Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 23 Jun 2011
Threat Assessment and Collective-Action Emergence: Death-Camp and Ghetto Resistance During the Holocaust
Threat Assessment and Collective-Action Emergence: Death-Camp and Ghetto Resistance During the Holocaust
and
Page Range: 127 – 146
Recent work in the field of social movements has argued for the importance of threat as a factor that explains the emergence of collective action. However, threat remains poorly specified and understood. This article seeks to refine the concept of threat and its role in mobilization with an examination of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Our study design compares two cases where resistance took place (the Warsaw Ghetto and the Sobibór death camp) with two cases where resistance did not occur (the Łódź Ghetto and the Bełżec death camp). Our comparison of these cases finds that mass resistance occurred only when and where Jews correctly assessed the threats facing them. We use these findings to identify five dimensions of threat: severity, temporality, applicability, malleability, and credibility. We argue that recognizing these dimensions and the ways they interact is especially useful for understanding action in repressive contexts.
Adelson, Alan (ed). 1996. The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Łódź Ghetto. New York: Oxford University Press.
Adelson, Alan, and Robert Lapides (eds). 1989. Łódź Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege. New York: Viking.
Ainsztein, Reuben. 1974. Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Ainsztein, Reuben. 1979. The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. New York: Holocaust Library.
Alimi, Eitan. 2007. "The Dialectic of Opportunities and Threats and Temporality of Contention: Evidence from the Occupied Territories." International Political Science Review 28(1): 101-123.
Alimi, Eitan. 2009. "Mobilizing Under the Gun: Theorizing Political Opportunity Structure in a Highly Repressive Setting." Mobilization 14(2): 219-38.
Almeida, Paul D. 2003. "Opportunity Organizations and Threat-Induced Contention: Protest Waves in Authoritarian Settings." American Journal of Sociology 109(2): 345-400.
Almeida, Paul D. 2008. Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador, 1925-2005. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Arad, Yitzhak. 1982. Ghetto in Flames. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
Arad, Yitzhak. 1987. Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Auyero, Javier, and Debora Swistun. 2008. "The Social Production of Toxic Uncertainty." American Sociological Review 73(3): 357-79.
Babb, Sarah. 1996. "'A True American System of Finance': Frame Resonance in the US Labor Movement, 1866-1886." American Sociological Review 61(6): 1033-52.
Bauman, Janina. 1986. Winter in the Morning: A Young Girl's Life in the Warsaw Ghetto and Beyond, 1939-1945. New York: The Free Press.
Benford, Robert D. 1993. "'You Could Be the Hundredth Monkey': Collective Action Frames and Vocabularies of Motive Within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement." The Sociological Quarterly 34(2): 195-216.
Blatt, Thomas Toivi. 1997. From the Ashes of Sobibór: A Story of Survival. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Blatt, Thomas Toivi. 1998. Sobibór, the Forgotten Revolt: A Survivor's Report. Issaquah WA: H.E.P.
Bonnell, Victoria E. 1980. "The Uses of Theory, Concepts and Comparison in Historical Sociology." Comparative Studies in Society and History 22(2): 156-173.
Boudreau, Vincent. 2004. Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Calhoun, Craig. 1994. Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Cochavi, Yehoyakim. 1995. "The Motif of ‘Honor’ in the Call to Rebellion in the Ghetto." Pp. 245-54 in Zionist Youth Movements During the Shoah, edited by Asher Cohen and Yehoyakim Cochavi, translated by Ted Gorelick. New York: Peter Lang.
Cohen, Asher, and Yehoyakim Cochavi (eds). 1995. Zionist Youth Movements During the Shoah. New York: Peter Lang.
Corni, Gustavo. 2002. Hitler's Ghettos: Voices from a Beleaguered Society, 1939-1944. London: Arnold.
Davenport, Christian. 2007. "State Repression and Political Order." Annual Review of Political Science 10: 1-23.
Deng, Fang. 1997. "Information Gaps and Unintended Outcomes of Social Movements: The 1989 Chinese Student Movement." American Journal of Sociology 102(4): 1085-1112.
Dixon, Marc. 2010. "Union Threat, Countermovement Organization, and Labor Policy in the States, 1944-1960." Social Problems 57(2): 157-174.
