the planned deportations to concentration and extermination camps went ahead on August 17, 1943, without any delay. Approximately 10,000 Jews were led to the Holocaust trains and sent to camps in Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz. A transport of 1,200 children were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp and later to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. Several dozen guerillas managed to break through to the forests surrounding Białystok where they joined the partisan units of Armia Krajowa and other organisations and survived the war. It is estimated that out of almost 60,000 Jews who lived in Białystok before World War II, only several hundred survived the Holocaust. Analysis Historian Evgeny Finkel argues that "the comparison of the Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok ghettos suggests a direct linkage between the likelihood of uprising and the Zionists' leading role in the underground"; in Bialystok, the local Zionist chapters were well organized and had experience with clandestine activity from having operated underground even before the Nazi occupation, and ultimately successfully organized a rebellion, and convinced the rival communist faction to join; in Kraków, the Zionists were poorly organized and often dependent on cooperation with the communists, and thus could not successfully realize an uprising despite intending to. The difference between communist and Zionist behavior has been explained in the Zionists' greater salience of Jewish identity; they preferred to defend Jewish honor to the end even when doing so was suicidal, whereas the communists preferred to flee into forested lands and regroup. Notes and references Books B. Mark, "Ruch oporu w getcie białostockim. Samoobrona-zagłada-powstanie" (Polish, "Resistance movement in the Białystok ghetto. Self-defence – annihilation – uprising."), Warsaw 1952. "Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939 – 1945. Informator encyklopedyczny." (Polish, "Nazi camps on Polish soil 1939–1945. Encyclopedic reference book."), Warsaw 1979 r. Conflicts in 1943 Ghetto uprisings Military history of Poland during World War II Uprisings of Poland 1943 in Poland The Holocaust in Poland