Today, The Grandma and Claire Fontaine havevisited some of the most important places of Palma.After
visiting the Cathedral, one of the most incredible monuments of the
island, they have returned to their hotel, where they have rested a
little.
Tonight, they are going to celebrate SantSebastià,thepatron of the city, with thousands of Mallorcan people dancing near wonderful bonfires. They are going to spend their last hours in this wonderful city before returning to Barcelona, where The Grandma is going to start a new English course with a new family tomorrow.
Palma is the capital and largest city of Balearic Islands. It is situated on the south coast of Mallorca on the Bay of Palma. The Cabrera Archipelago, though widely separated from Palma proper, is administratively considered part of the municipality.
Palma was founded as a Roman camp upon the remains of a Talaioticsettlement. The city was subjected to several Vandal raids during the fall of the Western Roman Empire, then reconquered by the Byzantine Empire,thencolonised by the Moors, who called it Medina Mayurqa, and, in the 13th century, by King Jaume I.
After the conquest of Mallorca, the city was loosely incorporated into the province of Tarraconensis by 123 BC; the Romans founded two new cities: Palma
on the south of the island, and Pollentia in the northeast -on the site
of a Phoenician settlement. Whilst Pollentia acted as a port to Roman
cities on the northwestern Mediterranean Sea, Palma was the port
used for destinations in Africa, such as Carthage, and Hispania, such as
Saguntum, Gades and Carthago Nova. Though present-day Palma has no significant remains from this period, occasional archaeological finds are made in city centre excavations.
With Margalida and Tomeu, Giants of Palma
Though the period between the fall of the WesternRoman Empire and the Muslim conquest is not well understood, due to lack of documents, there is clear evidence of a Byzantinepresence in the city,as
indicated by mosaics found in the oldest parts of the Cathedral, which
was in early medieval times part of a paleo-Christian temple.
Between 902 and 1229, the city was under Islamic control. It remained the capital of the island and it was known as Medina Mayurqa, which in Arabic means City of Majorca.
On 31 December 1229, after three months of siege, the city was reconquered by King Jaume I and was renamed Ciutat de Mallorca. In addition to being kept as capital of the Kingdom of Mallorca, it was given a municipality that comprised the whole island. The governing arm was the University of the City and Kingdom of Mallorca.
After the death of King Jaume I, Palma became joint capital of the Kingdom of Mallorca, together with Perpignan. His son, Jaume II of Mallorca,championed
the construction of statues and monuments in the city: Bellver Castle,
the churches of St. Francesc and St. Domingo, reformed the Palace of
Almudaina and began the construction of the Cathedral of Mallorca.
In 1391, anti-Jewish riots broke out. The Jewish community of Inca was completely wiped out, as were those of Sóller, Sineu, and Alcudia. In spite of the governor's prohibition on leaving the island, many Jews fled to North Africa. The remaining Jews were forced to convert under threat of death.
Abraham Cresques was a 14th-century Jewish cartographer of the Majorcan cartographic school from Palma; Cresques is credited with the authorship of the famous Catalan Atlas.
The river that cut through the city gave rise to two distinct areas within the city; the Upper town and Lower town, depending upon which side of the river one was situated. Palma's Silk Exchange, a masterpiece of the Gothic architecture in Mallorca. Built between 1420 and 1452.
The Grandma with 'Els Xeremiers', Majorcan Giants
The city's advantageous geographical location allowed it extensive commerce
with Catalonia, Valencia, Provence, the Maghreb, the Italian republics
and the dominions of the Great Turk, which heralded a golden age for the
city.
The
17th century is characterised by the division of the city in two sides
or gangs, named Canamunts and Canavalls, with severe social and
economical repercussions. During this period the port became a haven for pirates. During the last quarter of the century, the Inquisition continued its persecution of the city's Jews, locally called xuetes.
The fall of Barcelona in 1714 meant the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the defeat and destruction of the Crown of Aragon, and this was reflected on the Nueva Planta decrees, issued by Philip V of Spain in 1715. These occupation decrees changed the government of the island
and separated it from the municipality's government of Palma, which
became the official city name. By the end of the 19th century, the name
Palma de Mallorca was generalised in written Spanish, although it is
still colloquially named Ciutat in Catalan.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Palma became a refuge for many who had exiled themselves from the Napoleonic occupation of Catalonia and Valencia; during this period freedom flourished, until the absolutist restoration.
The patron of Palma is Sant Sebastià (January, 20). The city celebrates this festivity with traditional cultural events. Giants, bonfires, and local dancings (ball de bot) are enjoyed by everybody.
Today, The Grandma has visited the Ancient Synagogue of Barcelona. This place, in Catalan SinagogaMajorde Barcelona, is believed to be an ancient synagogue located in the centre of Barcelona. It has been described as one of the oldest synagogues in Europe. After many centuries of use for other purposes, the building re-opened as a synagogue and museum in 2002. No congregation prays regularly at the SinagogaMajor, but it is used for festive occasions.
Archaeological investigations show that the original structure of the building was built in the third or fourth century; whether this structure was the synagogue cannot be said with certainty. The building was significantly expanded during the 13th century. Medieval Barcelona is known to have had several synagogues, and the main synagogue was certainly in the immediate area.
King Jaume I visited the synagogue in 1263 at the conclusion of the Barcelona Disputation. Shlomo ben Aderet served as the rabbi of the Sinagoga Major for 50 years.
The Jews of Barcelona were massacred in 1391. The building was used for many purposes and its original use was forgotten. Over the centuries, additional stories were added to the building.
In 1987, Jaume Riera i Sans began researching the location of the SinagogaMajor. His research was based on a reconstruction of the route followed by a thirteenth-century tax collector that ended at the Sinagoga Major.
Riera's work led Miguel Iaffa to examine the exterior of the building. Iaffa noted that the structure had been built in compliance with religious requirements that the building should face Jerusalem and that it should have two windows. In fact, the eastward orientation of the building, toward Jerusalem, broke with the northwest/southeast alignment of the streets in its neighborhood.
Iaffa purchased the building in 1995 when its owner put it up for sale. The Call Association of Barcelona, in Catalan Associació Call de Barcelona, led by Iaffa, undertook the recovery and restoration of the synagogue. The Sinagoga Major was opened to the public in 2002, and it drew 20,000 visitors during 2005.
The Grandma loves Jewish culture and history, perhaps because her ancestors were xuetes, the descendants of Majorcan Jews and she is very interested in knowing more things about her past.
Barcelona is celebrating its patron festivity and during five days all museums are open and free. She has decided to visit El Call, the Jewish quartier of Barcelona, and its historical places -the Synagogue and the Jewish Museum. During her visit to the museum, she has remembered another important event for the Jewish culture when on a day like today in 1997; the Dead Sea Scrolls were made available to the public for the first time.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also Qumran Caves Scrolls, are ancient Jewish religious manuscripts found in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert,near Ein Feshkha on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Scholarly consensus dates these scrolls from the last three centuries BC and the first century AD.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
The texts have great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the second-oldest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible canon, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism.
Almost all of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection is currently under the ownership of the Government of the State of Israel, and housed in the Shrine of the Book on the grounds of the Israel Museum. Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area. They represent the remnants of larger manuscripts damaged by natural causes or through human interference, with the vast majority holding only small scraps of text. However, a small number of well-preserved, almost intact manuscripts have survived – fewer than a dozen among those from the Qumran Caves.
Researchers have assembled a collection of 981 different manuscripts -discovered in 1946/47 and in 1956- from 11 caves.
The 11 Qumran Caves lie in the immediate vicinity of the Hellenistic-period Jewish settlement at Khirbet Qumran in the eastern Judaean Desert, in the West Bank.
The caves are located about 1.6 kilometres west of the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, whence they derive their name. Scholarly consensus dates the Qumran Caves Scrolls from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE. Bronze coins found at the same sites form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus, in office 135–104 BCE, and continuing until the period of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), supporting the radiocarbon and paleographic dating of the scrolls.
In the larger sense, the Dead Sea Scrolls include manuscripts from additional Judaean Desert sites, dated as early as the 8th century BCE and as late as the 11th century CE.
Biblical texts older than the Dead Sea Scrolls have been discovered only in two silver scroll-shaped amulets containing portions of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers, excavated in Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom and dated c. 600 BCE. The third-oldest surviving known piece of the Torah, the En-Gedi Scroll, consists of a portion of Leviticus found in the Ein Gedi synagogue, burnt in the 6th century CE and analyzed in 2015. Research has dated it palaeographically to the 1st or 2nd century CE, and using the C14 method to sometime between the 2nd and 4th centuries CE.
The Qumran Caves, the Dead Sea
Most of the texts use Hebrew, with some written in Aramaic, for example the Son of God text; in different regional dialects, including Nabataean, and a few in Greek. Discoveries from the Judaean Desert add Latin -from Masada- and Arabic -from Khirbet al-Mird- texts.
Most of the texts are written on parchment, some on papyrus, and one on copper.
Archaeologists have long associated the scrolls with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, although some recent interpretations have challenged this connection and argue that priests in Jerusalem, or Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups wrote the scrolls.
Owing to the poor condition of some of the scrolls, scholars have not identified all of their texts. The identified texts fall into three general groups:
-About 40% are copies of texts from the Hebrew Scriptures.
-Approximately another 30% are texts from the Second Temple Period which ultimately were not canonized in the Hebrew Bible, like the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Tobit, the Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms 152–155...
-The remainder, roughly 30%, are sectarian manuscripts of previously unknown documents that shed light on the rules and beliefs of a particular group or groups within greater Judaism, like the Community Rule, the War Scroll, the Pesher on Habakkuk, and The Rule of the Blessing.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a series of twelve caves around the site originally known as the Ein Feshkha Caves near the Dead Sea in the WestBank, then part of Jordan, between 1946 and 1956 by Bedouin shepherds and a team of archeologists. The practice of storing worn-out sacred manuscripts in earthenware vessels buried in the earth or within caves is related to the ancient Jewish custom of Genizah.
The initial discovery by Bedouin shepherd Muhammed edh-Dhib, his cousin Jum'a Muhammed, and Khalil Musa, took place between November 1946 and February 1947. The shepherds discovered seven scrolls housed in jars in a cave near what is now known as the Qumran site.
Early in September 1948, Metropolitan bishop Mar Samuel brought some additional scroll fragments that he had acquired to Professor Ovid R. Sellers, the new Director of ASOR. By the end of 1948, nearly two years after their discovery, scholars had yet to locate the original cave where the fragments had been found. With unrest in the country at that time, no large-scale search could be undertaken safely.
Sellers tried to get the
Syrians to assist in the search for the cave, but he was unable to pay
their price. In early 1949, the government of Jordan gave permission to
the Arab Legion to search the area where the original Qumran cave was
thought to be. Consequently, Cave 1 was rediscovered on 28 January 1949,
by Belgian United Nations observer Captain Phillipe Lippens and Arab
Legion Captain Akkash el-Zebn.
The 972 manuscripts
found at Qumran were found primarily in two separate formats: as scrolls
and as fragments of previous scrolls and texts.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
In the fourth cave the fragments were torn into up to 15,000 pieces. These small fragments created somewhat of a problem for scholars. G.L. Harding, director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, began working on piecing the fragments together but did not finish this before his death in 1979.
Some fragments of scrolls have neither significant archaeological provenance nor records that reveal in which designated Qumran cave area they were found. They are believed to have come from Wadi Qumrancaves, but are just as likely to have come from other archaeological sites in the Judaean Desert area. These fragments have therefore been designated to the temporary X series.
The Dead Sea Scrolls that were found were originally preserved by the dry, arid, and low humidity conditions present within the Qumran area adjoining the Dead Sea. In addition, the lack of the use of tanning materials on the parchment of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the very low airflow in the Qumran caves also contributed significantly to their preservation.
Some of the scrolls were found stored in clay jars within the Qumran caves, further helping to preserve them from deterioration. The original handling of the scrolls by archaeologists and scholars was done inappropriately, and, along with their storage in an uncontrolled environment, they began a process of more rapid deterioration than they had experienced at Qumran. During the first few years in the late 1940s and early 1950s, adhesive tape used to join fragments and seal cracks caused significant damage to the documents.
The Government of Jordan had recognized the urgency of protecting the scrolls from deterioration and the presence of the deterioration among the scrolls.
However, the government did not have adequate funds to purchase all the scrolls for their protection and agreed to have foreign institutions purchase the scrolls and have them held at their museum in Jerusalem until they could be adequately studied.
In partnership with Google, the Museum of Jerusalem is working to photograph the Dead Sea Scrolls and make them available to the public digitally, although not placing the images in the public domain.
The lead photographer of the project, Ardon Bar-Hama, and his team are utilizing the Alpa 12 MAX camera accompanied with a Leaf Aptus-II back in order to produce ultra-high resolution digital images of the scrolls and fragments.
With photos taken at 1,200 megapixels, the results are digital images that can be used to distinguish details that are invisible to the naked eye. In order to minimize damage to the scrolls and fragments, photographers are using a 1/4000th of a second exposure time and UV-protected flash tubes. The digital photography project was estimated in 2011 to cost approximately 3.5 million U.S. dollars.
For a thousand years after the Dead Sea Scrolls were written,
the Jewish holy scriptures -the five parts of the Torah and 19 other holy books- were copied and passed down in the various Jewish communities from generation to generation.
Today, Claire Fontaine and TheGrandma are still in Palma.
Claire is very interested in knowing more things about the Legend of the Drac de Na Coca and TheGrandma wants to search her family roots in the Jewish quarter of Calatrava.
The Grandma has also wanted to remember and homage Miquel,one of her old friends who left her some years ago, a great pastry cook and a better person.
Before starting to walk across the old streets of the city The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 3).
In Calatrava, you live very central in the Old Town of Palma in genuine medieval surroundings, close to the sea and the city beach Ca'n Pere Antoni.
On cobbled stone streets you can walk through the area where history is present everywhere you go.
Wide vaults over the entrances of the buildings are very common to see, as in days past, people used to ride (took out with) horse carriages through the entrance and keep the horses and the carts parked in the patio. Nowadays the stables are rebuilt into garages or green patios where you can have dinner al fresco.
The
first floor is called the Planta Noble, as that is where the family
lived. The servant lived on the second floor and upstairs, in the attic,
was where they held small animals like rabbits and hens.
In Calatrava you can find a couple of cosy cafés and restaurants. You will also find web agencies, vegan shops and art galleries.
The Grandma with Ramon Llull in Sant Francesc Church
Walking along, you will suddenly discover that you are no longer on the narrow small streets, but instead on the old historical city wall that goes in front of the gothic Cathedral and all you will see is the blue sky and the sea. The park and lake in front is called Parc de Mar which offers a café with views of the Cathedral and the water.
Calatrava is a truly historical and well kept area with a tranquil atmosphere and a perfect location between the centre of Palma and the beach.
You will immerse yourself in the history, mysteries and fun facts of the Jewish community that lived in Palma de Mallorca before and after their exile or conversion up to the 20th Century.
It’s a round tour that begins in Plaça Santa Eulàlia and finishes at the same place. We will deal with different terms used to describe places, customs, religion and the society of the Hebrew community of Mallorca.
During the Middle and part of the Modern Age, in Palma there were two calls jueus, that refers to the Jewish quarter of the Aragon Kingdom. Even though being located nearby the most touristic areas in Palma such as the Cathedral, Plaça Cort and Plaça Major, the Jewish district is known for its serenity, peace and quietness that you feel among its streets and alleys.
The main subject will be the Hebrew community in Mallorca from its beginnings until the first half of the 15th Century, when their definitive christian conversion took place or their exile to safer lands, where they could start a new life. Futhermore, we will talk about the life of the converted descendants, also called xuetes, within Mallorcan society up to the current Hebrew community of the Balearic Islands.
Its history, legends, anecdotes and characters will be combined with curiosities, aspects and the everyday life in a medieval city such as Ciutat de Mallorques. Moreover, we will admire one of the most important stately homes of the old town hidden among the narrow streets and alleys of the Jewish quarter or Call Jueu of Palma.
The Drac de Na Coca takes part in the town crier procession and participates in the fire festival accompanied by a host of fire beasts from other towns.
The reason behind the construction of this fire beast is to provide Palma with another emblem linked to popular tradition to join the existing imagery of creatures such as the gegants (giants) and capgrossos (big heads).
The Drac in Puresa Street and in the Diocesan Museum
This beast has its roots in one of the most epic legends of the city of Palma which tells of a dragon which lived in the city, roaming around its drains. This modern Drac de Na Coca will be carried around the city by the geganters or giants of Palma City Council. It weighs 50 kilos, and is 180 cm tall and 183 cm wide.
The legend of El Drac de Na Coca is one of the most epic legends there is. It begins in around 1776, when rumour began to spread in Palma that a great dragon came out at night in La Portella neighbourhood. Those living near the cathedral claimed to hear strange, disturbing noises in the night.
Later, people began to say that some children had been devoured by a terrible beast. At last, someone saw the diabolical dragon in Can Clapers street. One night, the noble knight Bartomeu Coc was on his way to his fiancée's house on Portella street when he heard a strange noise. By the faint light of a streetlamp he could make out the figure of the dreaded reptile which was preparing to make a charge at him.
The noble Coc unsheathed his sword and killed the beast with one clean blow. The dragon that had been terrorising the neighbourhood turned out to be a crocodile which had inexplicably arrived to the island and grown up in the sewers of Palma. The reptile was stuffed and is still preserved today in the Diocesan Museum.
Mallorcan singer Maria del Mar Bonet sings a popular version of the legend in the song El Drac de Na Coca.
Pel carrer de Sa Portella, quan la nit cau, diuen que hi surt una bèstia; valga'ns Déu, val! S'engoleix les criatures, valga'ns Déu, val! Les mares de Sa Portella ploren d'espant.
On the street of Sa Portella, when the night falls, They say that there is a beast there; oh my God, It eats the children, oh my God! The mothers of Sa Portella cry afraid.
Today, The Grandma and Claire Fontaine have visited some of the most important places of Palma.
Last night, they celebrated Sant Sebastià,thepatron of the city, with thousands of Mallorcan people who danced near wonderful bonfires.
After visiting the Cathedral, one of the most incredible monuments of the island, they have returned to their hotel where they have rested a little. The hotel is located in Almudaina Street and it is an incredible Mallorcan palace.
The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 2).
Palma is the capital and largest city of Balearic Islands. It is situated on the south coast of Mallorca on the Bay of Palma. The Cabrera Archipelago, though widely separated from Palma proper, is administratively considered part of the municipality.
Palma was founded as a Roman camp upon the remains of a Talaioticsettlement. The city was subjected to several Vandal raids during the fall of the Western Roman Empire, then reconquered by the Byzantine Empire,thencolonised by the Moors, who called it Medina Mayurqa, and, in the 13th century, by King Jaume I.
After the conquest of Mallorca, the city was loosely incorporated into the province of Tarraconensis by 123 BC; the Romans founded two new cities: Palma
on the south of the island, and Pollentia in the northeast -on the site
of a Phoenician settlement. Whilst Pollentia acted as a port to Roman
cities on the northwestern Mediterranean Sea, Palma was the port
used for destinations in Africa, such as Carthage, and Hispania, such as
Saguntum, Gades and Carthago Nova. Though present-day Palma has no significant remains from this period, occasional archaeological finds are made in city centre excavations.
With Margalida and Tomeu, Giants of Palma
Though the period between the fall of the WesternRoman Empire and the Muslim conquest is not well understood, due to lack of documents, there is clear evidence of a Byzantinepresence in the city,as indicated by mosaics found in the oldest parts of the Cathedral, which was in early medieval times part of a paleo-Christian temple.
Between 902 and 1229, the city was under Islamic control. It remained the capital of the island and it was known as Medina Mayurqa, which in Arabic means City of Majorca.
On 31 December 1229, after three months of siege, the city was reconquered by King Jaume I and was renamed Ciutat de Mallorca. In addition to being kept as capital of the Kingdom of Mallorca, it was given a municipality that comprised the whole island. The governing arm was the University of the City and Kingdom of Mallorca.
After the death of King Jaume I, Palma became joint capital of the Kingdom of Mallorca, together with Perpignan. His son, Jaume II of Mallorca,championed the construction of statues and monuments in the city: Bellver Castle, the churches of St. Francesc and St. Domingo, reformed the Palace of Almudaina and began the construction of the Cathedral of Mallorca.
In 1391, anti-Jewish riots broke out. The Jewish community of Inca was completely wiped out, as were those of Sóller, Sineu, and Alcudia. In spite of the governor's prohibition on leaving the island, many Jews fled to North Africa. The remaining Jews were forced to convert under threat of death.
Abraham Cresques was a 14th-century Jewish cartographer of the Majorcan cartographic school from Palma; Cresques is credited with the authorship of the famous Catalan Atlas.
The river that cut through the city gave rise to two distinct areas within the city; the Upper town and Lower town, depending upon which side of the river one was situated. Palma's Silk Exchange, a masterpiece of the Gothic architecture in Mallorca. Built between 1420 and 1452.
The Grandma with 'Els Xeremiers', Majorcan Giants
The city's advantageous geographical location allowed it extensive commerce with Catalonia, Valencia, Provence, the Maghreb, the Italian republics and the dominions of the Great Turk, which heralded a golden age for the city.
The 17th century is characterised by the division of the city in two sides or gangs, named Canamunts and Canavalls, with severe social and economical repercussions. During this period the port became a haven for pirates. During the last quarter of the century, the Inquisition continued its persecution of the city's Jews, locally called xuetes.
The fall of Barcelona in 1714 meant the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the defeat and destruction of the Crown of Aragon, and this was reflected on the Nueva Planta decrees, issued by Philip V of Spain in 1715. These occupation decrees changed the government of the island and separated it from the municipality's government of Palma, which became the official city name. By the end of the 19th century, the name Palma de Mallorca was generalised in written Spanish, although it is still colloquially named Ciutat in Catalan.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Palma became a refuge for many who had exiled themselves from the Napoleonic occupation of Catalonia and Valencia; during this period freedom flourished, until the absolutist restoration.
The patron of Palma is Sant Sebastià (January, 20). The city celebrates this festivity with traditional cultural events. Giants, bonfires, and local dancings (ball de bot) are enjoyed by everybody.
Today, The Grandma is flying to Mallorca. She's going to spend the weekend in the island with her friends and visit some important places for her.
Palma is a great city with a diverse society. One of the ancient communities is the xuetes, the old Jewishcitizens who had to convert their beliefs to survive in the middle of a terrible Catholic Inquisition. The history of the Jewishcommunity is a story of resilienceand 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.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The uprising started on 19 April when the ghettorefused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who then ordered the burning of the ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May.
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 thelargestsingle 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 crowdedghettos 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.
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 7,000Jews a day for the resettlement to the East. Czerniaków committed suicide once he became aware of the true goal of the resettlement plan.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Approximately between 254,000 and 300,000ghetto residents met their deaths 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 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.
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.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
While Jewish families hid their so-called bunkers, fighters of the ŻZW, joined by elements of the ŻOB, resisted, engaging the Germans in direct clashes.
Though the ŻZW and ŻOB suffered heavy losses, including some of their leaders, the Germans also took casualties, and thedeportationwas 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.
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.
