How rebel groups form in genocide: The Warsaw Ghetto fighters

Abstract

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is emblematic of armed Jewish resistance to the Holocaust; it should also be emblematic of rebel organization formation and capacity building in the most extreme power asymmetry. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising happened because civilians who were directly experiencing a genocide formed rebel organizations that gained the capacity to hold territory. Drawing from video testimonies and memoirs of survivors, diaries of witnesses, and the work of historians, this study analyzes the formation and evolution of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) to create and begin to validate a generalizable theory on how rebel organizations form in genocide, and how they create the capacity to hold territory from the genocidal opponent. The ŻOB evolved from a violent resistance organization to a rebel organization with a military infrastructure that could hold territory against the Nazis; further, it was this capacity to hold territory that allowed the ŻOB to win the survival of many Jews. These findings offer important insights on the possibility of rebel group mobilization against genocidal persecution, and can be used to understand contemporary genocide resisters.