By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
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 year old 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
least13,000 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 red-and-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.
No comments:
Post a Comment