Warsaw ghetto uprising

The Warsaw ghetto originally contained 450,000 people in a75,000 area. the Germans had put them all there and they had decided to kill them all. By January of 1943 the population was down to 37,000 people. The rest had already been sent to slave, labor or death camps. The remainder decided to fight.

Go to fullsize image (the area was packed)

By January of 1943 the population was down to 37,000 people. The rest had already been sent to slave, labor or death camps. The remainder decided to fight. The Germans had already let them build air raid shelters they used these very shelters to hide from the Germans. On April 19, 1943 the Warsaw ghetto uprising began. When the German soldiers and police came to clear out the ghetto they were met with resistance. The ghetto fighters won over the Germans it was a short lived victory. The Germans returned a short while later with some heavy fire power. The ghetto fighters held them off for nearly a month with home made pistols and Molotov cocktails.

For nearly a three weeks the ghetto fighters where able to hold up but the Germans had slowly crushed the resistance. After the main fighting was over it took months of digging under fallen down buildings to put it down. Out of 56 thousand Jews 7 thousand were shot the remainder were sent to death camps.

(ghetto fighters about to be shot)

Brenden Augustine

7th Social Studies

Rossville Jr. High

Holocaust project

Spring 2009

Bibliography