WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING

Between July 22 and September 12, 1942, the German authorities deported or murdered around 300,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. SS and police units deported 265,000 Jews to the Treblinka killing center and 11,580 to forced-labor camps. The Germans and their auxiliaries murdered more than 10,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during the deportation operations. The German authorities granted only 35,000 Jews permission to remain in the ghetto, while more than 20,000 Jews remained in the ghetto in hiding. For the at least 55,000-60,000 Jews remaining in the Warsaw ghetto, deportation seemed inevitable.

In response to the deportations, on July 28, 1942, several Jewish underground organizations created an armed self-defense unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization(Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB). Rough estimates put the size of the ZOB at its formation at around 200 members. The Revisionist Party (right-wing Zionists known as the Betar) formed another resistance organization, the Jewish Military Union (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy; ZZW). Although initially there was tension between the ZOB and the ZZW, both groups decided to work together to oppose German attempts to destroy the ghetto. At the time of the uprising, the ZOB had about 500 fighters in its ranks and the ZZW had about 250. While efforts to establish contact with the Polish military underground movement (Armia Krajowa, or Home Army) did not succeed during the summer of 1942, the ZOB established contact with the Home Army in October, and obtained a small number of weapons, mostly pistols and explosives, from Home Army contacts.

In accordance with Reichsführer-SS (SS chief) Heinrich Himmler's October 1942 order to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto and deport its able-bodied residents to forced labor camps in Lublin District of the General gouvernement, German SS and police units tried to resume mass deportations of Jews from Warsaw on January 18, 1943. A group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, infiltrated a column of Jews being forced to the Umschlagplatz (transfer point) and, at a prearranged signal, broke ranks and fought their German escorts. Most of these Jewish fighters died in the battle, but the attack sufficiently disoriented the Germans to allow the Jews arranged in columns at the Umschlagplatz a chance to disperse. After seizing 5,000-6,500 ghetto residents to be deported, the Germans suspended further deportations on January 21. Encouraged by the apparent success of the resistance, which they believed may have halted deportations, members of the ghetto population began to construct subterranean bunkers and shelters in preparation for an uprising should the Germans attempt a final deportation of all remaining Jews in the reduced ghetto.

The German forces intended to begin the operation to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover. When SS and police units entered the ghetto that morning, the streets were deserted. Nearly all of the residents of the ghetto had gone into hiding places or bunkers. The renewal of deportations was the signal for an armed uprising within the ghetto.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Personal Story
One of nine children, Hela grew up in the Polish capital of Warsaw. Her father was an art and antique furniture dealer and had a store on Marszalkowska Street. Every year, from the beginning of the summer break until the Jewish High Holidays in the fall, the Los family vacationed in the town of Miedzeszyn, located a short train ride's distance from Warsaw.

A few days later, Hela and her family were deported to forced-labor camps. Liberated in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, Hela emigrated to Palestine in 1947 with her mother and brother.

ZOB commander Mordecai Anielewicz commanded the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Armed with pistols, grenades (many of them homemade), and a few automatic weapons and rifles, the ZOB fighters stunned the Germans and their auxiliaries on the first day of fighting, forcing the German forces to retreat outside the ghetto wall. German commander SS General Jürgen Stroop reported losing 12 men, killed and wounded, during the first assault on the ghetto. On the third day of the uprising, Stroop's SS and police forces began razing the ghetto to the ground, building by building, to force the remaining Jews out of hiding. Jewish resistance fighters made sporadic raids from their bunkers, but the Germans systematically reduced the ghetto to rubble. The German forces killed Anielewicz and those with him in an attack on the ZOB command bunker on 18 Mila Street, which they captured on May 8.

Though German forces broke the organized military resistance within days of the beginning of the uprising, individuals and small groups hid or fought the Germans for almost a month.

To symbolize the German victory, Stroop ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue on Tlomacki Street on May 16, 1943. The ghetto itself was in ruins. Stroop reported that he had captured 56,065 Jews and destroyed 631 bunkers. He estimated that his units killed up to 7,000 Jews during the uprising. The German authorities deported approximately another 7,000 Warsaw Jews to the Treblinka killing center, where almost all were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival. The Germans deported almost all of the remaining Jews, approximately 42,000, to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp, and to the Poniatowa, Trawniki, Budzyn, and Krasnik forced-labor camps. With the exception of a few thousand forced laborers at Budzyn and Krasnik, German SS and police units later murdered almost all of the Warsaw Jews deported to Lublin/Majdanek, Poniatowa, and Trawniki in November 1943 in “Operation Harvest Festival” (Unternehmen Erntefest).

The Germans had planned to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto in three days, but the ghetto fighters held out for more than a month. Even after the end of the uprising on May 16, 1943, individual Jews hiding out in the ruins of the ghetto continued to attack the patrols of the Germans and their auxiliaries. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising, in German-occupied Europe. The resistance in Warsaw inspired other uprisings in ghettos (e.g., Bialystok and Minsk) and killing centers (Treblinka and Sobibor).

