"Like sheep to the slaughter" — and its numerous variants, such as "like a lamb to the slaughter" — is a simile that refers to facing a negative situation clueless of its consequences. It is a popular simile, and has been used in various contexts throughout history.
In the modern era, one highly significant use of the phrase "like sheep to the slaughter" () is as a phrase that refers to the idea that Jews went passively to their deaths during the Holocaust. It derives from a similar phrase in the Hebrew Bible that favorably depicts martyrdom in both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. Opposition to the phrase became associated with Jewish nationalism due to its use in Josippon and by Jewish self-defense groups after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. During the Holocaust, Abba Kovner and other Jewish resistance leaders used the phrase to exhort Jews to fight back. In postwar Israel, some demonized Holocaust survivors as having gone "like sheep to the slaughter" while armed resistance was glorified. The phrase was taken to mean that Jews had not tried to save their own lives, and consequently were partly responsible for their own suffering and death. This myth, which has become less prominent over time, is frequently criticized by historians, theologians, and survivors as a form of victim blaming.
Background Religious
Judaism In Isaiah 53, a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, a virtuous servant is murdered but does not protest: "Like a sheep being led to the slaughter or a lamb that is silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth" (Isaiah 53:7). His silence is praised because there was no "deceit in his mouth" (Isaiah 53:9). But Rabbi Abraham Heschel pointed out that the context is more ambiguous, because Isaiah himself protests God's punishment of the Jewish people. In Psalm 44, the martyrdom of Jewish people persecuted for their religion is presented favorably: "Nay, but for Thy sake are we killed all the day; / We are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered" (Psalms 44:22). Jewish liturgy uses the phrase in Tachanun, a prayer derived from Psalm 44, which is traditionally recited each Monday and Thursday in the Shacharis (morning prayers):
The Hebrew phrase in the Bible, "like sheep to be slaughtered" (, ke-tson le-tivhah), is distinct from the later variant "like sheep to (the) slaughter" (, ke-tson la-tevah).
Christianity In Christianity, the phrase was interpreted as the virtue of meekness, related to Jesus allowing himself to be crucified; Jesus was symbolized as the Lamb of God. Presbyterian theologian Albert Barnes wrote, "the fact that [Jesus] did not open his mouth in complaint was therefore the more remarkable, and made the merit of his sufferings the greater". He considered Isaiah 53 prophetic typology that had been "fulfilled in the life of the Lord Jesus", a typology that would continue as part of Christian interpretations of the Holocaust.
Secular The inverse of the phrase, contrary to what was previously believed, was coined by the writer of the 10th-century Jewish history Josippon, which quoted Mattathias, a leader of the Maccabean Revolt, as saying, "Be strong and let us be strengthened and let us die fighting and not die as sheep led to slaughter". In a different context, the phrase was used by United States founder George Washington in 1783 to warn of the dangers of removing the right to freedom of speech: "the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter".
The inversion of the phrase was revived by Jewish self-defense leagues in the Russian Empire in the wake of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, although it remained rare compared to other imagery of victimization. In reference to the pogrom, The New York Times reported that "The Jews were taken wholly unaware and slaughtered like sheep". Yosef Haim Brenner's Hebrew novella Around the Point featured a protagonist who asked, "Were the Jews like sheep to be slaughtered?" but immediately rejected the idea. By 1910, the second version of the phrase, invented in Josippon, was more commonly used. In a 1920 article titled "Will They Make Jerusalem into a Kishinev?" Zalman Shazar, later the third president of Israel, argued against negotiating with the British Mandatory Palestine authorities because "The brothers of the Tel Hai heroes will not be led as sheep to slaughter."
In Yizkor, a 1911 book memorializing Jews killed by Arabs, the inverse was attributed to Ya'akov Plotkin, the leader of a Jewish self-defense organization in Ukraine, who had immigrated to Palestine and was killed during the intercommunal conflict in Palestine. According to Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, later Israel's second president, Plotkin had previously used the phrase in regard to defense against the pogroms in the Russian Empire. The book was widely read by Zionists in Eastern Europe. Yael Feldman suggests that this is the probable source for the verbiage Abba Kovner used in his declaration of 1 January 1942.
