Warsaw Ghetto

Remnant of Warsaw Ghetto

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, located in the territory of General Government in occupied Poland during World War II.

Headline text

The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. Frank ordered Jews in Warsaw and its suburbs rounded up and herded into the Ghetto. At this time, the population in the Ghetto was estimated to be 400,000 people, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4% of the size of Warsaw.

The ghetto was split into two areas, the "small ghetto", generally inhabited by richer Jews and the "large ghetto", where conditions were difficult. The two ghettos were linked by a single footbridge. The Nazis then closed the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16, 1940, by building a wall and deploying armed guards.

Conditions

The wall of ghetto in Warsaw, being constructed by German order in August 1940. Taken on Świętokrzyska Street from the "Aryan side" (Marszałkowska Street).

During the next year and a half, thousands of the Polish Jews as well as some Romani people from smaller cities and the countryside were brought into the Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhus), and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 220 cal, compared to 1669 cal for gentile Poles and 2,614 cal for Germans.

Unemployment was a major problem in the ghetto. Illegal workshops were created to manufacture goods to be sold illegally on the outside and raw goods were smuggled in often by children. Hundreds of four to five year old Jewish children went across en masse to the "Aryan side", sometimes several times a day, smuggling food into the ghettos, returning with goods that often weighed more than they did. Smuggling was often the only source of subsistence for Ghetto inhabitants, who would otherwise have died of starvation. Despite the grave hardships, life in the Warsaw Ghetto was rich with educational and cultural activities, conducted by its underground organizations. Hospitals, public soup kitchens, orphanages, refugee centers and recreation facilities were formed, as well as a school system. Some schools were illegal and operated under the guise of a soup kitchen. There were secret libraries, classes for the children and even a symphony orchestra. The life in the ghetto was chronicled by the Oyneg Shabbos group.

Over 100,000 of the Ghetto's residents died due to rampant disease or starvation, as well as random killings, even before the Nazis began massive deportations of the inhabitants from the Ghetto's Umschlagplatz to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Gross-aktion Warschau, part of the countrywide Operation Reinhard. Between Tisha B'Av (July 23) and Yom Kippur (September 21) of 1942, about 254,000 Ghetto residents (or at least 300,000 by different accounts) were sent to Treblinka and murdered there. In 1942 Polish resistance officer Jan Karski reported to the Western governments on the situation in the Ghetto and on the extermination camps. By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to their deaths, and many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and destruction of the Ghetto

File:Warsaw Ghetto destroyed by German forces, 1945.jpg

Warsaw ghetto {east view} in 1945

Main article: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

On January 18, 1943, the first instance of armed resistance occurred when the Germans started the final expulsion of the remaining Jews. The Jewish fighters had some success: the expulsion stopped after four days and the ŻOB and ŻZW resistance organizations took control of the Ghetto, building shelters and fighting posts and operating against Jewish collaborators.

The final battle started on the eve of Passover of April 19, 1943, when a Nazi force consisting of several thousand troops entered the ghetto. After initial setbacks, the Germans under the field command of Jürgen Stroop systematically burned and blew up the ghetto buildings, block by block, rounding up or murdering anybody they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 23, and the Nazi operation officially ended in mid-May, symbolically culminated with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on May 16. According to the official report, at least 56,065 people were killed on the spot or deported to German Nazi concentration and death camps, most of them to Treblinka.

Ruins of Warsaw Ghetto, smashed into the ground by German forces, according to Adolf Hitler`s order, after suppressing of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. North-west view, left - the Krasiński`s Garden and Swiętojerska street, photo taken in 1945

Remnants of the Ghetto today

A remnant of the Ghetto's wall at backyard of Złota 60 street

The ghetto was almost entirely levelled during the uprising, however, a number of buildings and streets survived, mostly in the "small ghetto" area, which had been closed earlier and was not involved in the fighting. The buildings on ul. Próżna are the original residential buildings that once housed Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. The buildings have largely remained empty since the war and the street is the focus for the annual Warsaw Jewish Festival. Nearby, the Nożyk Synagogue also survived the war, as it was used as a stables by the German Wehrmacht. The synagogue has today been restored and is once again used as a temple. The last remaining piece of the ghetto wall is located at ul. Złota 62. There is a small monument on a mound at ul. Mila 18 to commemorate the site of the Jewish underground headquarters during the Ghetto Uprising.

