As part of the commemoration ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the night sky is illuminated with beams of light projected from the Warsaw Rising Museum and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Culture.pl hosts the live streaming of the event starting at 9:00 p.m. on the evening of the 19th of April.
The illumination ceremony is orchestrated by two heroes of both of Warsaw's major civil rebellions during World War II - Szymon "Kazik" Ratajzer, a veteran of the Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and Eugeniusz "Sęk" Tyrajski, a veteran of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. It is accompanied by a performance of the National Anthem on trumpet and saxophone by the Bund Band and a recital of Władysław Szengel's poem Window on that Side (read by Redbad Klynstra). The ceremony takes place in front of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. The light installation will continue to shine over three nights.
The commemoration of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 is remembered along with other armed revolts in Białystok, Treblinka and Sobiborz. It was the most extensive Jewish revolt of the Second World War, located in a sealed-off area of the city that had held between 300,000-400,000 Jews. The operation in the Ghetto was a desperate one, a fight to oppose the Nazi's final deportation of all Polish Jews in the ghetto to death camps. The Nazis crushed the Uprising on the 16th of May, carrying out plans to liquidate the ghetto and destroying the Great Synagogue of Warsaw. 13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising. Most survivors were captured - about 50,000 people - and sent to their deaths. Commemoration of the Uprising is among the most important events tied with remembering the casualties of World War II and the Holocaust, along with the city-wide Warsaw Uprising of August 1944.
Source: jewishmuseum.org.pl
Editor: AL
19.04.2013