The examination of any issue relating to the Holocaust is accompanied by complexity and the possibility of controversy. This is especially true when addressing the topic of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. Historians are often divided on this complex question, debating questions such as how “resistance” is defined and, in accordance with that definition, how much resistance occurred. According to Michael Marrus, “the very term Jewish resistance suggests a point of view.” Many factors, both internal such as differences of opinion about when or what resistance was appropriate, and external such as the lack of weapons with which to rebel, contributed to making resistance, especially armed resistance, extremely difficult. When considering acts of Jewish resistance, it is important to consider both direct and indirect forms of resistance, as well as to avoid belittling the efforts made to resist. Although many factors made resistance difficult, the Jews resisted both directly and indirectly, often more than historians have given them credit for. By and large, the Jews did not accept their deaths silently, like sheep to the slaughter. Countless internal factors made Jewish resistance extremely difficult. The most explicit of these were the horrific conditions of the ghettos and concentration camps, which led to malnutrition, as well as the extensive forced labor imposed on inmates, which caused a general state of poor health. When the living situation worsened further between 1940 and 1942 as the death rate in the concentration camps rapidly increased, conditions were so poor that survival was the inmates' only goal; there was no time to think about resistance. When the Jews began to become aware of their imminent extinction...... middle of paper...... Niewyk,129-145. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992.Hilberg, Raul. “Two thousand years of Jewish pacification”. In The Holocaust, edited by Donald L. Niewyk, 114-120. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992. Krakowski, Shmuel. “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”. In The Holocaust, edited by Donald L. Niewyk, 145-159. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1992. Marrus, Michael R. “Jewish Resistance.” In The Holocaust in History, 133-155. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Limited, 1987. Marrus, Michael R. “Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust.” Journal of Contemporary History 30, n.1 (1995): 83-110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/260923.Pingel, Falk. “Resistance and resignation in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps”. Translated by J. Sondheimer. In The Policies of Genocide, edited by Gerhard Hirschfeld, 30-72. London: German Historical Institute, 1986.