Dobroszycki, Lucjan (ed). 1984. The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto, 1941-1944. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Duffy, Andrew. 2007. "Bełżec Survivor Escaped to Reveal All He Witnessed in Gas Chambers." The Ottawa Citizen, 15 June.
Eichengreen, Lucille, with Rebecca Camhi Fromer. 2000. Rumkowski and the Orphans of Łódź. San Francisco, CA: Mercury House.
Einwohner, Rachel L. 2003. "Opportunity, Honor, and Action in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943." American Journal of Sociology 109(3): 650-75.
Einwohner, Rachel L. 2009. "The Need to Know: Cultured Ignorance and Jewish Resistance in the Ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, and Łódź." The Sociological Quarterly 50(3): 407-30.
Freidländer, Saul. 1969. Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc.
Freidländer, Saul. 2007. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Gilbert, Martin. 1993. Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: William Morrow and Company.
Goldstone, Jack A., and Charles Tilly. 2001. "Threat (And Opportunity): Popular Action and State Response in the Dynamics of Contentious Action." Pp. 179-194 in Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics, edited by Ronald R. Aminzade, Jack A. Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth J. Perry, William H. Sewell, Jr., Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, Jeff. 2000. No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gupta, Dipak K., Harinder Singh, and Tom Sprague. 1993. "Government Coercion of Dissidents: Deterrence or Provocation?" Journal of Conflict Resolution 37(2): 301-39.
Gutman, Yisrael. 1982. The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Gutman, Yisrael. 1994. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin.
Gutman, Yisrael. 2006. "Introduction: The Distinctiveness of the Łódź Ghetto." Pp. xxix-lvii in Łódź Ghetto: A History, by Isaiah Trunk. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Hilberg, Raul. 1979. The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Harper & Row.
Hirschman, Albert O. 1991. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy. Cambridge: Belknap Press.
Horwitz, Gordon J. 2008. Ghettostadt: Łódź and the Making of a Nazi City. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Johnston, Hank. 2005. "Talking the Walk: Speech Acts and Resistance in Authoritarian Regimes." Pp. 108-137 in Repression and Mobilization, edited by Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol Mueller. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Johnston, Hank. 2006. "'Let's Get Small': The Dynamics of (Small) Contention in Repressive States." Mobilization 11(2): 195-212.
Khawaja, Marwan. 1993. "Repression and Popular Collective Action: Evidence from the West Bank." Sociological Forum 8(1): 47-71.
King, Brayden G. 2008. "A Political Mediation Model of Corporate Response to Social Movement Activism." Administrative Science Quarterly 53(3): 395-421.
Klajman, Jack, with Ed Klajman. 2000. Out of the Ghetto. London: Vallentine Mitchell.
Kurzman, Dan. 1993. The Bravest Battle: The Twenty-eight Days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc.
Libionka, Dariusz. 2006. "The Life Story of Chaim Hirszman: Remembrance of the Holocaust and Reflections on Postwar Polish-Jewish Relations." Yad Vashem Studies XXXIV: 219-48.
Lichbach, Mark. 1987. "Deterrence of Escalation? The Puzzle of Aggregate Studies of Repression and Dissent." Journal of Conflict Resolution 31(3): 266-97.
Lubetkin, Zivia. 1981. In the Days of Destruction and Revolt. Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Ghetto Fighters' House) and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House.
Maher, Thomas V. 2010. "Threat, Resistance, and Mobilization: The Cases of Auschwitz, Sobibór, and Treblinka." American Sociological Review 75(2): 252-72.
Martin, Andrew. 2010. "Bureaucracy, Power, and Threat: Unions and Strikes in the United States, 1990-2001." Mobilization 15(2): 217-37.
McAdam, Doug. 1982. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
McAdam, Doug. 2010. "Ptolemy vs. Copernicus: On the Perils of Movement-Centric Scholarship in the Study of Contentious Politics." 2010 McCarthy Award Acceptance Speech. Center for the Study of Social Movements and Social Change, University of Notre Dame, April 10, 2010.
McVeigh, Rory. 2009. The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right Wing Movements and National Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Meyer, David S., and Debra C. Minkoff. 2004. "Conceptualizing Political Opportunity." Social Forces 82(4): 1457-92.
