Beyond Warsaw and Łódź: The Importance of Social Ties for Coping with Nazi Oppression in Three Smaller Polish Ghettos: Piotrkow, Tranow and Lachwa

Abstract

This essay develops a narrative of survival and resistance in three smaller Polish ghettos, Pitrokow, Tarnow and Lachwa. Drawing from archival sources and new interviews, it asserts that residents of the Jewish ghettos were obliged to marshal a full range of creative responses. Survival depended on success as an economic, political and social actor. Evidence for this adaptability supports Yehuda Bauer’s emphasis on ‘amidah’ and confirms his assertion that Holocaust victims did not meet their fate passively. As the survivors from Tarnow and Piotrokow attest, ghetto residents formed strong dyadic social bonds that functioned to guarantee physical and emotional survival. By extending this initial analysis through comparison with Lachwa, one of the few ghettos that saw collective resistance, we can observe how individual survival mechanisms interacted with leadership and community variables. The Jews of Lachwa pursued strategies similar to those seen in Tarnow and Piotrokow. The unique variable at Lachwa which led to broad-based resistance was the structural advantage of a small, easily manageable village which facilitated the transition from individual survival strategies to collective action at a crucial moment.