hen they learned of their intentions. The call to arms in Bialystok read:Even if we are too weak to defend our lives, we are strong enough to defend Jewish honor and human dignity, and thus prove to the world that we are captive, but no defeated. Do not go freely to your death! Fight with your life until the last breath… Make your enemies pay with blood for blood and death for death. (Witness to the Holocaust, 1997, p. 150)The Jews took to arms and fought back against Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jewish population.When did Hitler decide on the plan to exterminate the Jews? Was it when he wrote the Mein Kampf? His third speech excerpted to the Reichstag was his final will and testament just prior to his suicide, when he says to his people to continue the struggle against the Jews. The killing of Jews started when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 1941. Conferences were held where the evacuation of the Jews to the east was to be made. Those at the conference knew what the evacuation to the east was in fact the Jews being sent to Concentration camps. Many methods had been tested, such as mobile gas trucks and the construction of gas chambers from farm barns. However by March of 1944, Germany was losing the world war. The Soviet Union was pushing from the west; the Allies were coming from the south and the Germans feared that Hungary would switch sides. With that Germany took Hungary. The Jews were subject to the Nuremberg laws. They were stripped of all rights and sent to the ghettos. Adolf Eichmann succeeded in sending more than four hundred thousand Jews in seven weeks to their deaths in Auschwitz. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the most heroic act by the Jews. When the order came for the deportation of Jews from the ghetto, the residents sprung into action. They fought battles on the streets and open warfare began. The Nazi troops were vulnerable. The Germans were pushed back despite several effo...
