"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" (Hebrew: כצאן לטבח) 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):
Look from heaven and perceive that we have become an object of scorn and derision among the nations; we are regarded as the sheep led to slaughter, to be killed, destroyed, beaten, and humiliated. But despite all this we have not forgotten Your Name—we beg You not to forget us. The Hebrew phrase in the Bible, "like sheep to be slaughtered" (כְּצֹאן טִבְחָה, ke-tson le-tivhah), is distinct from the later variant "like sheep to (the) slaughter" (כצאן לטבח, 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:
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