On Their Own Terms: The Warsaw Ghetto & Its Heroic Uprising
On 19th April 1943, smoke covered the skies over central Warsaw. The Nazi German occupying forces attempted to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to deport the last surviving members of the city’s Jewish population to the Majdanek and Treblinka death camps. But instead of surrendering to their will, the people of Warsaw Ghetto took up arms preferring to die on their own terms – with dignity. This is the story of the ghetto and its uprising.
Before the outbreak of World War II, Poland was home to more than three million Jews – they accounted for 10% of the total population and a third of the population of the capital, Warsaw. At about 370,000, it was one of the most prominent Jewish communities in the world – only New York boasted a larger one. They were, and remain, a diverse minority, which could be found in all walks of life. Many Polish Jews inhabited the country’s remote villages and lived off their land. Others formed thriving communities in the cities, working in Poland’s factories and companies, or managing their own businesses. Some became wealthy industrialists, renowned artists and influential intellectuals.
When Poland lost its struggle against the Nazi German invasion in September 1939, the Nazi forces quickly began rounding up the Jewish population and forcing them into cordoned off districts known as ghettos. The Jews which were not immediately murdered or sent to concentration camps, found themselves sharing the same fate. They were forced to give up their previous life, their property and most of their belongings, and moved into the ghettoes in Poland’s biggest cities.
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The footbridge on Chłodna Street connecting the 'big' and 'small' ghettos, photo: 1942, fot. NN/wikimedia.org
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest such district in the entire territory conquered by Nazi Germany – it is estimated that approximately 460,000 people were living in the ghetto in March 1941. More people were being brought into the district daily, yet total area in which the Jews were forced to live amounted to only 307 hectares. To put this in perspective, over a third of Warsaw’s population was living in only about 2% of the entire city.
Before the war, the area selected by the Germans for the ‘Jewish Residential District in Warsaw’, as it was officially called to avoid alarming representatives from other countries, was predominantly populated by Jews and it stretched right across the city’s centre. Today, you could walk from one of its ends (just north of the Palace of Science and Culture) to the other (in the Muranów district, near the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews) in about half an hour, enjoying some of the city’s most popular spots.
At first, the Nazis wanted to place the ghetto on the outskirts of the city, in the western parts of the Wola district, or in Grochów which was just across the river from the city centre. However, they quickly realised that displacing such a massive population would be a costly logistical nightmare. Even though Muranów and Nowolipki were by no means exclusively Jewish neighbourhoods, the minority was so prominent there, that it was easier to trap the Jews where they already were. Those who lived outside the district had little time to sell whatever property they had and try to secure a place within the confines of the ghetto.
Some managed to buy apartments from Poles forced to leave the district, while others squatted in the houses vacated by those who did not manage to finalise a sale. However, many found themselves at the mercy of their family, friends and even strangers. After months of forced relocations, the ‘Jewish Residential District in Warsaw’ was officially established on 16th October 1940. On 15th November, its gates were closed and the Jewish population of Warsaw found itself separated from the rest of the world by freshly erected brick walls and barbed wire.
In the ghetto
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A market in the Warsaw Ghetto, between buildings at 42 Leszno Street and 35 Nowolipie Street, photo: Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Life in the Warsaw Ghetto was dehumanising and excruciatingly difficult by design. The majority of the population went hungry as the official food rations amounted to around 180 calories, or 15% of the recommended daily intake for an average adult. The rest was supplied through smuggling, or paid for with the meagre wages of those who were lucky, and unlucky, enough to work in one of the local factories which manufactured military supplies for the Nazi German army. The labour was exhausting and workers were rampantly exploited but could ward off a death sentence.
The general lack of space meant that there were usually between eight and ten people living in every room, with many others spending much of their time on the streets. The lack of sanitary solutions (only some houses had good plumbing, but even the best installations could not support so many people crowded in a single building) led to wide-spread diseases that could not be properly addressed due to a shortage of doctors and medical supplies. If that was not enough, the inhabitants of the ghetto were at the mercy of the Nazi German soldiers and police, who were encouraged to be particularly cruel. The Jews who resisted commands risked getting shot or beaten, and those caught escaping faced certain death. As a result, the odds of surviving the war in the ghetto were frighteningly low. And this was before the deportations even started.
Adam Czerniaków, photo: Wikimedia Commons People living in the ghettoes were officially represented by Judenrats (Jewish Councils) appointed by the occupying forces. The main responsibility of these councils was carrying out orders issued by Nazi German commanders and maintaining control over the people living in the walled-off districts. Some council members and Jewish abused their powers for personal gain and alleged safety. The leader of Warsaw’s Judenrat Adam Czerniaków, however, saw the power he was granted as a different kind of opportunity.