Today, Days of Remembrance ceremonies to commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust are linked to the dates of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005188

Holocaust Facts
What You Need to Know About the Holocaust

What Does Holocaust Mean?

* The Holocaust began in 1933 when Hitler came to power in Germany and ended in 1945 when the Nazis were defeated by the Allied powers.
* The term "Holocaust," originally from the Greek word "holokauston" which means "sacrifice by fire," refers to the Nazi's persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. The Hebrew word "Shoah," which means "devastation, ruin, or waste," is also used for this genocide.

* In addition to Jews, the Nazis targeted Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the disabled for persecution. Anyone who resisted the Nazis was sent to forced labor or murdered.

* The term "Nazi" is an acronym for "Nationalsozialistishe Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" ("National Socialist German Worker's Party").

* The Nazis used the term "the Final Solution" to refer to their plan to murder the Jewish people. .

The Big Numbers

* It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews.

* The Nazis killed approximately two-thirds of all Jews living in Europe.

* An estimated 1.1 million children were murdered in the Holocaust.

Persecution Begins

* On April 1, 1933, the Nazis instigated their first action against German Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses.

* The Nuremberg Laws, issued on September 15, 1935, began to exclude Jews from public life. The Nuremberg Laws included a law that stripped German Jews of their citizenship and a law that prohibited marriages and extramarital sex between Jews and Germans. The Nuremberg Laws set the legal precedent for further anti-Jewish legislation.

* Nazis then issued additional anti-Jews laws over the next several years. For example, some of these laws excluded Jews from places like parks, fired them from civil service jobs (i.e. government jobs), made Jews register their property, and prevented Jewish doctors from working on anyone other than Jewish patients.

* During the night of November 9-10, 1938, Nazis incited a pogrom against Jews in Austria and Germany in what has been termed, "Kristallnacht" ("Night of Broken Glass"). This night of violence included the pillaging and burning of synagogues, breaking the windows of Jewish-owned businesses, the looting of these stores, and many Jews were physically attacked. Also, approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

* After World War II started in 1939, the Nazis began ordering Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing so that Jews could be easily recognized and targeted.

Jewish Ghettos

* After the beginning of World War II, Nazis began ordering all Jews to live within certain, very specific, areas of big cities, called ghettos.

* Jews were forced out of their homes and moved into smaller apartments, often shared with other families.

* Some ghettos started out as "open," which meant that Jews could leave the area during the daytime but often had to be back within the ghetto by a curfew. Later, all ghettos became "closed," which meant that Jews were trapped within the confines of the ghetto and not allowed to leave.

* A few of the major ghettos were located in the cities of Bialystok, Kovno, Lodz, Minsk, Riga, Vilna, and Warsaw.

* The largest ghetto was in Warsaw, with its highest population reaching 445,000 in March 1941.

* In most ghettos, Nazis ordered the Jews to establish a Judenrat (a Jewish council) to both administer Nazi demands and to regulate the internal life of the ghetto.

* Nazis would then order deportations from the ghettos. In some of the large ghettos, 1,000 people per day were loaded up in trains and sent to either a concentration camp or a death camp.

* To get them to cooperate, the Nazis told the Jews they were being transported to another place for labor

* When the Nazis decided to kill the remaining Jews in a ghetto, they would "liquidate" a ghetto by boarding the last Jews in the ghetto on trains.

* When the Nazis attempted to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto on April 13, 1943, the remaining Jews fought back in what has become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jewish resistance fighters held out against the entire Nazi regime for 28 days -- longer than many European countries had been able to withstand Nazi conquest.

Concentration and Extermination Camps

* Although many people refer to all Nazi camps as "concentration camps," there were actually a number of different kinds of camps, including concentration camps, extermination camps, labor camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and transit camps.

* One of the first concentration camps was Dachau, which opened on March 20, 1933.

* From 1933 until 1938, most of the prisoners in the concentration camps were political prisoners (i.e. people who spoke or acted in some way against Hitler or the Nazis) and people the Nazis labeled as "asocial."

* After Kristallnacht in 1938, the persecution of Jews became more organized. This led to the exponential increase in the number of Jews sent to concentration camps.

* Life within Nazi concentration camps was horrible. Prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor and yet given tiny rations. Prisoners slept three or more people per crowded wooden bunk (no mattress or pillow). Torture within the concentration camps was common and deaths were frequent.

* At a number of Nazi concentration camps, Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on prisoners against their will.

* While concentration camps were meant to work and starve prisoners to death, extermination camps (also known as death camps) were built for the sole purpose of killing large groups of people quickly and efficiently.

* The Nazis built six extermination camps: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Majdanek. (Auschwitz and Majdanek were both concentration and extermination camps.)

* Prisoners transported to these extermination camps were told to undress to take a shower. Rather than a shower, the prisoners were herded into gas chambers and killed. (At Chelmno, the prisoners were herded into gas vans instead of gas chambers.)

* Auschwitz was the largest concentration and extermination camp built. It is estimated that 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz.