Present, past wounds

THIS YEAR is the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising where the Jewish inhabitants fought the Nazis with a doomed valour in protest with the world’s silence at their plight.

Using sewers, tunnels and bunkers, they kept the German troops at bay for just on a month in the built-up urban area. They had some small-calibre weapons while the Germans had artillery, flame-throwers and machine guns. Eventually, the Germans took to burning down complete city blocks and smoking the defenders from their tunnels. In the bunker Mila 18, they took poison rather than surrender.

More than 13 000 are known to have died as opposed to only 17 on the German side. As one survivor Yitzhak Zuckerman said, “I don’t think there’s any real need to analyse the uprising in military terms.

“This was a war of less than a thousand people against a mighty army and no one doubted how it was to turn out. This isn’t a subject for study in military school. If there’s a school to study the human spirit, there it should be a major subject.

“The important things were inherent in the force shown by Jewish youth after years of degradation, to rise up against their destroyers and determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or uprising.”

After the establishment of the State of Israel, Zuckerman and other survivors founded Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot (the Ghetto Fighters). Another, Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, was named in honour of Mordechai Anielewicz who died in Mila 18. Ironically, it is situated close to the Gaza Ghetto, where the Palestinian inhabitants are once again fighting overwhelming odds.

This time their oppressors are the grandchildren of those who died in Warsaw. James Cunningham

Camps Bay.