First urban uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe

Example for Jews in other ghettos and camps; there were smaller revolts elsewhere in Poland

This year’s Yom HaShoa, the commemoration of the Holocaust, includes events around the world marking the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which began on April 19, 1943.

It was the first popular uprising in a city in Nazi-occupied Europe, and, against incredible odds, lasted almost a month.

A year after invading Poland, Nazi Germany set up a ghetto in the heart of the occupied Polish capital in October 1940. Nearly half a million Polish Jews were confined in its squalid quarters, measuring just three square kilometres.

Between July 22 and Sept. 21 of 1942, some 260,000 inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. They were mainly the elderly or children.

After the deportations to Treblinka between 55,000 to 60,000 Jews, mainly younger people, remained in the ghetto and they were concentrated in a few building blocs.

They began to establish a fighting underground organization. Representatives of three Zionist youth movements, Hashomer Hatzair, Dror, and Akiva, established the first cell of the new organization. Members of the left-wing Poalei Tsion party joined them in October 1942.

The Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) was later joined by the non-Zionist Jewish Labour Bund and the Communists. The commander was 23-yearold Mordechai Anielewicz of Hashomer Hatzair. They gained some help from the Polish Communist-led People’s Army (GL) militia.

The Revisionist Zionist youth movement Betar established its own fighting organization, the Jewish Military Union (ZZW); some of their arms were acquired from the mainstream underground Home Army (AK).

The final German action began on April 19. The ghetto population had constructed subterranean bunkers and shelters in preparation for an uprising and had barricaded themselves in these hideouts, taking the Germans by surprise.

The ZOB scattered its positions throughout the ghetto, while the ZZW did most of its fighting at Muranowska Square, impeding the Germans’ attempts to penetrate their defenses.

In response, the Germans began to systematically burn down buildings, turning the ghetto into a firetrap. The Jews fought valiantly for a month but by May 16 the Germans had crushed the uprising and the ghetto had been burned to the ground. At least 13,000 ghetto fighters were killed in the battle, almost half burnt alive in the collapsing buildings set on fire by the Nazis.

Surviving ghetto residents were deported to concentration camps, though some managed to escape through underground sewers and took part in the larger Polish rising in the city that began on Aug. 1, 1944.

On April 19, during the battle in the ghetto, the ZZW had raised two flags atop the highest building in the ghetto: the redand-white Polish Eagle and the blue-and-white Star of David.

They were visible in much of the city and many Polish partisans were moved by the gesture. The Polish flag had not been displayed openly since the fall of Poland in 1939. The Home Army called the struggle “worthy of emulation.”

In his last message, dated April 23, Anielewicz wrote: “The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle.”

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising became an example for Jews in other ghettos and camps and there were smaller revolts elsewhere in Poland.

My mother’s two brothers were part of the one in Czestochowa. After it ended they fled into a nearby forest, where they were hunted down and shot by the Nazi SS.