Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War
once stolen his shoes, and they took Dobina and executed him. My brother Alex was working in the kitchen there and he saw this. “Not long after, my brother saw Dobina’s accuser stealing meat from the kitchen. He wrapped it in parachute material and hid it in the woods, and then, when his parents came to visit him on Sundays, gave them the meat. My brother told the partisans, ‘This man is stealing the meat from the kitchen and is wrapping it up in parachute material and giving it to his parents.’ The partisans watched him one Sunday, and saw what he did, and hanged him from a tree.” Community members’ fears that a rebellion or planned escape was doomed to failure, since the Jews had no weapons and were suffering from malnutrition and disease, and that it would pro - voke severe reprisals, were realistic. Elsewhere, resisters’ families, neighbors, and sometimes entire communities were murdered af- ter an attempted escape or rebellion or the discovery of plans for one. The community paid the price for the act of an individual or group, which was a German tactic to control people that worked equally well in large and small communities, in ghettos, and in concentration camps. Resistance in Jewish communities was effec - tively stifled, say scholars, by the threat of this kind of collective punishment. 25 At the same time, many people in Ludvipol did not believe the extent of the Nazi atrocities or that the regime’s goal was to anni- hilate the millions of Jews in Europe. Older people who had lived with anti-Semitism all of their lives and heard stories from count- less previous generations were particularly unable to believe the worst. They tried to adjust to the difficult times and focus on stay - ing alive until it got better. They could not conceive the magnitude of the situation. The psychology of denial in Jewish communities at the time was complex. There was optimism and faith, supported by clandestine
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