Central Europe
72-651: April uprising: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany 's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the gas chambers of the Majdanek and Treblinka extermination camps . After the Grossaktion Warsaw of summer 1942, in which more than
144-685: A Bundist member of the Polish government in exile, committed suicide in London to protest the lack of action on behalf of the Jews by the Allied governments. In his farewell note, he wrote: 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
216-546: A Communist one). The CDJ was only one of dozens of organised resistance groups that provided support to hidden Jews. Other groups and individual resistance members were responsible for finding hiding places and providing food and forged papers. Many Jews in hiding went on to join organised resistance groups. Groups from left wing backgrounds, like the Front de l'Indépendance (FI-OF), were particularly popular with Belgian Jews. The Communist-inspired Partisans Armés (PA) had
288-875: A French-made Lorraine 37L light armored vehicle and an armored car ) were set on fire by the insurgents' petrol bombs. The remaining Jews knew that the Germans would murder them and decided to resist to the last. While the uprising was underway, the Bermuda Conference was held by the Allies from 19 to 29 April 1943 to discuss the Jewish refugee problem. Discussions included the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces and those who still remained in German-occupied Europe . Following von Sammern-Frankenegg's failure to contain
360-719: A day for " resettlement to the East ". Czerniaków committed suicide once he became aware of the true goal of the "resettlement" plan. Approximately 254,000–300,000 ghetto residents were murdered at Treblinka during the two-month-long operation. The Grossaktion was directed by SS- Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg , the SS and police commander of the Warsaw area since 1941. He was relieved of duty by SS-und-Polizeiführer Jürgen Stroop , sent to Warsaw by Heinrich Himmler on 17 April 1943. Stroop took over from von Sammern-Frankenegg following
432-572: A major subject. The important things were inherent in the force shown by Jewish youth after years of degradation, to rise up against their destroyers, and determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or Uprising. On 7 December 1970, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt spontaneously knelt while visiting the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes memorial in the People's Republic of Poland . At
504-615: A museum and archives dedicated to remembering the Holocaust . Yad Mordechai , a kibbutz just north of the Gaza Strip , was named after Mordechaj Anielewicz. In 2008, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi led a group of Israeli officials to the site of the uprising and spoke about the event's "importance for IDF combat soldiers". In 1968, the 25th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Zuckerman
576-409: A number of extremely crowded ghettos located in large Polish cities . The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto , collected approximately 300,000–400,000 people into a densely packed, 3.3 km area of Warsaw. Thousands of Jews were killed by rampant disease and starvation under SS-und-Polizeiführer Odilo Globocnik and SS - Standartenführer Ludwig Hahn , even before the mass deportations from
648-629: A particularly large Jewish section in Brussels. The resistance was responsible for the assassination of Robert Holzinger, the head of the deportation program, in 1942. Holzinger, an active collaborator, was an Austrian Jew selected by the Germans for the role. The assassination led to a change in leadership of the AJB. Five Jewish leaders, including the head of the AJB, were arrested and interned in Breendonk, but were released after public outcry. A sixth
720-488: A quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto. The left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and right-wing Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) formed and began to train. A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred Polish resistance groups to support
792-456: A search later on was out of the question. The captured hand grenades, ammunition, and incendiary bottles were at once reused by us against the bandits. Further booty: Up to 23 May 1943 we had counted: 4.4 million zloty; furthermore about 5 to 6 million zloty not yet counted, a great amount of foreign currency, e.g. US$ 14,300 in paper and US$ 9,200 in gold, moreover valuables (rings, chains, watches, etc.) in great quantities. State of
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#1732766252087864-500: Is likely that his list was neither complete, free of errors, nor indicative of the German losses throughout the entire period of resistance, until the absolute liquidation of Jewish life in the ghetto. All the same, the German casualty figures cited by the various Jewish sources are probably highly exaggerated." Other historians such as Raul Hilberg also confirm the accuracy of official German casualty figures. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
936-537: Is supported by Yehuda Bauer , who wrote that resistance to the Nazis comprised not only physical opposition, but any activity that gave the Jewish people dignity and humanity despite the humiliating and inhumane conditions. The scholarly argument surrounding passive and spiritual resistance stems from historian Yehuda Bauer's concept of "amidah", the Hebrew word meaning "to stand up against", which asserts any act of resisting
