Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising[a] was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the gas chambers of the Majdanek and Treblinka extermination camps.
For the subsequent general uprising of 1944, see Warsaw Uprising.
After the Grossaktion Warsaw of summer 1942, in which more than a quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto. The left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and right-wing Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) formed and began to train. A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred Polish resistance groups to support the Jews in earnest.
The uprising started on 19 April when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who ordered the destruction of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. A total of 13,000 Jews were killed, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. Stroop reported 110 German casualties, including 17 killed.[4]
The uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew that victory was impossible and survival unlikely. Marek Edelman, the last surviving ŻOB commander who died in 2009, said their inspiration to fight was "not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths". According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the uprising was "one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people".[6]
Uprising
January revolt
On 18 January 1943, the Germans began their second deportation of the Jews, which led to the first instance of armed insurgency within the ghetto. While Jewish families hid in their so-called "bunkers", fighters of the ŻOB and ŻZW, resisted, engaging the Germans in direct clashes.[13] Though the ŻZW and ŻOB suffered heavy losses (including some of their leaders), the Germans also took casualties, and the deportation was halted within a few days. About 1,200 Jews were killed, and about 5,000 deported, instead of the 8,000 planned by Germans.[14] The fighters managed to kill about a dozen Germans and wound several dozen.[15]
Hundreds of people in the Warsaw Ghetto were ready to fight, sparsely armed with handguns, gasoline bottles, and a few other weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto by resistance fighters.[2] Most of the Jewish fighters did not view their actions as an effective measure by which to save themselves, but rather as a battle for the honour of the Jewish people, and a protest against the world's silence.[16]
Preparations
The ŻZW and ŻOB, built dozens of fighting posts and executed a number of Nazi collaborators, including Jewish Ghetto Police officers, members of the fake (German-sponsored and controlled) resistance organization Żagiew, as well as Gestapo and Abwehr agents (including the alleged agent and Judenrat associate Alfred Nossig, executed on 22 February 1943).[17] The ŻOB established a prison to hold and execute traitors and collaborators. Józef Szeryński, former head of the Jewish Ghetto Police, committed suicide.
After the uprising was over, most of the incinerated houses were razed, and the Warsaw concentration camp complex was established in their place. Thousands of people died in the camp or were executed in the ruins of the ghetto. The SS hunted Jews hiding in the ruins. On 19 April 1943, the first day of the most significant period of the resistance, 7,000 Jews were transported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp.[33] Many purportedly developed resistance groups and helped to plan and execute the revolt and mass escape of 2 August 1943. From May 1943 to August 1944, executions in the ruins of the ghetto were carried out by:[34]
Open and secret executions carried out in Warsaw were led by SS-Obersturmführer Norbert Bergh-Trips, SS-Haupturmführer Paul Werner and SS-Obersturmführer Walter Witossek. The latter often presided over the police "trio", signing mass death sentences for Polish political prisoners, which were later pronounced by the ad hoc court of the security police.[35][36]
In October 1943, Bürkl was tried and condemned to death in absentia by the Polish Resistance's Underground court, and shot dead by the AK in Warsaw, a part of Operation Heads that targeted notorious SS officers. That same month, von Sammern-Frankenegg was killed by Yugoslav Partisans in an ambush in Croatia. Himmler, Globocnik and Krüger all committed suicide at the end of the war in Europe in May 1945.
