When Vilna Ghetto survivor Ann K. was asked at the end of her testimony given to the USC Shoah Foundation Visual Archive if she had any message to her family and to others who may watch the tape, she replied:

Hope and honor, as the title indicates, are the main concepts used in this book, but so is hopelessness. Over the years, Holocaust survivors have been asked why they did not resist and were even blamed for going to the death sites “as sheep to the slaughter”. This phrase was etched in the collective consciousness and narrative and had become the focus of discussion and debate among Jews and non-Jews, and a source of shame among younger generations.

Sociologist Rachel L. Einwohner approaches the discussion of this myth of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust by asking a different question. Not why they did not resist, but rather, why they did. She argues that the reason for this perception of alleged Jewish passivity in the United States and elsewhere is not derived from a lack of education about the Holocaust but that the Jewish resistance is not generally stressed enough in dominant narratives about that period. On the contrary, she writes, popular accounts of the Holocaust typically cast Jews as powerless and passive victims rather than active fighters. Jews are mostly depicted as starving, hollow-eyed victims behind barbed wire or packed into cattle cars, seemingly resigned to their fate, following the oft-used phrase, going “like sheep to the slaughter” (5). The author takes it upon herself to disprove this myth of Jewish passivity, which is indeed – a myth, and turn the question on its head.

Three ghettos stand at the core of this research as case studies to examine Jewish resistance and the theoretical argument behind it: Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź. The author wishes to explain why a collective uprising occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto but did not take place in either Vilna or Łódź.

The book's starting point is not to add new historical knowledge by adding previously unknown facts on the resistance in the three ghettos. Instead, the author's approach derives from a different angle, a sociological one, that analyzes resistance from a broader point of view and tries to draw lessons from these case studies for protest and resistance movements of oppressed people in general. Therefore, in studying the armed uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, the question presented is not how, but – why. Why did they resist, what motivated them, and when did they decide to do it? Time and place play a major role in this analysis that wishes to understand how a weakened, oppressed, and humiliated collective engaged in a sustained armed uprising against a much more powerful foe, and what the answer to this question teaches us about protests in other theaters of resistance.

A critical turning point in the Jews’ approach to the question of resistance in the ghettos was their assumption of what awaited them, the understanding of the threats ahead, which led them to what the author refers to as their “critical conclusions”: “The study of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust . . . [suggests] that it is threat, not opportunity, which matters most to the emergence of collective action” (223–224). From then on, the question was how to respond to those critical conclusions. For example, Vilna's proximity to dense forests played a role in the decision of the underground members to flee the ghetto and join partisan warfare. In contrast, the Łódź Ghetto was isolated from its surroundings, so the assessments of threats shaped the different forms of resistance by its inmates.

Indeed, the historical parts of the book lean mostly on existing research about the three ghettos, and its importance lies in its contribution to the theoretical discussion about the emergence of resisting social actions as a whole. This is reflected in the second chapter titled “Understanding Resistance: Theoretical Underpinnings,” which presents sociological theories on this matter.

In the case of Warsaw, “Once Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto realized that they were targeted for extermination, with no hope for survival, they decided to resist” (90). In addition to the different locations and circumstances in the ghettos, it seems that personal differences in leadership affected the nature of resistance. In Vilna, most of the ghetto inmates objected to armed resistance. They chose to stick to the hope that, as long as they kept working and obeying the Germans, they would survive, as the message of “work to live” had been conveyed to them all along by the head of the Judenrat Jacob Gens (who was murdered by the Nazis a short time before the ghetto's liquidation). In Łódź, it was the controversial personality of leader Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski that made people resist him rather than against the Nazis. There was no armed resistance inside the ghetto; however, “Jews did fight back – but not with weapons” (202).

Armed resistance was only one potential course of action that the Jews could have taken. They also chose other responses, such as escape, suicide, prayer, or spiritual resistance, in various ways. Armed resistance was the preferred response, mainly among the young who did not have families to care for. “Importantly, the fighters did not choose resistance to save their lives. On the contrary, they were sure that they would all perish,” (90) so with no hope of success and a firm belief that they would die, Einwohner asks: why did they resist? She argues that Jews fought back precisely because they lacked opportunity and resources. With no hope for survival, they reached the critical conclusion of hopelessness that, ironically, made resistance possible. They equated resistance with honor; they would be the ones to choose the way they died, and, for them, it was better to die in battle than to submit meekly to Nazi aggression. Resistance was also a resonant response to the threat of genocide because it was the enactment of an identity: Jews chose to be seen as strong and proud people, and not the weak sub-humans as they were portrayed by the Nazis.

The author's much-appreciated methodology includes an impressive collection of short entries selected from video testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Einwohner meticulously watched about 120 testimonies of the USC Shoah Foundation and excerpted segments about resistance and other relevant topics, told in the original voice of the survivors. This certainly provides added value to her research and conclusions. The author also dedicates an appendix to the “Data Sources” she used, describing the nature of the sources, giving a special tribute to the famous and unique project of collecting video testimonies in the 1990s.

Although no new historical revelations appear in this book, it does present an interesting and important contribution as it offers a new pivotal point on a rather well-researched subject that can add to interdisciplinary research of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust and bring it to new directions of study. It offers a broader perspective and adds additional layers to the attempt to explain Jewish resistance during the darkest time of the Holocaust.