Today in History: November 11

To what extent did the populations of rural Lithuania and Poland engage in hostilities and Nazi collaboration against Jewish fugitives and partisans surviving in forests? (Part 1, by Jack Watt)

PublisHistory Blog

The forest is a hugely significant, but somewhat marginalised landscape of the Holocaust. Initially woodland was the chosen site of the Einsatzgruppen shooting squads, helping to facilitate the mass murder and disposal of thousands of Jews. However, they later became one of the few places where Jews could escape and attempt to survive either individually or in small groups and family camps, and even engage in violent acts of partisan resistance to impede German progress. Up to 80,000 Jews fled into the forests of Eastern Europe , where they could evade the continuous gaze of their oppressors, which plagued the experiences of ghetto and camp life.

However, there were still numerous other groups and actors in the forest landscape and its immediate periphery, including local collaborators, bystanders and righteous gentiles (those who aided the Jews). The title of this study, which isolates the relationship between Jews and local inhabitants, is…

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