Bauer is determined to avoid blaming the victims for their fates, and if that means he sometimes stretches the definition of resistance to include ordinary acts of self-preservation, his position is nonetheless preferable to Hilberg’s and Arendt’s. Their harsh accusations have not stood up to historical analysis over the past forty years. Above all, they underestimate the forms of resistance that Jews participated in, and they overestimate the possibilities of armed resistance or even noncooperation that were available to Jews, either upon initial contact with the Nazis or later.
