Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

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

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (German: "Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto", Polish: "Powstanie w gettcie warszawskim") was the Jewish insurgency that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the Treblinka extermination camp. The insurgency was launched against the Germans and their Jewish collaborators on January 18 1943. The most significant portion of the insurgency took place from April 19 until May 16, 1943, and ended when the poorly-armed and supplied resistance was crushed by the German troops under the direct command of Jürgen Stroop. It was the largest single revolt by the Jews during the Holocaust.^[3]

Background

Main articles: Warsaw Ghetto and Operation Reinhard

In 1940, the Nazis began concentrating Poland's population of over 3 million Jews into a number of extremely overcrowded ghettos located in various Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, concentrated approximately 400,000 people into a densely packed central area of Warsaw. Thousands of Jews died due to rampant disease and starvation, even before the Nazis began their massive deportations from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. Approximately 300,000 Ghetto residents met their deaths at the Treblinka extermination camp in the 52 days preceding September 12, 1942.

When the deportations first began, members of the Jewish resistance movement met and decided not to fight the directives, believing that the Jews were being sent to labour camps and not to their deaths. By the end of 1942, however, it became clear that the deportations were part of an extermination process, and many of the remaining Jews decided to resist.^[4]

The fighting

January 1943 rebellion

On January 18, 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 "bunkers," Germans and fighters engaged in two direct clashes. As a consequence, the deportation was halted within a few days, and only 5,000 Jews were removed instead of the planned 8,000.^[2]

Two resistance organizations, the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) and the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) took control of the Ghetto. They built dozens of fighting posts and executed Jews whom they considered to be Nazi collaborators, including Jewish Police officers and Gestapo agents^[5] The ŻOB established a prison to hold and execute traitors and collaborators^[6]). Józef Szeryński, the former head of the Jewish Police, committed suicide.^[7]

Opposing forces

Jewish insurgents

Main articles: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa and Żydowski Związek Wojskowy

As the frustrated Germans diverted additional resources to end the standoff, ghetto residents spent the next three months preparing for what they understood would be their last stand. Hundreds of camouflaged bunkier shelters were dug beneath houses, connecting the buildings through the sewage system and linking up with the central water supply and electricity. The Warsaw Ghetto was divided into military districts, with organizations responsible for each district.

Ghetto fighters were armed with mostly with a pistols and revolvers (if at all), with just a few rifles and automatic firearms. The insurgents had little ammunition, and relied heavily on improvised explosive devices and incendiary bottles. A few more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, or captured from the Germans.

Polish support

Support from outside the Ghetto was limited, but Polish Resistance units from Armia Krajowa (AK) (the Home Army)^[8] and Polish Communist Gwardia Ludowa (the People's Guard)^[9] attacked German sentry units near the ghetto walls and attempted to smuggle weapons and ammunition into the ghetto. AK also disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the ghetto, both in Poland and by way of radio transmissions to the Allies.^[8] Several ŻOB commanders and fighters escaped through the sewers with assistance from the Poles.^[8]

One Polish unit from AK, the National Security Corps (Państwowy Korpus Bezpieczeństwa), under the command of Henryk Iwański, fought inside the Ghetto along with ŻZW. Subsequently, both groups retreated together to the so-called "Aryan side". Although Iwański's action is the most well-known rescue mission, it was only one of many actions undertaken by the Polish resistance to help the Jews.^[10] In the first day of uprising 19 April 1943 three units of AK under command kpt. Józef Pszenny tried to breach the Ghetto walls with anti-tank mines but the Germans defeated this action. AK engaged the Germans between April 19 and April 23 at different locations outside the ghetto walls, in a futile attempt to breach them.^[8]

Participation of the Polish underground in the uprising was confirmed by a report of the German commander Jürgen Stroop. He wrote that German soldiers were "...permanently under gun fire behind the ghetto. It means from the Aryan side". He described Iwański's action: "major group, with some Polish bandits, retreated on the so called Muranowski Square in the first or second day of combat. They were supported by some others Polish bandits".

Nazi forces

Ultimately, the combined efforts of the Polish and Jewish resistance fighters proved insufficient against the German forces. 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), as well as 363 Polish Blue Policemen, who were ordered by the Germans to cordon the walls of the Ghetto.^[11]

The other forces were drawn from the SS Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) "order police" (battalions from the regiments 22rd and 23rd), the 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 known as Askaris (Latvian Arajs Kommando and Lithuanian Saugumas), and technical emergency corps. Polish fire brigade personnel were forced to help in the operation. In addition, a number of Gestapo jailers and executioners from the nearby Pawiak prison, under the command of Franz Bürkl, volunteered to hunt for the Jews. Most of the remaining Jewish policemen were executed by the Gestapo, or used in the offensive and then subsequently too executed.^[12]

German assault

On the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, the police and SS auxiliary forces entered the Ghetto under the command of SS-Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, planning to complete their Aktion within three days. However, they suffered losses as they were repeatedly ambushed by Jewish insurgents, who shot and launched Molotov cocktails and hand grenades at them from alleyways, sewers and windows. A French-made Lorraine 37L armoured fighting vehicle and an armoured car were set afire with ŻOB petrol bombs, and the German advance was halted.^[12]

The Jewish insurgents achieved noteworthy success against von Sammern-Frankenegg's forces, and he subsequently lost his post as the SS and police commander of Warsaw. He was replaced by SS-Gruppenführer (then Brigadeführer) Jürgen Stroop, who rejected von Sammern-Frankenegg's proposal to call in bomber aircraft from Kraków and proceeded with a better-organized ground assault that included artillery support.