1008-784: The Jewish Military Union fought the Germans with a handful of small arms and Molotov cocktails , as Polish resistance attacked from the outside in support. After fierce fighting, vastly superior German forces pacified the Warsaw Ghetto and either murdered or deported all of the remaining inhabitants to the Nazi killing centers. The Germans claimed that they lost 18 dead and 85 wounded, though this figure has been disputed, with resistance leader Marek Edelman estimating 300 German casualties. Some 13,000 Jews were killed, and 56,885 were deported to concentration camps. There are two main reasons why Jews failed to resist when they were leaving
1080-519: The Warsaw ghetto was cut off from its access to Polish underground newspapers, and the only newspaper allowed to be imported into the confines of the ghetto was the General Government propaganda organ Gazeta Żydowska . As a result, from roughly May 1940 to October 1941, the Jews of the ghetto published their own underground newspapers, offering hopeful news about the war and prospects for
1152-543: The Yugoslav Partisans . One Yugoslav Partisan unit, Rab battalion , was composed of entirely of Jews liberated from the Rab concentration camp . Belgian resistance to the treatment of Jews crystallised between August–September 1942, following the passing of legislation regarding wearing yellow badges and the start of the deportations. When deportations began, Jewish partisans destroyed records of Jews compiled by
1224-586: The " Trawniki men " and Polish police under his command. Other sources have questioned the number of German casualties. Edelman claims that the German casualties amounted to 300 killed and wounded. The official German casualty figures were kept low, while the propaganda bulletins of the Polish Underground State , claimed that hundreds of occupiers had been killed in the fighting. But according to Israel Gutman , "the number cited by Stroop (16 dead, 85 wounded) cannot be rejected out of hand, but it
1296-489: The AJB. The first organization specifically devoted to hiding Jews, the Comité de Défense des Juifs (CDJ-JVD), was formed in the summer of 1942. The CDJ, a left-wing organization, may have saved up to 4,000 children and 10,000 adults by finding them safe hiding places. It produced two Yiddish language underground newspapers, Unzer Wort ("Our Word", with a Labour-Zionist stance) and Unzer Kamf ("Our Fight", with
1368-729: The AK under the command of Captain Józef Pszenny ("Chwacki") joined up in a failed attempt to breach the ghetto walls with explosives. Eventually, the ŻZW lost all of its commanders. On 29 April, the remaining fighters from the organization escaped the ghetto through the Muranowski tunnel and relocated to the Michalin forest. This event marked the end of significant fighting. At this point, organized defense collapsed. Surviving fighters and thousands of remaining Jewish civilians took cover in
1440-419: The Germans also took casualties, and the deportation was halted within a few days. About 1,200 Jews were killed, and about 5,000 deported, instead of the 8,000 planned by Germans. The fighters managed to kill about a dozen Germans and wound several dozen. Hundreds of people in the Warsaw Ghetto were ready to fight, sparsely armed with handguns, gasoline bottles, and a few other weapons that had been smuggled into
1512-428: The Germans discovered a large dugout located at Miła 18 Street, which served as ŻOB's main command post . Most of the organization's remaining leadership and dozens of others committed mass suicide by ingesting cyanide , including Mordechaj Anielewicz , the chief commander of ŻOB. His deputy Marek Edelman escaped the ghetto through the sewers with a handful of comrades two days later. On 10 May, Szmul Zygielbojm ,
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#17327662520871584-504: The Ghetto at the termination of the large-scale operation: Sporadic resistance continued and the last skirmish took place on 5 June 1943 between Germans and a holdout group of armed Jews without connections to the resistance organizations. 13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising (some 6,000 among them were burnt alive or died from smoke inhalation ). Of the remaining 50,000 residents, almost all were captured and shipped to
1656-472: The Jews in earnest. The uprising started on 19 April when the ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop , who ordered the destruction of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. A total of 13,000 Jews were killed, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. Stroop reported 110 German casualties, including 17 killed. The uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew that victory
1728-613: The Jews of Eastern Europe had to live under and endure, what is surprising is not how little resistance there was, but rather how much resistance was present. Middleton-Kaplan calls upon the traditional connotation of "sheep to the slaughter" in both Judaism in Christianity to argue the positive notion in Jewish scripture of facing a looming, existential threat with faith and bravery, succumbing to one's fate without fear. In The Myth of Jewish Passivity , Middleton-Kaplan mentions Jewish resistance leader Abba Kovner, famed for his role in
