Untold stories of Jewish resistance revealed in London Holocaust exhibition

From quiet acts of bravery, to overt acts of rebellion, Jewish resistance to the Holocaust took many forms, yet research shows they remain largely unacknowledged in traditional UK teachings about the genocide.

A new exhibition, drawing on thousands of previously unseen documents and manuscripts, is placing some of the little-known personal stories of heroism, active armed resistance, and rescue networks in the extermination camps and ghettos at the forefront.

Opening at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, it highlights the extraordinary endeavours of Tosia Altman, a courier who as a member of the socialist Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, smuggled herself into Poland’s ghettos on false “Aryanised” papers, organising groups, spreading information and moving weapons, before being captured and dying of her injuries, aged 24, after the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943.