Ceremonies mark 80 years since Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Leaders from Germany, Israel, Poland attend
WARSAW — Sirens wailed and church bells rang as the presidents of Germany, Israel, and Poland bowed their heads Wednesday before a memorial to Jewish insurgents who fought a mismatched, desperate battle against Nazi German forces in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Celebrations of the uprising’s 80th anniversary honored the hundreds of young Jews who took up arms in the Polish capital in 1943, choosing to fight and die at a time and place not dictated by the Nazis. Most were killed, and none of those who survived the fighting are still alive.
“I stand before you today and ask for forgiveness,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at the site of the former ghetto.
“The appalling crimes that Germans committed here fill me with deep shame. But at the same time it fills me with gratitude and humility that I can take part in this commemoration as the first German head of state ever.”
The leaders were joined by Holocaust survivors and their descendants, amid a poignant sense that the responsibility for carrying on the memory of the Holocaust is passing from the witnesses to younger generations.
A 96-year-old Polish Holocaust survivor, Marian Turski, told those gathered that German forces did the unimaginable in annihilating Jews, but that the “subsoil” of antisemitism existing for centuries made it possible for the Germans to kill so many. He warned against indifference in the face of rising hatred and violence in today’s world.
“Can I be indifferent, can I remain silent, when today the Russian army is attacking our neighbor and seizing its land?” he said.
Steinmeier said the lessons of his country’s aggression offer a message amid the war.
“You in Poland, you in Israel, you know from your history that freedom and independence must be fought for and defended,” Steinmeier said. “But we Germans have also learned the lessons of our history. ‘Never again’ means that there must be no criminal war of aggression like Russia’s against Ukraine in Europe.”
Jewish and Christian clerics recited prayers and a torch burned from a part of the memorial resembling a Jewish menorah.
A large group held private unofficial observances at other sites across the former ghetto. For some it was a boycott of the right-wing government for its policy of portraying the predominant response to the Holocaust as one in which Poles saved Jews. That approach has been a source of tensions with Israel, where many accuse the Polish government of ignoring modern scholarship, which paints a complex picture that also includes many cases of Polish betrayal of Jews.
The Germans invaded Poland in 1939 and the next year set up the ghetto, the largest of many in occupied Poland.
The Warsaw ghetto initially held some 380,000 Jews who were cramped into tight living spaces, and at its peak housed about half a million people.
The Jewish resistance movement in the ghetto grew after 265,000 men, women, and children were rounded up in the summer of 1942 and killed at the Treblinka death camp. As word of the Nazi genocide spread, those who remained behind no longer believed German promises they would be sent to labor camps.
A small group of rebels began to spread calls for resistance, carrying out isolated acts of sabotage and attacks. Some Jews began defying German orders to report for deportation.
The uprising began when the Nazis entered the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of the Passover holiday. Three days later, the Nazis set the ghetto ablaze, but the Jewish fighters kept up their struggle for nearly a month before they were vanquished.