In the Holocaust context
During the Holocaust
During the Holocaust, Abba Kovner was the first to use the phrase as a call for action in a 1 January 1942 pamphlet in which he argued that "Hitler is plotting the annihilation of European Jewry". Kovner urged Jews in the Vilna Ghetto to resist the Germans:
Instead of viewing Jews as sheep, Kovner instead attempted "to cause a rebellion against the very use of that term", according to Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer. In a speech Kovner gave to members of the Palmach after arriving in Palestine in October 1945, he explained that his phrase had not meant that Holocaust victims had gone "like sheep to the slaughter" and attributed that interpretation to non-Jews, such as a Soviet partisan commissar. Kovner also said of the inability of so many victims to fight back, "All and everyone did go like this!", including Soviet prisoners of war, Nazi collaborators killed by their former allies, and Polish officers.
The pamphlet was smuggled to other ghettos, where it inspired similar calls for resistance. In the Kraków Ghetto, Dolek Liebeskind said, "For three lines in history that will be written about the youth who fought and did not go like sheep to the slaughter it is even worth dying." During the Grossaktion Warsaw, the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto beginning 22 July 1942, Jewish archivist Emanuel Ringelblum criticized the brutality of the Jewish Ghetto Police during roundups and the Jewish masses' passivity. Ringelblum asked, "why have we allowed ourselves to be led like sheep to the slaughter", and concluded that Jews were ashamed and disgraced because their "docility" did not save their lives. He concluded that the only option was armed resistance, even as a symbolic gesture.
After the war
In Israel
In the immediate postwar period in Israel, before the Eichmann trial, survivors who had not fought with the partisans were stigmatized for having allegedly gone like sheep to the slaughter. In response, some child survivors pretended to be sabras (native Israelis), and other survivors never mentioned their experience. Armed resistance was glorified, partly because the establishment of the State of Israel also required armed conflict. For example, the most popular textbook for elementary school students devoted 60% of its Holocaust coverage to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In contrast, other reactions to the Holocaust were demonized: one textbook approved by the Ministry of Education read that "the heroic stand of the Ghetto Jews also compensated for the humiliating surrender of those led to the death camps" and that Holocaust victims had gone "as sheep to the slaughter".
British historian Tom Lawson argues that the idea of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust confirmed stereotypes of diaspora Jews held by the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, which contributed to their ascendance. Israeli historian Yechiam Weitz argues that the "sheep to slaughter" trope "insinuat[es] that millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust did not measure up" and, if they had fought back, Jewish national honor would have been preserved. Israeli historian Idit Zertal writes that Holocaust survivors were blamed for not choosing Zionism in time.
Israeli historian Hanna Yablonka criticizes this perception, arguing that Holocaust survivors shaped Israeli memory. Feldman describes the myth as deriving from traditional European antisemitic stereotypes of Jews as "the dishonorable antithesis of all the 'virile' qualities deemed necessary by modern nationalism". An alternate explanation advanced by Israeli historian Tom Segev is that the sheep metaphor enabled Israelis to downplay the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust as a defense mechanism against cultural trauma. Initially, little was known about the Holocaust, leading to over-generalization. According to the just-world falllacy, Holocaust victims and survivors must have done something to deserve their fate.
Kovner's speech of October 1945 was not available to the public for four decades, and many falsely attributed the accusation against Israeli Holocaust survivors to him. Disturbed by this, Kovner said in 1947 that one who had not witnessed the events of the Holocaust could not use the phrase appropriately; "like sheep to the slaughter" meant something different in Israel than it had in the Vilna Ghetto in 1942. Meanwhile, he continued to claim authorship of the inversion of the statement despite the previous precedent.
The Israeli attitude toward Holocaust survivors was revolutionized by the highly publicized trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key Holocaust perpetrator, in Jerusalem. During the trial, prosecutor Gideon Hausner went beyond proving Eichmann's guilt. He attempted to educate Israelis about Nazi crimes, "assumed the role of defense attorney for the dead and the living Jewish people", and called many survivors as witnesses. The public questioned whether resistance was an option for the masses, and the activity of rescue groups such as the Aid and Rescue Committee was viewed more favorably. Public opinion shifted to blaming the perpetrators exclusively. Revisionist Zionist poet Uri Zvi Greenberg said, "It is a crime to say that, in the time of Hitler, Diaspora Jewry could have gone to their deaths differently." The Labor Zionist writer Haim Guri wrote:
Outside of Israel
After the war, the idea that Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors had been passive was reinforced by photographs of liberated Nazi concentration camps depicting emaciated survivors. Because Nazi propaganda films were often the only source of footage, their use in postwar documentaries supported the idea of Jewish passivity, as did the iconic Warsaw Ghetto boy photograph. The claim that Jewish concentration camp prisoners were more passive than non-Jewish prisoners often obscured historical fact, such as the fact that Jews launched six of the seven uprisings in concentration or death camps.