Day: April 20, 2018

Seventy-five years since the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

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Yesterday marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Below you can download a number of histories and firsthand accounts of the revolt, and below that read an article Marcus Barnett wrote on the subject last year for Jacobin. Roughly 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto were killed by gas or bullet over a six-week span in 1943, after 92,000 or so perished from starvation or disease the three years before.

About the authors below: Edelman and Goldstein were Bundists, while Rotem and Zuckerman were left-wing Zionists. Gutman was later an inmate of Auschwitz, where he narrowly survived. Berg was only a child when she lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, and refused to share further details of her experience or speak out after a translation of her diary (by Henri Lefebvre co-author and Frankfurt School fellow traveler Norbert Guterman) was serialized in American newspapers in 1944.

Daily life in the ghetto

THE WARSAW GHETTO, OCTOBER 1940-MAY 1943 (HU 60714) Street rickshaws and a tramcar carrying passengers along Leszno Street in the ghetto, summer 1941. This particular tramline was run between the Muranowski Square and the Grzybowska Street. The plaque on the tram indicates it runs towards Grzybowska Street. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205234846
THE WARSAW GHETTO, OCTOBER 1940-MAY 1943 (HU 60621) A starving man (father ?) and two emaciated children begging on the street in the ghetto. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205394135

 

Scenes from the uprising

Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
Jewish civilians. Copy of German photograph taken during the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland, 1943. (WWII War Crimes Records) Exact Date Shot Unknown NARA FILE #: 238-NT-282 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 1280
Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
1943: Fire breaks out during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a Polish insurrection against the German forces who had occupied Poland at the start of World War II. By 1944 Warsaw was the centre of Polish resistance, but the army was forced to surrender on October 2nd 1944 under pressure from German air raids. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Stroop Report 2/4 Record Group 038 United States Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality; United States Exhibits, 1933-46 HMS Asset Id: HF1-88454435 ReDiscovery Number: 06315
Women prisoners. Copy of German photograph taken during the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland, 1943. (WWII War Crimes Records) Exact Date Shot Unknown NARA FILE #: 238-NT-281 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 1277

Remembering the Warsaw ghetto uprising

Marcus Bennett
Jacobin Magazine
April 19th, 2017

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On the eve of Passover 1943 — the nineteenth of April — a group of several hundred poorly armed young Jews began the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the first insurrections against Nazism.

For a small group of fighters, realizing — in the lyrical words of one militant — that “dying with arms is more beautiful than without,” an isolated group of Jewish militants resisted for twenty-nine days against a much larger foe, motivated by a desire to kill as many fascists as they could before they themselves were killed. The uprising, etched into the collective memory of postwar Jewry, remains emotive and emboldening.

That their heroism was a crucial part of the war is disputed by nobody today. But less known is the extent to which the uprising, far from being a spontaneous one of the masses, was the product of planning and preparation from a relatively small — incredibly young — group of Jewish radicals. Continue reading →