Jews

Identifying Jews solely as victims of the Holocaust, a classification long employed in Holocaust studies, begs more questions than it answers, because this approach tends to underplay the active and even proactive stance of Jews who at every turn did what they could to defend and preserve their lives. This article surveys the multiple ways in which Jews confronted the Holocaust. Following background discussion about Judaism and modern Jewish history, it examines how Jews in the 1930s and 1940s comprehended and reacted to the Nazi onslaught, looking at Jewish leadership within and outside of Europe, ways of perseverance and resistance, and modes of documenting the Jewish experience. The article concludes with an account of Jewish losses and the Holocaust's impact on Jewish culture and peoplehood.