1800-665: The Jews of Europe should be considered spiritual resistance. Tec asserts that actions such as ghetto leaders scavenging resources for food and medicine, or the employment and preservation of Jewish art and artists in Germany through the creation of Jewish Cultural Association serve as a passive means of resisting the Nazi aim to destroy the identity and culture of Judaism. Richard Middleton-Kaplan identifies documented acts of spiritual resistance in concentration camps, such as inmates saying prayers for Shabbat and fallen loved ones and making efforts to care for themselves and others. This view
1872-522: The July 1942 Grossaktion Warsaw committed suicide after being arrested in 1962. Walter Bellwidt, who commanded a Waffen-SS battalion among Stroop forces, died on 13 October 1965. Hahn went into hiding until 1975, when he was apprehended and sentenced to life for crimes against humanity ; he served eight years and died in 1986. SS Oberführer Arpad Wigand who served with von Sammern-Frankenberg as SS and Police Leader in Warsaw from 4 August 1941 to 23 April 1943
1944-478: The Polish Home Army and its command structure in exchange for weapons and training. Marek Edelman, who was the only surviving uprising commander from the left-wing ŻOB, stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails . His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one submachine gun . Due to its socialist leanings,
2016-561: The Soviets and Israel promoted the actions of ŻOB as the dominant or only party in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a view often adopted by secondary sources in the West. The right-wing faction ŻZW, which was founded by former Polish officers, was larger, more established and had closer ties with the Polish Home Army, making it better equipped. Zimmerman describes the arms supplies for the uprising as "limited but real". Specifically, Jewish fighters of
2088-631: The United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO), adopted internationally on 27 June 1957, intended to abolish camps of forced labor. In the 20th century, a new category of labor camps developed for the imprisonment of millions of people who were not criminals per se , but political opponents (real or imagined) and various so-called undesirables under communist and fascist regimes. Early-modern states could exploit convicts by combining prison and useful work in manning their galleys . This became
2160-503: The Vilna ghetto uprising, quoted as early as 1941 using the "sheep to the slaughter" phrase as a call to action, arguing Kovner employed the phrase's original connotation as a call to action towards an unmoving or absent God. Historians such as Patrick Henry have found that the "sheep to the slaughter" myth of Jewish passivity is partly tied to the apparent lack of discussion regarding forms of Jewish resistance outside armed revolt. In 1940,
2232-548: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, known as the "Ghetto Fighters", went on to create the kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot (literally: "Ghetto Fighters'"), which is located north of Acre, Israel . The founding members of the kibbutz include Yitzhak Zuckerman (Icchak Cukierman), who represented the ŻOB on the 'Aryan' side, and his wife Zivia Lubetkin , who commanded a fighting unit. In 1984, members of the kibbutz published Daphei Edut ("Testimonies of Survival"), four volumes of personal testimonies from 96 kibbutz members. The settlement features
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2304-462: The Warsaw Ghetto but was later discovered and executed in 1944) visited a ŻZW armoury hidden in the basement at 7 Muranowska Street. In his notes, which form part of Oneg Shabbat archives, he reported: They were armed with revolvers stuck in their belts. Different kinds of weapons were hung in the large rooms: light machine guns, rifles, revolvers of different kinds, hand grenades, bags of ammunition, German uniforms, etc., all of which were utilized to
2376-487: The Warsaw Uprising: the left wing ŻOB founded in July 1942 by Zionist Jewish youth groups within the Warsaw Ghetto; and the right wing ŻZW, or Jewish Military Union, a national organization founded in 1939 by former Polish military officers of Jewish background which had strong ties to the Polish Home Army and cells in almost every major town across Poland. However, both organisations were officially incorporated into
2448-742: The alleged agent and Judenrat associate Alfred Nossig , executed on 22 February 1943). The ŻOB established a prison to hold and execute traitors and collaborators. Józef Szeryński , former head of the Jewish Ghetto Police, committed suicide. On 19 April 1943, on the eve of Passover , the police and SS auxiliary forces entered the ghetto. They were planning to complete the deportation action within three days, but were ambushed by Jewish insurgents firing and tossing Molotov cocktails and hand grenades from alleyways, sewers, and windows. The Germans suffered 59 casualties and their advance bogged down. Two of their combat vehicles (an armed conversion of
2520-602: The course of his study of the German occupation of France : "first, individual French Jews in the general Resistance; secondly, specifically Jewish organizations in the general Resistance; thirdly, Resistance organizations (not necessarily comprising Jews alone) with specifically Jewish objectives." In his book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy , Martin Gilbert defines Jewish resistance more widely. He recounts widespread individual resistance in many forms. Jews fought oppressors with
