Did resistance to German occupation affect Nazi treatment of Jews in territory under their control?
Soviet propaganda agitated for civilians to fight the Germans in occupied Soviet territory. Many partisan guerrilla groups remained active in these areas committing acts of sabotage and murder throughout the time the Nazis occupied them. The Nazis viewed communism as a creature of the Jews and in reprisal for the war being waged by the partisans, many Jews were shot. Jews were viewed by many in the Baltic states, occupied by the Communists in 1940, as collaborators in that occupation. As the Red army retreated in 1941, the Soviet secret police known as the NKVD murdered as many of the political prisoners as they could before abandoning their prisons to the advancing Germans. Many Jews who did not retreat with the Russians were rounded up and murdered by local anti-Communist militias and German units in reaction to the NKVD murders of members of nationalist groups they held in their prisons.