The General Government Governor of Warsaw at the time of the Uprising, Dr. Ludwig Fischer, was tried and executed in 1947. Stroop was captured by Americans in Germany, convicted of war crimes in two trials (U.S. military and Polish), and executed by hanging in Poland in 1952, along with Warsaw Ghetto SS administrator Franz Konrad. Stroop's aide, Erich Steidtmann, was exonerated for "minimal involvement"; he died in 2010 while under investigation for war crimes. Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle who helped carry out the July 1942 Grossaktion Warsaw committed suicide after being arrested in 1962. Walter Bellwidt, who commanded a Waffen-SS battalion among Stroop forces, died on 13 October 1965. Hahn went into hiding until 1975, when he was apprehended and sentenced to life for crimes against humanity; he served eight years and died in 1986. SS Oberführer Arpad Wigand who served with von Sammern-Frankenberg as SS and Police Leader in Warsaw from 4 August 1941 to 23 April 1943 was tried for war crimes in Hamburg Germany in 1981 and sentenced to 12.5 years in prison; died 26 July 1983. Walter Reder reportedly served in the SS Panzer Grenadier Training Battalion III; he served a jail sentence in Italy from 1951 to 1985 for war crimes committed in 1944 in Italy and died in 1991. Josef Blösche was tried for war crimes and executed in 1969. Heinrich Klaustermeyer was tried for war crimes in 1965 and sentenced to life in prison. In 1976, he was released from prison on the grounds of his advanced cancer and died 13 days later.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 took place over a year before the Warsaw uprising of 1944. The ghetto had been destroyed by the time of the general uprising in the city, which was part of the Operation Tempest, a nationwide insurrection plan. During the Warsaw Uprising, the Polish Home Army's Battalion Zośka was able to rescue 380 Jewish prisoners (mostly foreign) held in the concentration camp "Gęsiówka" set up by the Germans in an area adjacent to the ruins of former ghetto. These prisoners had been brought from Auschwitz and forced to clear the remains of the ghetto.[37] A few small groups of ghetto residents also managed to survive in the undetected "bunkers" and to eventually reach the "Aryan side".[38] Several hundred survivors from the first uprising took part in the later uprising (mostly in non-combat roles such as logistics and maintenance, due to their physical state and general shortage of arms), joining the ranks of the Polish Home Army and the Armia Ludowa. According to Samuel Krakowski from the Jewish Historical Institute, "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had a real influence ... in encouraging the activity of the Polish underground."[39]
A number of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, known as the "Ghetto Fighters", went on to create the kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot (literally: "Ghetto Fighters'"), which is located north of Acre, Israel. The founding members of the kibbutz include Yitzhak Zuckerman (Icchak Cukierman), who represented the ŻOB on the 'Aryan' side, and his wife Zivia Lubetkin, who commanded a fighting unit. In 1984, members of the kibbutz published Daphei Edut ("Testimonies of Survival"), four volumes of personal testimonies from 96 kibbutz members. The settlement features a museum and archives dedicated to remembering the Holocaust. Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz just north of the Gaza Strip, was named after Mordechaj Anielewicz. In 2008, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi led a group of Israeli officials to the site of the uprising and spoke about the event's "importance for IDF combat soldiers".[40]
In 1968, the 25th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Zuckerman was asked what military lessons could be learned from the uprising. He replied:
On 7 December 1970, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt spontaneously knelt while visiting the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes memorial in the People's Republic of Poland. At the time, the action surprised many and was the focus of controversy, but it has since been credited with helping improve relations between the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. Many people from the United States and Israel came for the 1983 commemoration.[42] The last surviving Jewish resistance fighter, Simcha Rotem, died in Jerusalem on 22 December 2018, at age 94.[43][44]
Poster printed by ŻOB: "All people are equal brothers; Brown, White, Black and Yellow. To separate peoples, colors, races, Is but an act of cheating!"
Page 5 of Stroop Report describing German fight against "Juden mit polnischen Banditen" – "Jews with Polish bandits".[21]
![Page 5 of Stroop Report describing German fight against "Juden mit polnischen Banditen" – "Jews with Polish bandits".[21]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Strp012_Jurgen_Stroop_report_p5.jpg/113px-Strp012_Jurgen_Stroop_report_p5.jpg)
Continuation 27 April 1943 describing fight against "jüdisch-polnische Wehrformation" ("Jewish-Polish armed formation").[21]
![Continuation 27 April 1943 describing fight against "jüdisch-polnische Wehrformation" ("Jewish-Polish armed formation").[21]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Strp040_Stroop_report_27_4_1943.jpg/112px-Strp040_Stroop_report_27_4_1943.jpg)
In popular culture
The uprising is the subject of numerous works, in multiple media, such as Aleksander Ford's film Border Street (1948),[76] John Hersey's novel The Wall (1950), Leon Uris' novel Mila 18 (1961), Jack P. Eisner's autobiography The Survivor (1980),[77] Andrzej Wajda's films A Generation (1955), Samson (1961), Holy Week (1995),[78] and Jon Avnet's film Uprising (2001).
The photograph of a boy surrendering outside a bunker, with Trawniki with submachine guns in the background, became one of the best-known photographs of World War II and the Holocaust:[d] He is said to represent all 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims.[e]