Mill, John Stuart. 1950. John Stuart Mill's Philosophy of Scientific Method. New York: Hafner Publishing Co.
Modigliani, Andre, and Francois Rochat. 1995. "The Role of Interaction Sequences and the Timing of Resistance in Shaping Obedience and Defiance to Authority." Journal of Social Issues 51(3): 107-123.
Nirenstein, Albert. 1959. A Tower From the Enemy: Contributions to a History of Jewish Resistance in Poland. New York: The Orion Press.
Novitch, Miriam. 1980. Sobibór: Martyrdom and Revolt Documents and Testimonies. New York: Holocaust Library.
O'Neil, Robin. 2004. Bełżec: Stepping Stone to Genocide. Retrieved July 10, 2009 ( http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Belzec1/Belzec1.html
O'Neil, Robin. 1998. "Bełżec—The ‘Forgotten’ Death Camp." East European Jewish Affairs 28(1): 49-62.
Ragin, Charles C. 1989. The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rashke, Richard. 1982. Escape from Sobibór. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Reder, Rudolf. 2000. "Bełżec." Pp. 270-89 in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Vol. 13: Focusing on the Holocaust and its Aftermath, Edited by Antony Polonsky Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.
Reese, Ellen, Vincent Geidraitis, and Eric Vega. 2005. "Mobilization and Threat: Campaigns against Welfare Privatization in Four Cities." Sociological Focus 38(4): 287-309.
Rosenbaum, Alan S. (ed). 2001. Is The Holocaust Unique? 2nd edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Rotem, Simha. 1994. Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter: The Past Within Me. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Rubel, Margaret. M. 2000. "Bełżec: Translator's Note." Pp. 268-69 in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Vol. 13: Focusing on the Holocaust and its Aftermath Edited by Antony Polonsky. Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.
Schelvis, Jules. 2007. Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp. Oxford: Berg.
Scott, A.O. 2008. "A Society in the Forest, Banding Together to Escape Persecution." Retrieved December 31, 2008 ( http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/movies/31defi.html
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Snow, David A., and Robert Benford. 1988. "Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization." Pp. 197-218 in From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research Across Cultures, edited by Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Snow, David A., Daniel M. Cress, Liam Downey, and Andrew W. Jones. 1998. "Disrupting the 'Quotidian': Reconceptualizing the Relationship Between Breakdown and the Emergence of Collective Action." Mobilization 3(1): 1-22.
Sofsky, Wolfgang. 1997. The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Suhl, Yuri. 1968. They Fought Back: The Story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe. London: MacGibbon and Kee.
Tarrow, Sidney G. 1998. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Verta. 1989. "Social Movement Continuity: The Women's Movement in Abeyance." American Sociological Review 54(5): 761-75.
Tester, Griff M. 2004. "Resources, Identity, and the Role of Threat: The Case of AIDS Mobilization, 1981-1986." Research in Political Sociology 13: 47-75.
Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Tilly, Charles. 1995. Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tilly, Charles. 2008. Contentious Performances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow. 2006. Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Tregenza, Michael. 1977. "Bełżec Death Camp." Wiener Library Bulletin 30: 8-25.
Tushnet, Leonard. 1972. The Pavement of Hell. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Unger, Michal. 2002. "The Lodz Ghetto." Pp. 19-29 in In Those Terrible Days: Notes from the Łódź Ghetto, by Josef Zelkowicz. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem.
Van Dyke, Nella, and Sarah A. Soule. 2002. "Structural Social Change and the Mobilizing Effect of Threat: Explaining Levels of Patriot and Militia Organizing in the United States." Social Problems 49(4): 497-520.
Walsh, Edward J., Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith. 1993. "Backyards, NIMBYs, and Incinerator Sitings: Implications for Social Movement Theory." Social Problems 40(1): 25-37.
Walsh, Edward J., Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith. 1997. Don't Burn it Here: Grassroots Challenges to Trash Incinerators. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press.
Wdowinski, David. 1985. And We Are Not Saved. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc.
Wright, Stuart. 2007. Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yad Vashem Archives. 1946. Testimony of Chaim Hirszman and Pola Hirszman, March 19, 1946. YVA 0016-6 1476. Jerusalem, Israel.
Zelkowicz, Josef. 2002. In those Terrible Days: Writings from the Łódź Ghetto. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem.