“Rescue as Resistance: the Kashariyot in the Jewish Resistance Who Saved Jews on the “Aryan side” in Nazi occupied Poland

• In Event: Performance, Resistance, Writing: Responses to the Holocaust

Abstract

This paper, which is based primarily on my own in-depth interviews, examines the efforts of the KASHARIYOT (the Hebrew name for a group of women liaisons in the Jewish resistance), who operated on the “Aryan side” in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust.

It fits into the request for proposals on new research on defiance and resistance.


The KASHARIYOT, who were each affiliated with an organization such as a Zionist youth group (Ha Shomer Ha Tzir, Dror, etc.) or a political party (the Bund, communists, etc.), in what became the Jewish resistance in the ghetto period. When it became clear that the ghettos were going to be liquidated, the KASHARIYOT were charged with the daunting task of saving as many Jews as possible by helping children and adults escape from the ghetto and arranging for them to survive – as non-Jews – by passing or hiding on the Aryan side.

The KASHARIYOT were responsible for every step in this high-risk effort –from planning the time and method for each persons escape from the ghetto; personally escorting them thru the escape to a place of shelter on the “Aryan side”; preparing their false papers and new identity cards; securing rooms and safe houses and apartments for them; providing for their basic necessities and financial support including food, clothing, money, and medicine; and sustaining them with visits, news, and moral support.

This paper begins with a brief background section on the KASHARIYOT and the Jewish resistance groups with which they were affiliated. I then focus on the characteristics of the KASHARIYOT , i.e. who they were, and what they did. The third section follows them thru their daily activities, the difficulties they faced, and their encounters with the Gestapo, blackmailers, and other life-threatening obstacles.

I conclude with a discussion of the role of rescue and saving lives in Jewish views of resistance during the Holocaust. Here I trace the evolution of their definitions of resistance and how their ideology evolved to define “rescue as defiance” and “the most important form of resistance.”

author

• Lenore J. Weitzman, George Mason University