Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

"For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people? or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred? Esther 8:6

Within the ghettos, a governing council of Jewish leaders was formed and called "The Judenrat". They handled day to day business in the Ghettos such as a mayor and City board might do, but they were also prisoners and under the coercion of the Nazis.

To Stand for their Lives

Wherein the king granted the Jews which [were] in every city to gather themselves together, and to stand for their life, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all the power of the people and province that would assault them...Esther 8:11.

Of the many questions asked regarding the Shoah, one of the most prominent is "Why didn't the Jews offer resistance, or at least more resistance against the Nazi genocide? It is hard to conceive for many why the Jews did not rise up and fight back. There were many reasons though: often the aktions and attacks were by surprise, and the Jews had no warning, also, it was a capital crime to help or arm the Jews. To resist the Nazis often meant that massive attacks on other innocent people would occur. The moral and necessary choice of resistance was not always a case of a mere to desire to resist, but of whether resisting would cause greater bloodshed for the Jews or an even worse fate.

Still, among the notable acts of resistance, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising stands alone as one of the more successful, even though the participants understood clearly that most would die in the process.

The Events Leading to the Uprising

The idea of resistance was not a new one, but in the cast of German occupation, it was difficult to resist. From the very beginning of the Ghetto in 1939 even before it became a township-prison, resistance movements were already under way. Most felt that violent resistance would only lead to greater harm and retailiation against other innocents; they believed that the deportations and killings were a small percent and that if they tolerated the injustices, they would be safe. These conditions and beliefs though continued to degenerate over the next 4 years.

The events that gave rise to the the Jewish resistance in Warsaw, though were brutalities, such as shootings and imprisonments for 'policy' violations and the ever increasing 'deportations'. On the day the Warsaw ghetto was declared a restricted area in which neither Aryans could freely cross in nor Jews could cross to the 'Aryan' side, civil rights were frozen. (See Jewish Civil Liberties) From this date on, any crossing to the Aryan side were either shot or imprisoned.

Events in the Warsaw ghetto did not happen

A Young Mordecai

The leadership in most of the resistance in the war in general was young, and this was no exception in the Warsaw Ghetto. The Z.O.B. was in by the end the umbrella organization for many youth groups: the fertile ground from which came the most fiery Jewish resistance in the Ghetto. Two leaders stand out above the others: Mordecai Anielewicz and Zuckerman. Before the end of the uprising, Anelewicz would die in the ghetto and Zuckerman, after leading many to safety on the German side, would emigrate to Israel, where he lived on a kibbutz.

The youth organization

The Dawn of Battle

On April 18th the very basis of ghetto life started to move from under people's feet. Every night filled with the shrill, crisp sound of shots was an illustration that the ghetto had no foundations whatever, that it lived at the will of the Germans, that it was brittle and weak like a house built of playing cards. By now everybody understood that the ghetto was to be liquidated, but nobody yet realized that its entire population was destined to die.- Woman from Warsaw Ghetto at the time of the Uprising¹

Rising Smoke and a Merry-Go-Round

A true story is told that on the first day of the burning of the Warsaw ghetto, Polish children in the German sector went on with life as usual. The day people watched Jewish women and children jump from burning building windows to their deaths with a crowd crying "Komm, Komm" calling them to jump in mockery, the same day on the other side of the wall, Polish children were entertained with a small mobile merry-go-round. As the aryan children enjoyed the ride, smoke was seen in the distance rising from the ghetto. While the Z.O.B. and others were able by clever strategy to initially hold off the German Army marching into the area, when they returned, they returned in force, under Jurgen Stroop, and they were fought not in a police actions to put down resistors, but as though in combat. In addition to searching every house, closet and possible hiding place and rounding up the Jews of Warsaw for arrest or killing, once a building was cleared, it was set on fire and destroyed to try and oust any last residents. Stroop's troops were meticulous and violent and even children met the same fate as resistors: all were seen as enemies of the German Reich, and all were seen as possible agents of resistance. The end to the Warsaw ghetto had come, although about 8-10,000 would remain in the area: at the end of the war, Jewish Virtual Library notes that there were 6000 Jews fighting to liberate Warsaw and another 2000 were found in hiding. {CHECK REMNANT}

Fighting to the Death

By now every partisan was equipped. on the average, with one pistol (and 10-15 rounds for it), 4-5 hand grenades, 4-5 Molotov cocktails. 2-3 rifles were assigned to each "area". There was just one machine-gun in the entire ghetto.

"The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More"

The Battle that Ending in Freedom (& Death)

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The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising