[yummyfajitas]

According to the author it's better to die on your feet and take out some Nazis than die as a slave helping the Nazis. Also, according to the author, the Nazis might have thought twice about Poland if there were uprisings in more than just Warsaw.

Sometimes these uprisings do actually save the people involved. It wouldn't have saved the Jews, but it did save about half of the Tutsis.

Closer to home, it's also worth reading the book "We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement". tl;dr; violent terrorists were regularly attacking black Americans, American Indians and insufficiently loyal white people, and armed resistance put a big dent in it. (Note that law enforcement generally sided with the terrorists.)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hayes_Pond