The Phoenix Effect of State Repression: Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust

TLDR

Some nascent groups succeed in sustained violent resistance to state repression while others fail, raising questions about the factors that enable such organization. The study links the sustainability of armed resistance to the skills required to mount it and argues that the type of repression a community experiences shapes these skills. The authors examine selective versus indiscriminate state repression and test this by comparing anti‑Nazi Jewish resistance trajectories in Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok ghettos. Selective repression is more likely to produce skilled resisters, and large‑scale repression is more likely to elicit sustained organized resistance if the population had previously experienced selective repression.

Abstract

Why are some nascent groups able to organize sustained violent resistance to state repression, whereas others quickly fail? This article links the sustainability of armed resistance to a largely understudied variable—the skills to mount such a resistance. It also argues that the nature of repression experienced by a community creates and shapes these crucial skills. More specifically, the article focuses on a distinction between selective and indiscriminate state repression. Selective repression is more likely to create skilled resisters; indiscriminate repression substantially less so. Thus, large-scale repression that begins at time t has a higher chance of being met with sustained organized resistance at t +1 if among the targeted population there are people who were subject to selective repression at t‒1 . The article tests this argument by comparing the trajectories of anti-Nazi Jewish resistance groups in three ghettos during the Holocaust: Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok.