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| Mallorca from the air |
Palma is a great city with a diverse society. One of the ancient communities is the xuetes, the old Jewish citizens who had to convert their beliefs to survive in the middle of a terrible Catholic Inquisition. The history of the Jewish community is a story of resilience and survival in front of intolerance, racism and xenophobia, in that case summed up in a word. It's antisemitism.
While The Grandma was flying to Palma, she has been reading about another terrible episode of the Jewish community, the first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, an historical event that celebrates its 76th anniversary on a day like today.
Before taking the plane, she has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 77 & Checkpoint).
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 Majdanek and Treblinka.
After the Grossaktion Warsaw of summer 1942, in which more than 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. However, only the ŻZW received logistical support from the similarly right-leaning Polish Home Army. A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred the Polish groups to support the Jews in earnest.
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| The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising |
A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties were probably less than 150, with Stroop reporting only 16 killed. Nevertheless, it was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew that the uprising was doomed and their survival was unlikely. Marek Edelman, the only surviving ŻOB commander, said that the motivation for fighting was 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 a number of extremely crowded ghettos located in large Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, concentrated approximately 300,000–400,000 people into a densely packed, 3.3 km2 central area of Warsaw.
More information: Yad Vashem
Thousands of Jews died due to rampant disease and starvation under SS-und-Polizeiführer Odilo Globocnik and SS-Standartenführer Ludwig Hahn, even before the mass deportations from 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 a day for the resettlement to the East. Czerniaków committed suicide once he became aware of the true goal of the resettlement plan.
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| The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising |
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 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 their deaths. By the end of 1942, ghetto inhabitants learned that the deportations were part of an extermination process.
More information: The History Press
Many of the remaining Jews decided to revolt. The first armed resistance in the ghetto occurred in January 1943. On 19 April 1943, Passover eve, the Germans entered the ghetto. The remaining Jews knew that the Germans would murder them and they decided to resist to the last.
While the uprising was underway, the Bermuda Conference was held from 19–29 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 within German-occupied Europe.
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.
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.
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| The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising |
Though the ŻZW and ŻOB suffered heavy losses, including some of their leaders, the Germans also took casualties, and the deportation was halted within a few days. Only 5,000 Jews were removed, instead of the 8,000 planned by Globocnik. Hundreds of people in the Warsaw Ghetto were ready to fight, adults and children, sparsely armed with handguns, gasoline bottles, and a few other weapons that had been smuggled into 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.
More information: Time
Two resistance organizations, the ŻZW and ŻOB, took control of the ghetto. They 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 (such as Judenrat member Dr 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.
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 Majdanek and Treblinka.
More information: The Guardian
My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal.
Both my father and mother were survivors
of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps.
Apart from my parents, every family member
on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.
Norman Finkelstein
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