2592-631: The death camps of Majdanek and Treblinka. Jürgen Stroop's internal SS daily report for Friedrich Krüger , written on 16 May 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. ... Apart from 8 buildings (police barracks, hospital, and accommodations for housing working-parties)
2664-420: The destruction of Jewish life is an act of defiance. Further historical research and arguments have used "Amidah" to characterize religious observation, the of Jewish resistance to the destruction of one's culture, one's individualism, and one's will to live. Bauer disputes the popular view that most Jews went to their deaths passively—" like sheep to the slaughter ". He argues that, given the conditions in which
2736-538: The extermination camps. Uprisings also erupted in at least 18 forced labor camps. There were a number of Jewish partisan groups operating in many countries, especially in places like Poland. Jews also joined existing partisan movements. The most notable Jewish partisan group is the Bielski partisans , whom the movie Defiance portrays, and the Parczew partisans in the forests near Lublin . Hundreds of Jews escaped
2808-509: The failure of the latter to pacify the ghetto resistance. When the deportations first began, members of the Jewish resistance movement met and decided not to fight the SS directives, believing that the Jews were being sent to labour camps and not to be murdered. But by the end of 1942, ghetto inhabitants learned that the deportations were part of an extermination process. Many of the remaining Jews decided to revolt. The first armed resistance in
2880-586: The first uprising took part in the later uprising (mostly in non-combat roles such as logistics and maintenance, due to their physical state and general shortage of arms), joining the ranks of the Polish Home Army and the Armia Ludowa . According to Samuel Krakowski from the Jewish Historical Institute , "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had a real influence ... in encouraging the activity of the Polish underground." A number of survivors of
2952-435: The following as captured booty: Regarding the booty of arms, it must be taken into consideration that the arms themselves could in most cases not be captured, as the bandits and Jews would, before being arrested, throw them into hiding places or holes which could not be ascertained or discovered. The smoking out of the dug-out by our men, also often made the search for arms impossible. As the dug-outs had to be blown up at once,
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3024-652: The forests in Sobibór and Treblinka death camps, whereas in Western Europe, they used armed resistance. Between April and May 1943, Jewish men and women of the Warsaw Ghetto took up arms and rebelled against the Nazis after it became clear that the Germans were deporting remaining Ghetto inhabitants to the Treblinka extermination camp . Warsaw Jews of the Jewish Combat Organization and
3096-541: The former Ghetto is completely destroyed. Only the dividing walls are left standing where no explosions were carried out. According to the casualty lists in Stroop's report, German forces suffered a total of 110 casualties – 17 dead (of whom 16 were killed in action ) and 93 injured – of whom 101 are listed by name, including over 60 members of the Waffen-SS. These figures did not include Jewish collaborators but did include
3168-1383: The full in the April "action". (...) While I was there, a purchase of arms was made from a former Polish Army officer, amounting to a quarter of a million zloty ; a sum of 50,000 zlotys was paid on account. Two machine guns were bought at 40,000 złoty each, and a large amount of hand grenades and bombs. Jewish resistance during the Holocaust Germany Italy Spain ( Spanish Civil War ) Albania Austria Baltic states Belgium Bulgaria Burma Czechia Denmark France Germany Greece Italy Japan Jewish Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Slovakia Spain Soviet Union Yugoslavia Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II . According to historian Yehuda Bauer , Jewish resistance
3240-606: The future. The most prominent of these were published by the Jewish Socialist party and the Zionist Labor Movement. These two groups formed an alliance but they had no arms. These papers lamented the carnage of war, but for the most part did not encourage armed resistance. Jews mainly used unarmed resistance in Eastern Europe; for instance, young Jews smuggled food or secretly took people into
3312-522: The ghetto by resistance fighters. Most of the Jewish fighters did not view their actions as an effective measure by which to save themselves, but rather as a battle for the honour of the Jewish people, and a protest against the world's silence. The ŻZW and ŻOB built dozens of fighting posts and executed a number of Nazi collaborators , including Jewish Ghetto Police officers, members of the fake (German-sponsored and controlled) resistance organization Żagiew , as well as Gestapo and Abwehr agents (including
3384-400: The ghetto occurred in January 1943. On 18 January 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 so-called "bunkers", fighters of the ŻOB and ŻZW, resisted, engaging the Germans in direct clashes. Though the ŻZW and ŻOB suffered heavy losses (including some of their leaders),