The longest-lasting defense of a position took place around the ŻZW stronghold at Muranowski Square from April 19 to late April. In the afternoon of April 19, two boys climbed up on the roof of the concrete headquarters of the ŻZW at Muranowski Square and raised two flags: the red-and-white Polish flag and the blue-and-white ŻZW flag (blue and white are the colors of the flag of Israel today). These flags were well-seen from the Warsaw streets and remained atop the house for four entire days, despite German attempts to remove them. Stroop recalled:

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 unified the population of the General-Government, but especially Jews and Poles. Flags and national colors are a means of combat exactly like 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."^[13]

Another German armoured vehicle was destroyed in an insurgent counterattack, in which ŻZW commander Dawid Apfelbaum was also killed. After Stroop's ultimatum to surrender was rejected by the defenders, the Nazis resorted to systematically burning houses block by block with flamethrowers and blowing up basements and sewers: "We were beaten by the flames, not the Germans," recalled Marek Edelman in 2007.^[1] "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," Edelman said in 2003.^[14]

The ŻZW lost all its leaders and, on April 29, 1943, the remaining fighters escaped the ghetto through the Muranowski tunnel, and relocated to the Michalin forest. This event marked the end of the organized resistance, and of significant fighting.

The remaining Jews, civilians and surviving fighters took cover in the "bunker" dugouts which were carefully hidden among the largely burned-out ruins of the ghetto. The German troops employed dogs to discover the hideouts, using smoke grenades and tear gas (and reportedly even poison gas) to force Jews out. In many instances, the Jews came out of their hiding places firing at the Germans, while a number of female fighters lobbed hidden grenades or fired concealed handguns after they had surrendered. Small groups of Jewish insurgents engaged German patrols in night-time skirmishes. However, German losses were minimal following the first ten days of the uprising.

On May 8, 1943, the Germans discovered the ŻOB's main command post, located at Miła 18 Street. Most of its leadership and dozens of remaining fighters were killed, while others committed mass suicide by ingesting cyanide. The dead included the organization's commander, Mordechaj Anielewicz. His deputy, Edelman, escaped through the sewers on May 10 with a handful of comrades. Two days later, the Bundist Szmul Zygielbojm committed suicide in London in protest, citing a lack of assistance for the insurgents on the part of Western governments:

I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people.

The suppression of the uprising officially ended on May 16, 1943. Nevertheless, sporadic shooting could be heard within the Ghetto throughout the summer of 1943. The uprising was put down conclusively in a battle which took place on June 5, 1943 between Germans and a group of Jewish criminals without connection to the resistance groups.

Death toll

Approximately 13,000 Jewish residents were killed during the uprising. Some 6,000 among them were burnt alive or died from smoke inhalation. Of the remaining 50,000 inhabitants, most were shipped to concentration and extermination camps, in particular to Treblinka.

Jürgen Stroop's final report, written on May 13 1943, stated:

180 Jews, bandits and sub-humans, were destroyed. The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence. The large-scale action was terminated at 20:15 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.^[11]

According to the report, Stroop's force suffered the following casualties: sixteen killed in action, and 86 wounded. These figures included over 60 members of the Waffen-SS, and did not include the Jewish collaborators. The number of casualties may be higher; Edelman estimated that up to 1,300 enemies were either killed or wounded in the uprising.

Aftermath

After the uprising, most of the incinerated houses were razed, and the Warsaw concentration camp complex was established in their stead.

In 1944, during the second Warsaw Uprising, the AK battalion Zośka was able to save 380 Jewish concentration camp prisoners from the Gęsiówka sub-camp, most whom immediately joined the AK. A few small groups of Ghetto inhabitants also managed to survive in the sewers.

Franz Bürkl was assassinated by the Polish resistance in October 1943. Same month, Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg was killed by Croatian partisans in Yugoslavia. Odilo Globocnik, Heinrich Himmler, and Friedrich Krüger all followed Adolf Hitler and committed suicide in May 1945. Jürgen Stroop was convicted of war crimes in two different trials and executed by hanging in Poland in 1951. Ludwig Hahn went into hiding until 1975, when he was apprehended and sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity; he died in prison in 1986. Stroop's aide Erich Steidtmann was exonerated in a postwar trial for "minimal involment"; in December 2007 he was involved in a personel lawsuit. See [[3]]

Relation to 1944 Warsaw Uprising

Main article: 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 their aims were different. The first Ghetto uprising was an act of desperation--- a choice between dying in battle with only a slim hope of escape, or facing sure death in an extermination camp. The second was a coordinated action, and part of the larger Operation Tempest.

However, hundreds of the survivors from the first uprising took part in the later Warsaw Uprising, fighting in the ranks of the AK and Armia Ludowa.

The Warsaw kneeling

Main article: Warschauer Kniefall

On December 7, 1970, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt spontaneously knelt while visiting a monument to the Uprising in the former 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 East and West Germany, and among the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries.

Remembrance in Israel

A number of survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, known as the "Ghetto Fighters," went on to found Kibbutz Lohamey ha-Geta'ot (literally: "Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz"), which is located north of Acre. The founding members of the kibbutz include Yitzhak Zuckerman, ŻOB deputy commander, and his wife Zivia Lubetkin, who also commanded a fighting unit. In 1984, the members of the kibbutz published Dapei Edut ("Testimonies of Survival"), four volumes of personal testimonies from 96 kibbutz members. The settlement also features a museum and archives dedicated to remembering the Holocaust.

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

See also

• A Generation (movie)
• Białystok Ghetto Uprising
• Ghetto uprising
• Mila 18 (book)
• The Pianist (movie)
• Uprising (movie)

References

Further reading