The CODOH Revisionist Forum

In a recent thread that includes discussion on the mass executions (some 16k+ Jews over three days) at Pinsk Ghetto in late October 1942, SanityCheck (Dr. Terry) said this:

SanityCheck wrote:There is actually no evidence for this - the Pinsk ghetto as a 'gang headquarters' - except the ideological fantasies and excuse-making of the SS, from Himmler downwards.

But this was wrong:

Callafangers wrote:All of these instances took place within the final weeks before the mass execution (September-October 1942):

• Organized partisan group (~50 people) — acquired semi-automatic guns, revolvers, and hand grenades; hid arms in Kaplan's vegetable garden; planned escape to forests to join partisans, but delayed under Judenrat pressure
• Underground resistance organization — secretly enlisted members, bought revolvers from Poles, hid arms outside the ghetto; coordinated with Judenrat insiders
• Plan to burn factories/workshops — proposed simultaneously setting fire to all places of Jewish employment to create turmoil for escape
• Plan to assassinate the German Commissioner
• Plan to burn the entire city (Pinsk) — divided town into districts; stashed kerosene, rags, petrol, and matches in empty houses; assigned young men to stay behind after work and ignite fires on a secret code signal to enable mass escape
• Forest rifle expedition — ~150 hidden Russian rifles reported in a forest; hundreds of young men prepared to retrieve them and stay as fighters; led by Dr. Praeger; abandoned after German deception
• Escape attempt from a workshop — a group of young men employed outside the ghetto failed to return; pressured by families and Judenrat threats, they came back after two days
• Hiding in camouflaged bunkers — extensive digging of hideouts and underground bunkers throughout the ghetto, referenced in the German report as "innumerable people hiding in well-camouflaged holes"

Dr. Terry, does none of this look like partisan/gang activity to you? Organizing armed groups, hiding and smuggling weapons in and out of the ghetto, planning/coordinating mass enlisting to forest partisan groups, secret enlisting within ghettos, planning to burn down the city (with petrol/rags already stashed in houses throughout) and assassinate the German commissioner, hiding extensively in well-camoflauged underground bunkers throughout the ghetto, etc.?

[ Source: Rabinowitsch, Wolf Zeev, and Nachman Tamir (Mirski), eds. Pinsk: Sefer Edut ve-Zikaron le-Kehilat Pinsk-Karlin. Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Pinsk-Karlin in Israel, 1966–1977. English translation by Ellen Stepak, JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, https://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Pinsk1 ... l#P1-Chap6 ]

SC/Terry continues:

SanityCheck wrote: How did wiping out the Pinsk ghetto, or indeed targeting Jews across occupied Europe, work out for the German occupiers, then? Doesn't seem to have stemmed the upsurge in resistance in the slightest.

This got me thinking... We often hear from orthodoxy the claim that Jewish involvement as partisans during WW2 was overstated by Germany at the time (and perhaps since then overstated by revisionists). They point to there being "only" some recorded ~30,000 Jewish forest partisans + some thousands of ghetto underground fighters (not including Red Army). But this misses the real picture.

If we assume some ~1 million surviving able-bodied Jews in Eastern Europe post-1941 (common estimate), this puts Jews already at a significant over-representation in actual partisan ranks (some ~3% of Jews active as partisans, compared to roughly ~0.5% of non-Jewish population). However, this neglects that most Jews were in ghettos at this time, with ghettos regularly organizing themselves as partisan bases:

In specific hotspots like Lithuania, Jews made up 10% of all partisans despite being less than 1% of the population (10x overrepresentation).[15] Approximately 30,000 Jewish men and women fought back against the Germans in organized, armed partisan units [...]. Jewish partisans could be found in every Nazi occupied country in Europe.[16] [...] Between 1941 and 1943, underground resistance movements developed in about 100 Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe.[17]

[...]

...ghettos/camps neutralized ~80-90% of ~1 million able-bodied Jews, with escapees joining partisans at near-100% rates.[22] [...] Jews weren't "6x likely" — they were a strategic epicenter of the existing 150-200k partisan army and its highest-potential reserves (near-100% escapee join rate).[26]
https://wiki.codohforum.com/pages/index ... _(NO-1128)

In other words, the only reason Jews were not far more prevalent by raw numbers or proportion in partisan counts and analyses is precisely because the Germans were very effective overall at containing them. All of the evidence strongly reflects that Jews made every effort on a collective scale to organize as partisans and militantly oppose the Germans. Ghettos were not just composed of individual/private lives begging to be left alone -- these were also a hostile organization posing a constant threat, every bit as much as the "free range" (Soviet/forest) partisans themselves.

German records explicitly note the Pinsk ghetto executions as "executions" (not as "resettlement"), showing that executions could be noted as precisely that; diminishing the notion of "resettlement" as a necessary label for mass killing of Jews.

Overall, the only reason Jews were not absolutely dominant in scale/proportion of partisan ranks is precisely because Germany was effective at controlling Jewish populations. The 'leaks' were still a problem (and treated as such, as reflected by these executions), but plugging these leaks was always a matter of:

• Keeping Jewish ghettos/concentrations away from partisan networks and vice-versa
• Keeping Jews -- including hiding/escapees -- out of open areas altogether ("Judenfrei")

The resettlement end-goal remained to be the removal of Jews entirely from within German-occupied borders ("Judenrein").