Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

This article is about the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. For other uprisings named in a similar manner, see Warsaw Uprising (disambiguation).

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Part of World War II
SS men during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Date April 19 1943 - May 16 1943 Location Warsaw Ghetto, Poland Result German victory, Jewish heroic failure
Belligerents
Nazi Germany (SS, SD, Gestapo, Ordnungspolizei, Wehrmacht) Collaborators (Blue Police, Jewish Ghetto Police)	Jewish resistance (ŻOB, ŻZW) Polish resistance (Armia Krajowa, Gwardia Ludowa)
Commanders and leaders
Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg Jürgen Stroop Franz Bürkl	Mordechai Anielewicz† Dawid Apfelbaum† Paweł Frenkiel† Icchak Cukierman Marek Edelman Zivia Lubetkin Henryk Iwański
Strength
Official daily average of 2,090, including 821 Waffen-SS soldiers	Some 220 ŻOB [1] and 400 ŻZW insurgents on April 19, 1943 Est. about 70,000 civilians
Casualties and losses
Officially 16 KIA, 86 wounded according to Stroop's Report; other estimates up to over 300 total dead since January 18, including a number of Jewish collaborators.	About 13,000 killed immediately, most of the rest deported to death camps; total of 56,065 accounted for {killed and captured} according to Stroop's Report (71,000 deaths in his unofficial count).

German sentries with a Maschinengewehr 08 machine gun at one of the gates to the ghetto

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Surrounded by heavily armed guards, SS Major General Jürgen Stroop (center) watches housing blocks burn. SD Rottenfuhrer at right is possibly Josef Bloesche aka "Frankenstein".

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A man jumping out of a window of a burning house during the fighting; German soldiers nicknamed such people Parachutists

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Civilians executed on the spot after their capture

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Stroop Report photograph of captured civilians prior to deportation to death camps. The boy with his arms raised has been identified as possibly being Tsvi C. Nussbaum, Holocaust survivor

The Ghetto Heroes' Memorial in Warsaw

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (German: "Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto") was the Jewish insurgency against Nazi Germany's attempt to liquidate the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during World War II.

The significant precursor to the main fighting was an armed insurgency launched against the Germans and Jewish collaborators on January 18 1943. The main fighting lasted from April 19 1943 to May 16 of that year, when a tenacious but weakly armed and badly supplied resistance was ultimately crushed by SS troops under SS-Gruppenführer (then Brigadeführer) Jürgen Stroop.

Background

Main article: Warsaw Ghetto

Starting in 1940, the Nazis began concentrating Poland's population of over 3 million Jews in a number of extremely overcrowded ghettos in various Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, held 380,000 people in a densely-packed area in the middle of the city. Thousands of Jews died due to rampant disease or starvation even before the Nazis began massive deportations of the Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. In the 52 days before September 12 1942, about 300,000 Ghetto residents were sent to the extermination camps and killed.

At the start of the deportations, members of the Jewish resistance movement met, but decided not to fight, believing that the Jews were really being sent to labor camps rather than to their deaths. By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to death camps, and many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.

The fighting

On January 18 1943, the first instance of armed insurgency occurred when the Germans started the second expulsion of the Jews. The expulsion stopped after four days and the ŻOB and ŻZW insurgent organizations took control of the Ghetto, building dozens of fighting posts and killing Jews they considered to be Nazi collaborators, including Jewish police officers and Gestapo agents.

Opposing forces

As the frustrated Germans diverted additional resources to end the standoff, during the next three months all inhabitants of the Ghetto prepared for what they realized would be their final fight. Hundreds of camouflaged bunker shelters were dug under the houses (including 618 air raid shelters), most connected through the sewage system and linked up with the central water supply and electricity. The Ghetto fighters were armed with pistols and revolvers, a few rifles and one machine gun (three machine guns according to some sources). They had little ammunition, and relied heavily on improvised explosive devices and incendiary bottles; some more weapons were supplied through the uprising, or captured from the Germans. The Ghetto territory was divided into three military districts; each organization was responsible for its district.

Support from outside the Ghetto was limited, but Polish Resistance units from Armia Krajowa (AK) and Communist Gwardia Ludowa attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls and attempted to smuggle weapons and ammunition inside. AK engaged the Germans between April 19 and April 23 at different locations outside the walls attempting to breach the ghetto. One Polish unit from AK, namely Państwowy Korpus Bezpieczeństwa under the command of Henryk Iwański, even fought inside the Ghetto together with ŻZW and then retreated together to the so-called "Aryan side". AK disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the ghetto, both in Poland and via radio transmissions informing the Allies. Several partisans of ŻOB and part of the command structure with help from the Poles managed to escape via canals. Though Iwański's action was the most famous, it was just one of many actions by the Polish resistance to help the Jews.

However, in the end the combined efforts of the Polish and Jewish resistance fighters proved to be not enough against the full force of the Nazi war machine. The Germans eventually committed an average daily force of 2,054 soldiers and 36 officers, including 821 Waffen SS Panzergrenadier troops (consisting of five SS reserve and training battalions and one SS cavalry reserve and training battalion) and 363 Polish Navy-Blue Policemen who had been ordered by the Germans to cordon the walls of the Ghetto. The other forces were drawn from SS Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) police regiments (battalions from 22rd and 23rd), SS Sicherheitsdienst (SD) security service, one battalion each from two Wehrmacht railroad combat engineers regiments, a battery of Wehrmacht anti-aircraft artillery (and one field gun), a battalion of Ukrainian Trawniki-Männer from the SS Final Solution training camp Trawniki, Lithuanian and Latvian auxiliary policemen (Askaris), and technical emergency corps as well as Polish fire brigade personnel; a number of Gestapo jailers and executioners from Pawiak, under the command of Franz Bürkl, volunteered to hunt for the Jews. Their support weapons included armoured fighting vehicles, combat gasses, flamethrowers, aircraft, tanks and artillery.

German assault

The final battle started on the eve of Passover, April 19, when the German columns entered the Ghetto in force, planning their aktion for three days. The Nazis were ambushed in alleyways, as the Jewish insurgents shot and threw Molotov cocktails and hand grenades at Nazi troops from alleyways, sewers, and house windows; a French-made SS tank and an armored car were set afire by ŻOB petrol bombs, at least 16 soldiers were wounded and the initial attack was recalled.

The Jewish insurgents achieved noteworthy success against the forces of Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, who in effect had lost his post as the SS and police commander of the Warsaw area, and was replaced by Jürgen Stroop.

In the afternoon of April 19, a symbolic unsual event took place by the ŻZW. On the roof of the concrete headquarters of the ŻZW at Muranowski Square, two boys climbled up and placed two flags: the red-and-white flag of Poland and the blue-and-white flag of the ŻZW and the future colors of the flag of Israel. These flags were well seen from the streets of Warsaw. For four whole days the flags stood proudly on the house, despite the German attempts to take them down.

The matter of the flags was of great political and moral importance. It reminded hundreds of thousands of the Polish cause, it excited them and united the population of the General-Government, but especially Jews and Poles. Flags and national colors are a means of combat exactly as a rapid-fire weapon, like thousands of such weapons. We all knew that - Heinrich Himmler, Krueger, and Hahn. The Reichsfuehrer [Himmler] bellowed into the phone: "Stroop, you must at all costs bring down those two flags." -- Jürgen Stroop on the flags over Muranowski Square [2]

Another German tank was knocked out in the insurgent counterattack in which ŻZW commander David Apfelbaum was killed. The longest lasting position battle took place around the ŻZW stronghold at Muranowski Square from April 19 to late April.

The Nazis eventually resorted to burning the houses block by block, and blowing up basements and sewers. "We were beaten by the flames, not the Germans," recalled Marek Edelman in 2007. [3]

The sea of flames flooded houses and courtyards... There was no air, only black, choking smoke and heavy burning heat radiating form the red-hot walls, from the glowing stone stairs -- Marek Edelman on the fire that ravaged the ghetto [4]

On April 29 the remaining fighters of the ŻZW, which had lost all its leaders, left the ghetto through the Muranowski tunnel and became relocated in the Michalin Forest; this marked the end of the main battles.

"Mopping up"

After the significant fighting ended, the hidden bunkers were the main arena of resistance. In this fight, the Germans used smoke grenades and tear gas or poison gas, forcing the Jews out; in many instances Jews kept firing as they emerged, and a number of male and particularly female fighters threw hidden grenades after they had surrendered, or fired concealed handguns.

On May 8 the Germans discovered the command post of the ŻOB at Miła 18, resulting in the death of most of its leadership and almost 100 remaining fighters, most of whom committed mass suicides; they included the organization's commander, Mordechai Anielewicz. Edelman escaped through the sewers on May 10 with a handful of comrades. On May 12 the Bundist Szmul Zygielbojm committed suicide in London in protest against the lack of assistance for the insurgents on the part of the Western governments.