3456-524: The ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp began. The SS conducted many of the deportations during the operation code-named Grossaktion Warschau , between 23 July and 21 September 1942. Just before the operation began, the German "Resettlement Commissioner" SS- Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle called a meeting of the Ghetto Jewish Council Judenrat and informed its leader, Adam Czerniaków , that he would require 7,000 Jews
3528-414: The ghetto were carried out by: Open and secret executions carried out in Warsaw were led by SS-Obersturmführer Norbert Bergh-Trips, SS-Haupturmführer Paul Werner and SS-Obersturmführer Walter Witossek. The latter often presided over the police "trio", signing mass death sentences for Polish political prisoners, which were later pronounced by the ad hoc court of the security police. In October 1943, Bürkl
3600-701: The ghettoes and joined the Partisan resistance groups. Some Jews liberated from the Gęsiówka concentration camp participated in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising . In France, up to 20% of the French Resistance was Jewish despite Jews making up only about 1% of the French population, and there was a Jewish resistance unit, the Armée Juive . About 10% of Soviet partisans were Jews. Thousands of Jews also joined
3672-659: The ghettos: Nazis' powerful army and also, it was difficult for Jews to get armed resistance because they needed others' support and because they lacked the ability to get arms when they were in ghettos. There were many other major and minor ghetto uprisings, however most were not successful. Some of the ghetto uprisings include the Białystok Ghetto Uprising and the Częstochowa Ghetto Uprising . Uprisings took place in five major cities and 45 provincial towns. There were major resistance efforts in three of
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#17327662520873744-558: The hostility of various sections of the civilian population, few Jews were able to effectively resist the Final Solution militarily. Nevertheless, there are many cases of attempts at resistance in one form or another including over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings. Historiographically , the study of Jewish resistance to German rule is considered an important aspect of the study of the Holocaust. The historian Julian Jackson argued that there were three forms of Jewish resistance in
3816-475: The revolt, he lost his post as the SS and police commander of Warsaw. He was replaced by SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who rejected von Sammern-Frankenegg's proposal to call in bomber aircraft from Kraków . He led a better-organized and reinforced ground attack. During this fight on 22 April, SS officer Hans Dehmke was killed when gunfire detonated a hand grenade he was holding. When Stroop's ultimatum to surrender
3888-408: The ruins of the ghetto. The SS hunted Jews hiding in the ruins. On 19 April 1943, the first day of the most significant period of the resistance, 7,000 Jews were transported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp. Many purportedly developed resistance groups and helped to plan and execute the revolt and mass escape of 2 August 1943. From May 1943 to August 1944, executions in the ruins of
3960-475: The sewer system and in the many dugout hiding places hidden among the ruins of the ghetto, referred to as "bunkers" by Germans and Jews alike. The Germans used dogs to detect such hideouts, then usually dropped smoke bombs to force people out. Sometimes they flooded these so-called bunkers or destroyed them with explosives. On occasions, shootouts occurred. A number of captured fighters lobbed hidden grenades or fired concealed handguns after surrendering. On 8 May,
4032-589: The time of the Uprising, Dr. Ludwig Fischer , was tried and executed in 1947. Stroop was captured by Americans in Germany, convicted of war crimes in two trials (U.S. military and Polish), and executed by hanging in Poland in 1952, along with Warsaw Ghetto SS administrator Franz Konrad . Stroop's aide, Erich Steidtmann , was exonerated for "minimal involvement"; he died in 2010 while under investigation for war crimes. Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle who helped carry out
4104-590: The time, the action surprised many and was the focus of controversy, but it has since been credited with helping improve relations between the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. Many people from the United States and Israel came for the 1983 commemoration. The last surviving Jewish resistance fighter, Simcha Rotem , died in Jerusalem on 22 December 2018, at age 94. Two Jewish underground organisations fought in
4176-416: The weapons they could find. But Gilbert emphasizes that many Jews resisted passively; by enduring suffering and even death with dignity, they refused to satisfy German attackers' desire to see them despair. Gilbert writes, "Simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit." Nechama Tec argues that any of the complex and varying acts of defiance against the restrictive and demoralizing conditions forced upon
4248-482: The ŻZW received from the Polish Home Army: 2 heavy machine guns, 4 light machine guns, 21 submachine guns, 30 rifles, 50 pistols, and over 400 grenades for the uprising. During the Uprising, ŻZW is reported to have had about 400 well-armed fighters grouped in 11 units, with 4 units including fighters from the Polish Home Army. Due to the ŻZW's anti-socialist stand and close ties with the Polish Home Army (which
4320-432: Was able to rescue 380 Jewish prisoners (mostly foreign) held in the concentration camp " Gęsiówka " set up by the Germans in an area adjacent to the ruins of former ghetto. These prisoners had been brought from Auschwitz and forced to clear the remains of the ghetto. A few small groups of ghetto residents also managed to survive in the undetected "bunkers" and to eventually reach the "Aryan side". Several hundred survivors from
4392-401: Was asked what military lessons could be learned from the uprising. He replied: I don't think there's any real need to analyze the Uprising in military terms. This was a war of less than a thousand people against a mighty army and no one doubted how it was likely to turn out. This isn't a subject for study in military school. (...) If there's a school to study the human spirit, there it should be
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#17327662520874464-415: Was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves. Due to military strength of Nazi Germany and its allies , as well as the administrative system of ghettoization and
4536-430: Was deported directly to Auschwitz. Labour camp A labor camp (or labour camp , see spelling differences ) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especially prison farms ). Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators. Convention no. 105 of
4608-571: Was impossible and survival unlikely. Marek Edelman , the last surviving ŻOB commander who died in 2009, said their inspiration to fight was "not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths". According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , the uprising was "one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people". In 1939, German authorities began to concentrate Poland's population of over three million Jews into
4680-460: Was no air, only black, choking smoke and heavy burning heat radiating from the red-hot walls, from the glowing stone stairs." The "bunker wars" lasted an entire month, during which German progress was slowed. While the battle continued inside the ghetto, Polish resistance groups AK and GL engaged the Germans between 19 and 23 April at six different locations outside the ghetto walls, firing at German sentries and positions. In one attack, three units of
4752-504: 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. Besides claiming an estimated 56,065 Jews accounted for (although his own figures showed the number to be 57,065) and noting that "The number of destroyed dug-outs amounts to 631," in his official report dated 24 May 1943, Stroop listed
4824-419: Was rejected by the defenders, his forces resorted to systematically burning houses block by block using flamethrowers and fire bottles, and blowing up basements and sewers. "We were beaten by the flames, not the Germans," survivor Marek Edelman said in 2007; he was deputy commander of the ŻOB and escaped the ghetto in its last days. In 2003, he recalled: "The sea of flames flooded houses and courtyards. ... There
4896-606: Was released from prison on the grounds of his advanced cancer and died 13 days later. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 took place over a year before the Warsaw uprising of 1944. The ghetto had been destroyed by the time of the general uprising in the city, which was part of the Operation Tempest , a nationwide insurrection plan. During the Warsaw Uprising, the Polish Home Army's Battalion Zośka
4968-529: Was subsequently outlawed by the Soviets), the Soviets suppressed publication of books and articles on ŻZW after the war and downplayed its role in the uprising, in favor of the more socialist ŻOB. More weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, and some were captured from the Germans. Some weapons were handmade by the resistance; sometimes such weapons worked. Shortly before the uprising, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum (who managed to escape from
5040-405: Was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. German daily losses of killed/wounded and the official figures for killed or captured Jews and "bandits", according to the Stroop report: After the uprising was over, most of the incinerated houses were razed, and the Warsaw concentration camp complex was established in their place. Thousands of people died in the camp or were executed in
5112-617: Was tried and condemned to death in absentia by the Polish Resistance's Underground court , and shot dead by the AK in Warsaw, a part of Operation Heads that targeted notorious SS officers. That same month, von Sammern-Frankenegg was killed by Yugoslav Partisans in an ambush in Croatia . Himmler, Globocnik and Krüger all committed suicide at the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. The General Government Governor of Warsaw at
5184-692: Was tried for war crimes in Hamburg Germany in 1981 and sentenced to 12.5 years in prison; died 26 July 1983. Walter Reder reportedly served in the SS Panzer Grenadier Training Battalion III; he served a jail sentence in Italy from 1951 to 1985 for war crimes committed in 1944 in Italy and died in 1991. Josef Blösche was tried for war crimes and executed in 1969. Heinrich Klaustermeyer was tried for war crimes in 1965 and sentenced to life in prison. In 1976, he
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