The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The Warsaw ghetto was the largest in Europe: some 450,000 people locked into a little over three square kilometres. In the summer of 5702 nearly 300,000 were deported to Treblinka. The remaining sixty thousand understood that 'work' would save no one.

On 19 April 5703 — the eve of Passover, 14 Nisan — the Germans entered to liquidate the ghetto and were met with fire. The ŻOB was led by twenty-four-year-old Mordechai Anielewicz, the ŻZW by Pawel Frenkel. The fighters had a few dozen pistols, homemade grenades and petrol bombs against tanks and artillery. They held out for twenty-eight days, until the Germans began burning the ghetto house by house.

On 8 May the bunker at Mila 18 fell and Anielewicz died with his staff. On 16 May General Stroop blew up the Great Synagogue on Tlomackie Street and reported that 'the Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists'.

The uprising had no military chance and its fighters knew it. Anielewicz wrote in his last letter: 'The dream of my life has come true. I have lived to see Jewish defence in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.' In those same days Rabbi Menachem Ziemba, who had ruled the revolt permitted, was killed by gunfire in the street.