Not many. The Soviet Union was notorious for not being willing to let Jews leave to settle in Israel.
I reject it on the grounds of it being an idiotic statement. Who or what were the “fighting peoples” of mid-20th century Europe?
Polish Jews in a Warsaw ghetto did resist. They made a good show of it for awhile however it ultimately ended badly for them.
Come on. You’re going to compare one isolated uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto to the military traditions of the Holy Roman Empire, the Normans, the Franks, the people of Scotland and England, the Turks and Magyars and Indians and all the other peoples who had been perfecting the art of war for countless centuries? People who were hard at work smithing armor, training horses, inventing weapons and war machinery, etc, for hundreds upon hundreds of years, while the Jews of Europe traded cloth and gold and fled from this country to that country when the king or emperor got sick of them?
I’m Jewish, and I say this as a student of history - the Jews have not been, historically, a fighting people.
Note that I did specify in the OP that this changed after the establishment of Israel. But still. That’s a few decades of military experience that the Jews have as a people (not serving as conscripts in other nations’ armies) - a blip on the radar.
Staying away from the tangental discussion on the Jews being warlike or not (which i agree after their expulsion in 136 AD period they weren’t but around and before say, Exodus (and then during the sack of Jericho and the first Israel of course) I’ve seen it argued they were in fact, mercenaries and very gifted military tacticians). I believe that it wouldn’t have changed much.
When people say the phrase in the title I feel they’re assuming something, that every man womana nd child in Jewish communities owned an assault rifle. I don’t know if there are hard numbers on confiscation of arms, but I’d argue that many of them didn’t even have guns in the first place, making it irrelevent on the point of banning. Nad I’d also wager that a lot of the people that DID have them, hid them (though I’m not sure on this).
All in all, I’d say you’d see a few more Warsaw like pocket resistances, and definately would’ve made things more ANNOYING for the Nazis, but I’d be willing to wager the majority of the War and Holocaust would’ve gone the same way.
Because for most of European history, if the Jews, who were a persecuted minority, tried to fight, they were smashed down by the state. The Khazars, who were Jews, were a fighting people. The Himyarites, which was a Jewish Arabian kingom, were a fighting people. The “Mountain Jews” of the Caucasus were a fighting people, with a long tradition of fighting with their neighbors. There were Jewish Kurds with a millitary tradition.
For that matter, the Falashas of Ethiopia tended to be millitant, constantly either serving as mercenaries in the Ethiopian army or rebelling against the government.
So you’re only really accurate insofar as the Jews of medieval Europe haven’t been a fighting people. But in those times and places where Jews could have weapons and fight in their own defense, Jews have had as strong a millitary tradition as any other group.
Just so everyone knows, to keep this thread on topic I’ve made this thread on the tangental issue that ended up ebing teh focus here.
Without knowing whether that quote from Hitler was true or not, I always thought it a bit of a long shot for the Jews to survive by fighting back. The rest of the populace had already been whipped into a frenzy against them, if they fought back it would have been a boon for anti-Jew propaganda. The Nazi party could have used whatever means they fancied against them then without having to hide the Jews in concentration camps waiting to be gassed.