During World War II, Poland had a highly organized resistance movement, complete with its own fighting force known as the Home Army. Joshua D. Zimmerman discusses the fraught relationship between the Polish underground and the Jews:

Stefan Rowecki, [the commander of the Home Army], authorized the transfer of arms, ammunition, and explosive-device materials to the [Warsaw] ghetto beginning in late January 1943 [in preparation for the uprising there]. The reason for this authorization was a combination of pressure from London and Rowecki’s new appreciation for the demonstrated ability of Jews to fight effectively. Rowecki thus came to the conclusion that Jewish resistance groups inside ghettos deserved, and as citizens of Poland were entitled to, assistance. He also approved or ordered seven documented actions on behalf of the ghetto fighters. During the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Rowecki’s men suffered between fifteen and twenty casualties, [including] two dead, as a result. . . .

Rowecki [also] issued an order to district and sub-district commanders to provide military assistance to Jews inside [other] ghettos wishing to mount self-defense. Almost none, however, obeyed this order and the vast majority of Jews outside Warsaw received no assistance whatsoever. . . .

The most important evidence on this issue comes from the testimony of Yitzḥak Zuckerman. When the ghetto rising began, Zuckerman was residing on the Aryan side of Warsaw while serving as the Jewish Combat Organization’s liaison to the Home Army. He requested a meeting with the Home Army commander to coordinate joint actions. Five days later, the head of the Warsaw district of the Home Army informed Zuckerman that no such meeting would take place. . . .

The ambivalent attitude of the Polish underground to the rising is also evidenced by the important finding of [the historian] Paweł Szapiro, who found that in the extensive coverage of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in the clandestine press of the [resistance], not a single mention was ever made of Home Army aid to the ghetto fighters. Szapiro concluded that the underground authorities had to have imposed a ban on this topic probably out of fear of [negative] public reaction.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.