Hope and Honor

Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

By: Rachel L. Einwohner

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

A powerful account of Jewish resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe and why such resistance was so remarkable.

Most popular accounts of the Holocaust typically cast Jewish victims as meek and ask, "Why didn't Jews resist?" But we know now that Jews did resist, staging armed uprisings in ghettos and camps throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. In Hope and Honor, Rachel L. Einwohner illustrates the dangers in attempting resistance under unimaginable conditions and shows how remarkable such resistance was. She draws on oral testimonies, published and unpublished diaries and memoirs, and other written materials produced both by survivors and those who perished to show how Jews living under Nazi occupation in the ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Lodz reached decisions about resistance.

Using methods of comparative-historical sociology, Einwohner shows that decisions about resistance rested on Jews' assessments of the threats facing them, and somewhat ironically, armed resistance took place only once activists reached the critical conclusion that they had no hope for survival. Rather than ask the typical question of why Jews generally didn't resist, this powerful account of Jewish resistance seeks to explain why they resisted at all when there was no hope for success, and they faced almost certain death.

©2022 Oxford University Press (P)2022 Tantor

The thrust involves more academia than I was looking for, but the story still applies.

A lot of research methods content aimed at explaining theories, alternatives, arguments or conclusions in support of what to me as a non-academic seem mostly self-evident in the interesting story portions of the book. The target audience is wider than me and/ but In any event I still learned historically worthwhile things from the story.

The narration is wonderful.

All of the books that have this narrator are amazing great book. Easy to dive into.