Yes. This is the same military that didn't have the popular support to
complete its objectives in the ME, so they phoned it in. That's what happens
to countries that go to war under false pretense - they get to half-send their
militaries for political appeasement.

Were you implying that the REAL military was defeated in the ME? Or, that they
would somehow be unable to put down a guerrilla war?

~~~
mercurial
> Were you implying that the REAL military was defeated in the ME? Or, that
> they would somehow be unable to put down a guerrilla war?

The problem is that despite repeated demonstrations of the contrary, many
people (including people who really, really should know better) believe that
wars are only decided on the battlefield. The point of going to war is not to
engage in set-piece battles and blow up a hapless opponent like Saddam's
outclassed military live on CNN. The point is to complete a number of
strategic objectives. If you didn't manage to do that, you lost.

If on top of that, you managed to engineer a power vacuum in a very volatile
area, which subsequently created the conditions necessary for the emergence of
the most powerful militant group to date, you pretty much scored an own goal.
Bonus if your PR plan included saying "mission accomplished".

~~~
douche
People frown on building mountains of skulls, enslaving all the men of
military age, and distributing the conquered lands and peoples to your
officers and men these days...

------
bobthechef
Apologies for the length, but I had to correct some misinformation.

"In Western Europe, where anti-semitism among the conquered gentile population
was less severe [...]"

"But when Poland regained its independence in 1919, thanks to the Versailles
Treaty, the nation degenerated into a military dictatorship which encouraged
anti-semitism."

These statements are either facile and come from a position of ignorance and
show a lack of discernment. Consider that:

* After Poland regained its independence in 1918/19, it had been a democratic republic until the May coup d'etat of 1926 under Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, arguably the most important figure in the creation of the Second Polish Republic and the rebirth of the nation's independence. This de facto dictatorship lasted for less than 10 years. I know that we like to superficially assign without question an absolute superiority to democracy and view dictatorship as an absolute evil, but this depends on the particular characteristics of a given society, its situation, and its present needs as well as the kind of dictatorship we have in mind. Poland had been wiped off the map 123 years prior and divided into three parts by a joint conspiracy between Prussia, Russia, and Austria. It is strongly argued that without a dictatorship that would hold the nation together and guard it from foreign malice and its notoriously bad geopolitical predicament, Poland would have failed to survive as a state. There was a need for stabilization and coordination. Democracy presumes a certain status quo and does not bear chaos in such circumstances very well.

* Under Pilsudski's rule, the situation of ethnic minorities (1/3 of the citizenry) actually improved considerably, though some of these minorities later colluded with the Nazi and Soviet regimes in exterminations of the Polish population. Pilsudski preferred to emphasize loyalty to the state over ethnicity, which was the policy of the National Democrats under Roman Dmowski, Pilsudski's arch-rival (and who purportedly argued that ethnic minorities can add salt to the soup, though too much can ruin or destabilize a society, esp. when they fail to assimilate). In fact, Jews viewed him very favorably and their situation improved greatly especially under Pilsudski-appointed prime minister Kazimierz Bartel. Worth noting is that Pilsudski's own wife was Jewish. So I'm not sure how the author drew the link between dictatorship and anti-semitism. Maybe he was looking for a cheap trope to appeal to to sell his story.

* The Polish variety of anti-Jewish feeling during this period was not racial in character. The "Jewish Question" concerned the problem of who and what Jews were in relation to the Polish nation. To say that Jews were being kept back is not really accurate. The situation was far more complicated. Many Jews who did assimilate were quite successful. However, it is false to assume that all Jews wanted to assimilate in the first place and simply weren't welcome. Many had no such desire and purposefully maintained a separation from gentiles. Many were Zionists. Many had German loyalties. Some had Communist sympathies. During an era of nationalism where the state was rebuilding and trying to survive against the threat of Nazi German and Soviet Russian aggression, unknown or divided loyalties were threatening. Furthermore, much of the resentment towards Jews, where it did exist, was economic in nature. While the aristocracy and the peasantry were about 2/3 Polish, the same proportions did not hold among the burghers where Jews were overrepresented. In other words, Polish-Jewish relations are complicates and require particular care if they are to be understood, not boorish generalizations that you often hear from bigots and the ignorant, no doubt the same people who use phrases such as "Polish concentration camps".

* The greatest number of people honored at Yad Vashem are by far Poles. This is true despite that fact that only in Poland did Germany impose a death penalty that could be extended to the entire family for aiding and hiding Jews.

Other than that, I'm not sure how convincing the main argument seems to be.
Gun control, like many polarizing topics, exists in an anti-rational domain
that elevates a tool to some transcendental, fantastic order of Manichean
symbols: you either have those who equate guns with freedom and those who
equate it with evil incarnate. It is my opinion that whether gun training and
ownership is not a matter of principle but a matter of contingent factors and
pragmatism. For example, since we're on the topic, I believe countries in
historically geopolitically risky situation like Poland could benefit from
widespread training if not ownership. Switzerland is arguably geopolitically
safer place, but it has a trained populace in possession of firearms. The US
has a very curious history with fire arms that differs from that of France,
which does not mean stricter regulation of the gun market cannot be put in
place. However, while gun ownership has been increasing, violence has been
decreasing, esp. violence involving guns. There is no single number that can
characterize the facts on the ground, but what it goes to show is that much of
the "public debate" is merely the projection of preconceived notions,
ideology, and emotion. There is barely any reason in it, merely arrogant
presumption that the issue is obvious.