People of the Warsaw Ghetto

Casualties

"Janusz Korczak and the children" memorial at Yad Vashem

• Tosia Altman - ghetto resistance fighter, escaped the Ghetto in 1943 uprising through the sewers. Died afterwards after she was caught by the Gestapo when the celluloid factory where she hid caught fire.
• Mordechaj Anielewicz - ghetto resistance leader in the ŻOB (alias Aniołek). Died in the ghetto uprising when he and many of his comares committed suicide at their surrounded command post.
• Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum - ghetto resistance leader and commander of the ŻZW. Killed in action during the ghetto uprising.
• Adam Czerniaków - engineer and senator, head of the Warsaw Judenrat (Jewish council). Committed suicide in 1942.
• Yitzhak Gitterman - director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, resistance fighter. Killed in action during the ghetto uprising.
• Itzhak Katzenelson - teacher, poet, dramatist and resistance fighter. Executed at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944.
• Janusz Korczak - children's author, pediatrician, child pedagogist and orphanage owner. Executed at Treblinka in 1942, after refusing an offer to leave his orphans and escape.
• Simon Pullman - conductor of the Warsaw Ghetto symphony orchestra. Executed at Treblinka in 1942.
• Emanuel Ringelblum - historian, politician and social worker, leader of the Ghetto chroniclers. Discovered in Warsaw and executed together with his family in 1944.
• Kalonymus Kalman Shapira - grand rabbi of Piaseczno. Executed at Trawniki during Aktion Erntefest in 1943.
• Lidia Zamenhof - Esperantist, daughter of Dr. L. L. Zamenhof. Executed at Treblinka in 1942.

Survivors

Icchak Cukierman testifies for the prosecution during the trial of Adolf Eichmann

• Icchak Cukierman - ghetto resistance leader ("Antek"), founder of the Lohamei HaGeta'ot kibbutz in Israel. Died in 1981.
• Marek Edelman - Polish political and social activist, cardiologist. He was the last still-living leader of the ŻOB. Died in 2009.
• Bronisław Geremek - Polish social historian and politician. Died in 2008.
• Martin Gray - Soviet secret police officer and American and French writer.
• Mietek Grocher - Swedish author and the Holocaust remembrance activist.
• Ludwik Hirszfeld - Polish microbiologist and serologist. Died in 1954.
• Zivia Lubetkin - ghetto resistance leader, Aliyah Bet activist, later married Cukierman. Died in 1976.
• Uri Orlev - Israeli author of the semi-autobiographical novel The Island on Bird Street recounting his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto.
• Marcel Reich-Ranicki - German literary critic.
• Sol Rosenberg - American steel industrialist and philanthropist. Died in 2009.
• Simcha Rotem - ghetto resistance fighter ("Kazik"), Berihah activist, post-war Nazi hunter.
• Władysław Szpilman - Polish pianist, composer and writer, subject of the film The Pianist by Roman Polanski (survivor of the Kraków Ghetto) based on his memoir. Died in 2000.
• Menachem Mendel Taub - Kaliver rabbi in Israel.
• Dawid Wdowiński - psychiatrist, political leader of the Irgun in Poland, resistance leader of the ŻZW, American memoirist. Died in 1970.

Associated people

File:Jan Karski.jpg

Before a wall map at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Jan Karski recalls his secret 1942 missions into the Warsaw Ghetto

• Władysław Bartoszewski - Polish resistance activist of the Żegota organization in Warsaw.
• Henryk Iwański - Polish resistance officer in the charge of support for the Ghetto. Died in 1978.
• Jan Karski - Polish resistance courier who reported on the Ghetto for the Allies. Died in 2000.
• Irena Sendler - Polish resistance member who smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Ghetto and helped to hide them, subject of the film The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Died in 2008.
• Szmul Zygielbojm - Polish-Jewish socialist politician. In 1943 committed suicide in London in an act of protest against the Allied indifference to the death of the Warsaw Ghetto

See also

• Ghettos in occupied Europe 1939-1944
• Grossaktion Warschau - The massive deportation to Treblinka in 1942.
• Great Synagogue in Warsaw - One of the largest synagogues in the world, destroyed in 1943.
• Group 13 - Jewish collaborationist secret police also known as Jewish Gestapo, led by Abraham Gancwajch.
• Hermann Höfle - A deputy to Globocnik.
• Jewish Ghetto Police - Jewish collaborationist police force in Warsaw Ghetto and elsewhere.
• Jürgen Stroop - Nazi commander during the suppression of the uprising.
• Mila 18 - A book by Leon Uris.
• Odilo Globocnik - The Nazi leader responsible for the liquidation of the Ghetto.
• Umschlagplatz - Collection point for the deportations to extermination camps.
• Warsaw concentration camp - The concentration camp established in the former Ghetto.
• Warschauer Kniefall - Gesture by Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt.
• Żagiew - A group of collaborators posing as a resistance group (see also Hotel Polski affair)

Bibliography

• Berg, Mary , The Diary of Mary Berg, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006, ISBN 1-85168-472-7
• Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights, London: Bookmarks, 1994, ISBN 0-906-22456-X
• Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ISBN 0-395-60199-1
• Martin Gray, For Those I Loved, ISBN 0-316-32576-7
• Emmanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, New York: ibooks, 2006, ISBN 1-59687-331-0
• Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, ISBN 0-312-31135-4
• Dawid Wdowiński, And We Are Not Saved, ISBN 0802224865.
• Barbara Engelking & Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, ISBN 978-0-300-11234-4

External links

• www.druhasvetovavalka.cz - Pages show pictures and videos of the day taken at places connected with the World War II
• Warsaw Ghetto from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"
• Historical Sites of Jewish Warsaw
• Warsaw Ghetto Internet Database hosted by Polish Center for Holocaust Research
• Detailed, interactive map of the Warsaw Ghetto plotted on pre-war plan of the city
• Documents and information about the Warsaw Ghetto from the Jewish Virtual Library