Resistance: They Fought Back — Claims Conference Film Grants

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Tells the largely unknown and incredibly courageous story of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.

Synopsis

“People have this myth stuck in their heads that Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter. But this is where the real story begins…Jews did not go as sheep to the slaughter… They fought back.” Professor Richard Freund

We’ve all heard of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but most people have no idea how widespread and prevalent Jewish resistance to Nazi barbarism was. Instead, it’s widely believed “Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter.” Filmed in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Israel, and the U.S., Resistance – They Fought Back provides a much-needed corrective to this myth of Jewish passivity. There were uprisings in ghettos large and small, rebellions in death camps, and thousands of Jews fought Nazis in the forests. Everywhere in Eastern Europe, Jews waged campaigns of non-violent resistance against the Nazis.

Today, many stories of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust have all but vanished. In some cases, no historical records exist, and no one survived to tell the tale. The Germans documented many aspects of their war against the Jews, but they were allergic to any mention of Jewish resistance, leading many to think it never happened.

This film is a passionate refutation of that way of thinking. Told by survivors, their children, and expert witnesses from the U.S. Israel, and Europe, it is a revelation based on extensive research of how the Jews of Europe fought back. It uncovers evidence of non-violent methods which served as crucial tools of resistance and evolved into Jewish armed revolts in ghettos, forests and death camps, even as the odds of success were vanishingly small. Today, almost eighty years after the Holocaust, this story remains largely unknown to the general public. Without it, our understanding of this genocide, which wiped out two-thirds of European Jewry, remains incomplete, giving rise to renewed antisemitism, hatred, and denial of the Holocaust itself.

About the Director

PAULA S. APSELL created the feature documentary Resistance — They Fought Back with the goal of correcting the myth of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust. Before that, she spent 35 years as the senior executive producer of the PBS NOVA science series, responsible for more than 650 documentaries in the sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine, which won every major broadcasting award including the Emmy; the Peabody; the duPont-Columbia University Gold and Silver Batons; and an Academy Award® nomination for Special Effects. She has been recognized with numerous individual awards, including the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Emmy of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Now CEO of Leading Edge Productions, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity, she directed, wrote and executive producer Resistance — They Fought Back.

KIRK WOLFINGER directed Resistance — They Fought Back, traveling to Poland, Lithuania, and Israel to establish a unique visual approach to tell the important story of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. He is an Emmy and Peabody Award winning filmmaker and President of Lone Wolf Media, production partner for the feature-length documentary film. Lone Wolf is widely known as a leader in factual entertainment and is responsible for many award-winning nationally broadcast documentaries on PBS as well as the National Geographic, History and Smithsonian Channels, and more than 25 documentaries for the science series NOVA alone. Kirk’s forte is adventure, science, and historical programming. Among the many NOVA episodes he produced and directed is Holocaust Escape Tunnel, which tells the story of a landmark archeological discovery of a tunnel that Jewish prisoners used to escape their Nazi and Lithuanian captors.

Artistic Statement

From 1985-2019, I served as executive producer of the PBS science series NOVA. In 2016, I was on location in Lithuania when an archaeological team lead by Professor Richard Freund discovered a tunnel in the Ponary killing site in Lithuania, where Nazis and their Lithuanians collaborators murdered 100,000 people including 70,000 Jews. The Germans, fearing their war crimes would be known, brought in 80 remaining Jews to exhume and burn the bodies of those they had murdered. Those Jews, knowing they would be the next victims, decided to try to escape by digging a tunnel. Of the 80 Jewish prisoners that dug the tunnel, 12 succeeded in making it into the forest where Jewish partisans were waiting. I had not previously known anything about this heroic tunnel escape or other examples of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, so I embarked on a quest to uncover what are, to most of us, lost chapters of history. This evolved into the feature documentary Resistance – They Fought Back.

This film is a passionate refutation of that way of thinking. Told by survivors, their children, and expert witnesses from the U.S. Israel, and Europe, it is a revelation based on extensive research of how the Jews of Europe fought back. It uncovers evidence of non-violent methods which served as crucial tools of resistance and evolved into Jewish armed revolts in ghettos, forests and death camps, even as the odds of success were vanishingly small. Today, almost eighty years after the Holocaust, this story remains largely unknown to the general public. Without it, our understanding of this genocide, which wiped out two-thirds of European Jews, remains incomplete, giving rise to renewed antisemitism, hatred, and denial of the Holocaust itself.

I hope you find this film meaningful and important.

–Paula S. Apsell, Executive Producer