WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING

A family marches at the head of a column of Jews on its way to be deported during the Warsaw Ghetto 1/4 resistance by Polish Jews under Nazi occupation in 1943 to the deportations from Warsaw to the Treblinka extermination camp. The revolt began on April 19, 1943, and was crushed four weeks later, on May 16. As part of Adolf Hitler's "final solution" for ridding Europe of Jews, the Nazis established ghettos in areas under German control to confine Jews until they could be executed. The Warsaw Ghetto, enclosed at first with barbed wire but later with a brick wall 10 feet (3 metres) high and 11 miles (18 km) long, comprised the old Jewish quarter of Warsaw. The Nazis herded Jews from surrounding areas into this district until by the summer of 1942 nearly 500,000 of them lived within its 840 acres (340 hectares); many had no housing at all, and those who did were crowded in at about nine people per room. Starvation and disease (especially typhus) killed thousands each month. Beginning July 22, 1942, transfers to the death camp at Treblinka began at a rate of more than 5,000 Jews per day. Between July and September 1942, the Nazis shipped about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka. Only some 55,000 remained in the ghetto. As the deportations continued, despair gave way to a determination to resist. A newly formed group, the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB), slowly took effective control of the ghetto. On January 9, 1943, Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS (the Nazi paramilitary corps), visited the Warsaw Ghetto. He ordered the deportation of another 8,000 Jews. The January deportations caught the Jews by surprise, and ghetto residents thought that the end had come. Making use of the many hiding places that they had created since April, Jews did not report as ordered. The resistance sprang into action. Jewish fighters could strike quickly, then escape across the rooftops. German troops, on the other hand, moved cautiously and would not go down to cellars. When the German deportation effort ended within a few days, Jews interpreted this as a victory. From then on, the resistance dominated the ghetto. The resistance fortified hideouts and strengthened fighting units in preparation for the next battle. As one ZOB leader recalled, "We saw ourselves as a Jewish underground whose fate was a tragic one, the first to fight. For our hour had come without any sign of hope or rescue." Two Askaris (Ukrainian members of the SS) survey the bodies of Jews killed in the Warsaw Ghetto 1/4 Having withdrawn, the Germans suspended deportations until April 19, when Himmler launched a special operation to clear the ghetto in honour of Adolf Hitler's birthday, April 20. April 19 was also the first day of Passover, the Jewish holy days celebrating freedom from slavery in Egypt. Before dawn, 2,000 SS men and German army troops moved into the area with tanks, rapid-fire artillery, and ammunition trailers. While most remaining Jews hid in bunkers, by prearrangement, the ZOB and a few independent bands of Jewish guerrillas, in all some 1,500 strong, opened fire with their motley weaponry-pistols, a few rifles, one machine gun, and homemade bombs-destroying a number of tanks, killing German troops, and holding off reinforcements trying to enter the ghetto. The Germans withdrew in the evening. The next day the fighting resumed and casualties mounted. The Germans used gas, police dogs, and flamethrowers in an effort to rout the Jews from their bunkers, leaving the city under a pall of smoke for days. On the third day, the Germans' tactics shifted. They no longer entered the ghetto in large groups but roamed it in small bands. Then they made a decision to burn the entire ghetto. Jews captured during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 are lined up against a wall to be searched 1/4 The Germans had planned to liquidate the ghetto in three days. The Jews held out for nearly a month. Resistance fighters succeeded in hiding in the sewers, even though the Germans tried first to flood them and then force them out with smoke bombs. Not until May 8 did the Nazis manage to take the ZOB headquarters bunker. Civilians hiding there surrendered, but many of the surviving ZOB fighters took their own lives to avoid being captured alive; so died Mordecai Anielewicz, the charismatic young commander of the underground army. The one-sided battle continued until May 16, becoming sporadic as Jewish ammunition was exhausted. Total casualty figures for the uprising are uncertain, but the Germans likely lost several hundred soldiers during the 28 days that it took them to kill or deport over 40,000 Jews. SS Major General Jrgen Stroop supervised the coup de grace: the dynamiting of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw. Thereupon he wrote his report: "The Warsaw Ghetto Is No More." The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was nothing less than a revolution in Jewish history. Jews had resisted the Nazis with armed force. The significance and symbolic resonance of the uprising went far beyond those who fought and died. As Anielewicz wrote to his colleague Yitzhak Zuckerman, "My life's dream has now been realized: Jewish self-defense in the Ghetto is now an accomplished fact1/4I have been witness to the magnificent, heroic struggle of the Jewish fighters." Some aspects of the Warsaw uprising were common to all ghetto insurrections. Resistance came at the end, when all hope for survival was abandoned and when trust in the leadership of the Nazi-created Judenrte ("Jewish Councils") was lost. More than 300,000 had died at the extermination camps; the rail cars were at the station. The fighters knew that they were bound to lose. There was no longer a choice between life and death, but the honour of the Jewish people was at stake. They chose to die fighting and to inflict casualties on the enemy. Jewish fighters faced overwhelmingly superior forces. Even if they are understated with regard to their losses, the German figures reported after the battle reflect the mismatch. Of the Jews captured, the Germans shot 7,000 and transported 7,000 to the death camp at Treblinka, 15,000 to Majdanek, and the remainder to forced-labour camps. The Germans captured 9 rifles, 59 pistols, and several hundred grenades, explosives, and mines. Among the Germans and their collaborators, the stated losses were 16 dead and 85 wounded. Michael Berenbaum History Foundation and early development The origins of Warsaw remain obscure. Excavations within present urban limits have confirmed the existence of Stare Brdno, a small trading settlement of the 10th and early 11th centuries AD. Its functions were taken over successively by Kamion (c. 1065) and Jazdow (first recorded in 1262). About the end of the 13th century, Jazdow was moved about two miles to the north, to a village named Warszowa (Warsaw), and the community was strengthened by the protection of a castle. From 1339, authority was invested in a bailiff and, from 1376, in a city council. By the end of the 14th century, the growing settlement had a double line of protective ramparts. In the 15th century the town became the capital of the duchy of Mazovia, and the New Town sprang up to the north of the original, constricted site, afterward known as the Old Town. In 1526 both city and province became incorporated into the kingdom of Poland; from 1569 the Sejm met in Warsaw, and from 1573 the elections of the kings took place there. The first permanent bridge was built across the Vistula in 1573, and in 1596 King Sigismund III Vasa began to remodel the castle as a royal residence. In 1611 the king and his court finally moved from Krakw (Cracow) to Warsaw, making it the capital of the Polish state. Powerful persons built residences in Warsaw, and autonomous settlements sprang up around its periphery. This growth proved short-lived, for a Swedish invasion (1655-56) devastated the flourishing city. Afterward the War of the Polish Succession (1733-38) brought economic decay and pestilence. Growth of the modern city The 18th century The development of manufacturing, banks, and other enterprises during the early 18th century provided a firm economic base for a number of early exercises in urban planning. During the reign (1764-95) of King Stanislaw II August Poniatowski, Warsaw became the centre of the Polish Enlightenment. The first lay school (Szkola Rycerska) was opened in 1765, and in 1773 the Committee on National Education began its activity in the city. The Polish theatre and numerous printing establishments also flourished. Warsaw played an important role in the striving for Polish political rebirth (following the first partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia, and Russia in 1772) when a parliamentary constitution was proclaimed in the city on May 3, 1791. The national insurrection of 1794, led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko against the Russo-Prussian second partition, was brutally crushed; the ensuing third partition of Poland among Russia, Prussia, and Austria left Warsaw a provincial town of South Prussia.