Since he was one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Warsaw before the war, he saw his appointment by the Nazi Germans as a chance to implement their directives in ways which would be least harmful for the Jewish population. In Czerniaków’s view, direct opposition could be catastrophic, but it was possible to implement their commands in an inefficient manner, while maintaining the appearance of order and actually improving the living conditions for people locked in the ghetto. However, despite his efforts to organise social services in the district, his contacts with the Polish underground movement and the help he offered to the Oneg Szabat group led by Emanuel Ringelblum which was working on a secret archive of the ghetto, many Jews saw Czerniaków as a weak man and a collaborator, especially as he resisted calls for armed opposition against the Germans.
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The Umschlagplatz memorial today, photo: Adam Chełstowski / Forum
Regardless of the efficacy of his attempts at undermining Nazi German control in the ghetto, Czerniaków quickly found himself facing an impossible request. On 22nd July 1942, the Nazi authorities demanded that he assembled around 7,000 people every day at the so-called Umschlagplatz (collection point in German) to be ‘deported to the East’. Understanding that he was commanded to become complicit in deporting the ghetto population to the death camp in Treblinka, Czerniaków took his own life. His last words read: ‘They demand that with my own hands I should kill my nation’s children. There is nothing for me to do but to die’.
At first, the inhabitants of the ghetto assumed that the deportations would take them to labour camps (although some believed they were actually going East), but towards the end of 1942, the existence of the Nazi German death camps was common knowledge. Jan Karski, a member of the Polish resistance tried to present a report about them to governments in the West but he was met with incredulity, and no action was taken by the allied forces until their soldiers liberated the first camps towards the end of the war.
After 46 days, more than 250,000 Warsaw Jews were sent to the death camp in Treblinka and an overwhelming majority of them were immediately murdered. A further 100,000 died in the ghetto itself, mostly as a result of starvation and an epidemic of typhus. Around 10,000 were killed for resisting deportations, approximately 11,000 were taken to the Dulag 121 Pruszków transition camp, and 8,000 managed to escape to the ‘Aryan’ side of Warsaw. It is estimated that by the end of the ‘Grossaktion Warschau’, there were only about 35,000 people officially living in the ghetto, which was then confined to the so-called ‘Little Ghetto’ in the Muranów district. Another 20,000 Jews were hiding in the basements and attics of the cordoned off neighbourhood.
Resistance
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Polish Jews captured by Nazi Germans during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; photo from the Jürgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943, photo: Wikimedia Commons
Some of those who remained inside the ghetto walls decided to form organised resistance against any further deportation attempts and on 28th July 1942, the Jewish Combat Organisation (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ŻOB) was formed. It mostly consisted of young members of the leading Jewish political parties. By October 1942, most of the Jewish political scene had its representation in the organisation, although some parts of the right-wing movement formed a separate group, the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, or ŻZW). ŻOB established contacts with the Polish underground and began smuggling weapons into the ghetto. Its ranks consisted of 22 units of soldiers aged between 19 and 25. At first, they focused on organising trials and executions of those who collaborated with the Nazi German forces, but they soon decided to execute more direct forms of resistance.
Mordechaj Anielewicz, photo: Wikimedia Commons On 18th January 1943, the Nazi authorities decided to resume deportations. The Jews who remained in the ghetto were convinced that this was the beginning of the liquidation of the ghetto. As a result, the ŻOB commander Mordechaj Anielewicz ordered his troops to begin shooting at German soldiers and policemen. Most of the fighting occurred on the corner of Niska and Zamenhof Streets, but other units quickly joined the fight. By the time the combat ended on 21st January, ŻOB managed to kill 12 Nazi German soldiers –their own losses have not been documented.
But the resistance’s strong suit was more psychological – it unnerved the Nazis and gave Jews sense of purpose. ŻOB fighters issued a call to other inhabitants of the ghetto which included the following words:
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Do not help the [Nazi] agents. The Gestapo's dastardly people will get their just desserts. Jews in your masses, the hour is near. You must be prepared to resist, not to give yourselves up like sheep to slaughter. Not even one Jew must go to the train. People who cannot resist actively must offer passive resistance, that is, by hiding. […] Now our slogan must be: Let everyone be ready to die like a man!
The call was successful as the remaining Jewish population quickly recognised ŻOB as the leading authority still left in the ghetto. More importantly, even though the Nazi Germans managed to deport around 5,000 people during the four days of fighting, they later stopped deportations altogether. They also no longer entered the ghetto after dusk and ceased searching the basements in the district, allowing ŻOB to stock up on weapons and other supplies.
The situation remained relatively calm until 19th April 1943, when on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesach), well-armed Nazi German troops entered the Warsaw Ghetto on Nalewki Street in an attempt to liquidate the district and deport or slaughter its remaining inhabitants. ŻOB & ŻZW were well prepared for this eventuality, stocking up on supplies and constructing makeshift fortifications and underground bunkers. They Nazis were met with armed resistance by a group of approximately 700 insurgents, who, knowing their fate, took up arms in an attempt to die with dignity. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had begun.
A few days after the fighting began, ŻOB posted the following message on the ghetto’s outer wall:
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Poles, Citizens, Soldiers of Freedom,
Amid the noise of cannons which the German army is using to storm our homes, the flats of our mothers, children and wives;
Amid the rattle of machine-gunfire which we are gaining in our fight with cowardly gendarmes and SS-men;
Amid the smoke of fires and dust, of the blood of the murdered Warsaw Ghetto, we – prisoners of the Ghetto – send you brotherly, sincere greetings.
We know that with heartfelt pain and tears of sympathy, with admiration and anxiety, you have been following the outcome of this battle which we have been waging with the terrible occupier for a few days now.
Yet you also know that each threshold of the Ghetto, as before, will remain a fortress. Perhaps we will all perish in this fight but we will not give in. [You know] that we, like you, long for revenge and punishment for all the crimes of our common enemy.
A battle is raging for your Freedom and ours.
For your and our human, social, national honour and dignity.
We will avenge the crimes of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belżec and Majdanek.
Long live the brotherhood of arms and the blood of Fighting Poland!
Long live Freedom!
Death to the butchers and henchmen!
Long live our fight to the death and life against the occupier!
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The Great Synagogue at Tłomackie, Warsaw. Photo: Jewish Historical Institute
The liquidation of the ghetto did not go according to the Nazi Germans’ plan. In fact, ŻOB & ŻZW were so successful in slowing down the offensive that the first commander was quickly relieved of his duties and Jürgen Stroop, the head of the SS and police in occupied Poland, was brought in. Ghetto resistance fighters managed to hold off the German forces for almost a month and, considering that they never imagined that their uprising could be won, it was an extraordinary feat.
The uprising was finally quashed on 16th May 1943, when Stroop personally pressed the detonator button which brought down the beautiful and monumental Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street – one of the biggest synagogues in the world at the time. In his eyes, this symbolised the final destruction of Jewish Warsaw. In his infamous report, he wrote:
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The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence.
Most of the insurgents, including the uprising’s leader Mordechaj Anielewicz, were killed in combat or took their own lives, while the remaining civilians were deported to death camps. A small number of people managed to escape from the ghetto through the city’s canal network, but it is estimated that by the time the war finished, only about 35 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising insurgents survived. Marek Edelman, one of the last remaining leaders of the uprising passed away on 2nd October 2009, and the last survivor of the uprising, Simcha Rotem, passed away in Jerusalem on 22nd December 2018.
Aftermath
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The uprising took place right in the heart of Warsaw and the general population of the city must have seen the smoke and the glow of fires slowly devouring the dying ghetto, but at the time the event went largely ignored by the general population and was ultimately overshadowed by the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
The decision to build a monument in honour of the Warsaw Ghetto insurgents was made as early as 1944. The Central Committee of Polish Jews had Leon Suzin design the monument. A round memorial tablet, the first part of the monument, was unveiled on 16th April 1946. The inscription in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish reads:
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For those who fell in an unprecedented and heroic struggle for the dignity and freedom of the Jewish people, for a free Poland, and for the liberation of mankind.
Polish Jews
A bigger monument was also planned. This much larger monument, sculpted by Natan (Nathan) Rapoport, was unveiled just two years later, on 19th April 1948. The material used to build parts of the monument was actually ordered Nazi German architect Albert Speer in 1942 to build… Nazi German monuments.
The western part of the monument shows a insurgents – men, women and children, armed with guns and Molotov cocktails with Mordechaj Anielewicz at its centre; the eastern part of the monument shows the persecution of Jews at the hands of the Nazi German oppressors. The inscription reads:
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Jewish nation to its fighters and martyrs.
Years later, one of the ŻOB commanders, Marek Edelman, became the hero of Hanna Krall’s masterful non-fiction book Shielding the Flame and other combatants have since received recognition in Israel, Warsaw and around the globe. Nobel Prize-winning poet Czesław Miłosz’s Campo di Fiori is perhaps the most well-known reminiscence of the tragic month of the uprising. Miłosz referenced a graphic photograph depicting a carousel spinning while the ghetto burned in the background.
Today
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Helena Czernek & the daffodil she designed to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, photo: Aleksander Prugar
Fortunately, even though Stroop celebrated his success, history ultimately proved him wrong. The Jewish population of Warsaw (and Poland for that matter) never returned to its pre-war numbers, but the city still has a small, constantly growing Jewish community today.
Perhaps most importantly, in recent years the general public has begun to embrace the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as part of the capital's history. Each year, on 19th April, the people of Warsaw wear daffodils on their lapels to remember those who fought and died on their own terms.