The uprising ended on May 16 1943. Nevertheless, sporadic shooting could be heard in the area of the Ghetto throughout the summer of 1943. Finally, the uprising was strangled on June 5 1943 when the last battle with the Germans was led by a group of Jewish criminals, without any link to either ŻZW or ŻOB.

Death toll

During the fighting approximately 7,000 of the Jewish residents were killed. An additional 6,000 were burnt alive or gassed in bunkers. The remaining 50,000 people were sent to German death camps, mostly the Treblinka extermination camp.

The final report of Jürgen Stroop on May 13 1943 stated:

180 Jews, bandits and subhumans, were destroyed. The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence. The large-scale action was terminated at 2015 hours by blowing up the Warsaw Synagogue. (...) Total number of Jews dealt with 56,065, including both Jews caught and Jews whose extermination can be proved.

According to the report, Stroop's force lost 16 dead and 86 wounded, including over 60 Waffen-SS. According to the Edelman's estimates, up to 1,300 Germans and collaborators were killed or wounded in the uprising.

Aftermath

After the fighting, most of the burned down houses were leveled, and the complex of the KL Warschau concentration camps was founded in the area of the Ghetto. The Germans also used the former Ghetto to murder Polish Łapanka prisoners in highly publicised reprisal hostage executions.

During the later Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Polish Home Army battalion "Zośka" was able to save 380 Jewish concentration camp prisoners from the KL Warschau's Gęsiówka subcamp, most of whom immediately joined the AK. A few small groups of Ghetto inhabitants also managed to survive in the sewers until the Warsaw Uprising.

Relation to 1944 Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 is sometimes confused with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The two events were separated in time, and were quite different in aim. The first, in the Ghetto, was a choice to die fighting - with a slight hope of escape, rather than a sure death in an extermination camp, with the moment to fight being chosen as the last moment when the strength to fight was still available. The second was a coordinated action, part of the larger Operation Tempest.

Still, there are links between the events, as hundreds of the survivors from the Ghetto Uprising took part in the later Warsaw Uprising, fighting in the ranks of AK and AL.

In Israel

A number of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, known as the "Ghetto Fighters", including Yitzhak Zuckerman (Icchak Cukierman, ŻOB deputy commander), and his wife, Zivia Lubetkin who was also one of the commanders of the fighting units, went on to found kibbutz Lohamey ha-Geta'ot (lit. Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz) in Israel. In 1984 the members of the kibbutz published Dapei Edut ("Testimonies of Survival," interviewed and edited by Zvika Dror), four volumes of personal testimonies from 96 members of the kibbutz. Located north of Acre, the Kibbutz features a museum and archives dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.

Yad Mordechai, another kibbutz (just north of the Gaza Strip), was named after Mordechai Anielewicz.

The Warsaw kneeling

Main article: Warschauer Kniefall

On December 7, 1970, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, while visiting a monument to the Uprising in the then communist People's Republic of Poland, very surprisingly, and to all appearances spontaneously, knelt. This action was very controversial at the time, but has been credited with helping to improve relations between East and West Germany, as well as between Western and Soviet Bloc countries in general.

See also

• A Generation (movie)
• Białystok Ghetto Uprising
• Ghetto Uprising
• Miła 18 (ŻOB headquarters bunker)
• Mila 18 (book)
• The Pianist (movie)
• Uprising (movie)
• Warsaw Uprising

Further reading

• Marek Edelman. The Ghetto Fights: Warsaw, 1941-43. Bookmarks Publications, 1990. ISBN 0-906224-56-X.
• Kazimierz Moczarski. Conversations with an Executioner. Prentice Hall, 1984. ISBN 0-13-171918-1.
• Sabine Gebhardt-Herzberg, "Das Lied ist geschrieben mit Blut und nicht mit Blei": Mordechaj Anielewicz und der Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto; 250 p.; 2003; ISBN 3-00-013643-6 (in German language only); publisher: Sabine Gebhardt-Herzberg (s.gebhardt-Herzberg@gmx.net)

External links

• Videos of Marek Edelman talking about the Ghetto on Peoples Archive
• The Warsaw Ghetto archive (including The Stroop Report) at Jewish Virtual Library
• The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Marek Edelman
• WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Poles
• Gallery of pictures from the Uprising at A Teacher's Guide to Holocaust
• The Ghetto Fighters' House at Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum
• Uprising - A Response to the NBC Miniseries
• Commemorating the Uprising Jewish Currents in March 2006
• Last Warsaw ghetto revolt commander honours fallen comrades in Arpil 2007
• Template:Pl icon Ghetto 1943