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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 was the Jewish insurgency against Nazi Germany's attempt to liquidate the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during World War II. 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 finally crushed by SS-Gruppenführer (then Brigadeführer) Jürgen Stroop.
The significant precursor to the main fighting was an armed insurgency launched against the Germans and Jewish collaborators on January 18 1943.
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Background
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 death 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 death. By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to death camps, and many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.
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Insurgency
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.
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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, few rifles and one machine gun (three heavy 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 two military districts; each organization was responsible for its district.
Support from outside the Ghetto was limited, but Polish Resistance units from Armia Krajowa (AK)[Addendum 2 – Facts about Polish Resistance and Aid to Ghetto Fighters, Roman Barczynski, Americans of Polish Descent, Inc. Last accessed on 13 June 2006.] and Communist Gwardia Ludowa[http://wilk.wpk.p.lodz.pl/~whatfor/getto_43.htm] 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 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.][Stefan orbonski, "The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground, 1939-1945", pages 120-139, Excerpts]
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 averaged daily force of 2,054 soldiers and 36 officers, including 821 Waffen SS Panzergrenadier troops and 363 Polish Navy-Blue Policemen who had been ordered by Germans to cordon the walls of the Ghetto.[From the Stroop Report by SSGruppenführer Jürgen Stroop, May 1943.] The other forces were drawn from SS Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) police regiments , SS Sicherheitsdienst (SD) security service, one Battalion apeice from two Wehrmacht railroad combat engineers regiments, a battery of Wehrmacht light artillery, 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. Their support weapons included armoured fighting vehicles, combat gasses, flamethrowers, aircraft, tanks and artillery.
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German attack
The final battle started on the eve of Passover, April 19, when the German columns entered the Ghetto in force. Jewish insurgents shot and threw Molotov cocktails and hand grenades at Nazi troops from alleyways, sewers, house windows, and even burning buildings; a French-made SS tank was set afire by ŻOB petrol bombs, and the initial attack was repelled. 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.
After a pause the assault resumed, with Nazis burning the houses block by block, blowing up basements and sewers, and rounding up or killing any Jew they could capture. Another German tank was knocked out on April 17 in the insurgent counterattack in which ZZW 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. On April 29 the remaining fighters of the organization, 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.
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"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 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 suicide; they included the organization's commander, Mordechai Anielewicz.
The uprising ended on May 16. 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 when the last battle with the Germans was led by a group of Jewish criminals, without any link to either ŻZW or ŻOB.
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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 other estimates, up to 1,300 Germans and collaborators were killed or wounded in the uprising.
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Aftermath
After the fighting, most of the burned down houses were levelled to the ground, 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 a 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. Few small groups of the Ghetto inhabitants also managed to survive in the sewers until the Warsaw Uprising.
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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 a number (approximately 100) of the insurgents from the Ghetto Uprising took part in the later Warsaw Uprising, fighting in the ranks of AK and AL.
Moreover, many say that the Warsaw ghetto uprising inspired the Warsaw uprising of 1944.
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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.
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See also
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Further reading
Marek Edelman. The Ghetto Fights: Warsaw, 1941-43. Bookmarks Publications, 1990. ISBN 0-906224-56-X.
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)
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