The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest and deadliest ghetto in all of Poland. It was established in Warsaw, Poland, it was actually the city itself. The date of its appearance was November 15, 1939.  Five hundred thousand Jews were living inside its walls by1940.  The ghetto was divided into three

sections: German, Polish, and Jewish.  In October 3, 1940 the governor of Warsaw, Dr. Ludwig Fischer, announced that all Jews living outside the Jewish section would have to move there immediately. All Jews were ordered to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes to identify them so they don’t get mistaken for the

  Aryan race.  The ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire and wooden fences making it almost impossible to get out but people still managed to escape to bring food back for their families that was still there.

 

Living Conditions

          The Jews in Warsaw were forced to live on very small amounts of food and water.  In Warsaw there was at least 145 public kitchens, 45 of which were for children only. Their living conditions weren’t any better with many men, woman, and

 children cramped in one apartment room.  Lice and fleas were all over the place.  Many people starved to death, while others died of suicide or disease.  In three months alone

in1940, 44,630 Jews died of hunger or sickness.  This is a poem by someone from the ghetto:  

When we had nothing to eat,

They gave us a turnip, they gave us a beet

Here have some grub, have some fleas,

Have some typhus, die of disease.

 

Some marriages and births took place even though both were considered illegal.  When the babies were born, they were sometimes killed soon afterward by smothering it with a pillow for fear the baby would cry and the Nazis would discover them.  Some people thought it cruel and mean for someone to bring a baby into the harsh climate of the ghetto.  The birth rate of the Warsaw residents dropped by a ratio of 1:45 in 1942 as when the normal ratio was 1:1.

 

Business and Schooling

Keeping your business was a hard thing to do from inside the ghetto.  Most of the Jewish shopkeeper’s stores were taken by the Polish people on the permission of the Nazis.  Some Jewish

tailors and shoemakers were ordered by the Nazis to make uniforms and shoes for the soldiers.  These people would make the apparel so they couldn’t be worn. 

 

          Schools and education ceased.  Though parents would not give up the chance for children to get an education, so they taught them themselves, regardless of the consequences for this action, because schooling was forbidden.  

                     Underground Paper

          People wrote newspapers, diaries, records of German depredations, anything to keep a record of history in this certain point in history, even though the consequence was death.  One such person was Emmanuel Ringelblum.  He preserved history with a project called Oneg Shabbat, or Pleasure of Sabbath.  Two thirds of Ringeblum’s work survived the War.  Ringelblum was killed by Nazis soldiers in 1944. This is a piece that he wrote in one page of his project:  

 

         

      --Men tore out their hair at the thought that they had stood by while their loved ones, were taken away; children cried out bitterly because they had not resisted when their parents were deported.  People swore: “Never again will a German move us from our place without our exacting the price from him.  We may die, but the cruel invaders will pay blood for blood.  Our fate has been sealed”----they said----“every Jew carries in his pocket a death sentence, issued by the greatest butcher of all times.  We must think not of rescue, but of death with honor, with weapons in our hands.”

 

          Papers were published in the sewers; they would do anything to spread news around of what was happening in the ghetto.  There were more than fifty underground papers by 1941.  

 

The Great Aktion

          On July 28, 1942 was the start of the Great Aktion.  German, Lithuanian, and Slovakian troops surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto.   Jurgen Stroop was the German military leader and was ordered to seize all of the 60,000 Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto and bring them to a central gathering point.  The Jews were told that they were being resettled in the east but were really being put on a freight train and being sent off to Treblinka, a concentration camp about 50 miles away from the ghetto.  

  Adam Czerniakow

          Adam Czerniakow was the Nazi appointed leader of Warsaw Fudenrat.  He believed that if he cooperated with the Germans they would spare the lives of the Jews in Warsaw but he was very wrong.  On the eve of the first major deportation he committed suicide.  He wrote in this in his diary before taking a cyanide pill: “The SS wanted me to kill children with my own hands”       

  Z.O.B

          The Z.O.B was a group of political parties that were trying to defend the Jews.  The different political parties that made up Z.O.B. were Dror, Hashomer, Hatzair, and Akiva.  The leaders of

this group were Mordechai Anielwiez from Hashomer Hatzair and Yitzhak Zuckerman from Dror.  Z.O.B. vowed to fight the Germans to their death.   They had to either choose Uprising or Treblinka.  

 

Preparing for Fight

          On July 24, 1942 the leaders of Z.O.B met up and made a plan.  A plan to revolt against the Germans.  Z.O.B. gathered up as many people as they could, one thousand to be exact, and taught them to use weapons.  Most of the people they got were in their teens around the age of eighteen. 

 

          The Z.O.B. went out and killed many Jewish policemen in Warsaw, but their first target was to be Josef Szerynski, a commander of the force. They ended up wounding Josef instead of killing him.  Yitzhak Zuckerman didn’t believed that, “Jews should kill Jews.” These killings were somewhat of a warning for the Germans.

 

          Z.O.B. sent a messenger to the Polish side to collect as many weapons from the polish as he could.  The Jews in Z.O.B also manufactured and stole weapons.  They also made pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails.  They still trained people with weapons and studied a layout of the Warsaw ghetto.  The German army could easily destroy them.  They just couldn’t compare to the big army and tanks.

 

The Uprising Begins

          On January 18,1943, O Befuhrer Von Sammern-Frankenegg got ordered from Heinrich Himmler to destroy the Warsaw ghetto without warning.  Germans surrounded the ghetto with orders to gather up all Jews within a few days, but the Jews were ready for them. 

The Jews had set up Jewish snipers on the roofs and attics of buildings.  When the soldiers and tanks came in the walls of the ghetto they were met by a parade of bullets.  The Germans were stunned.  Never had any Germans fallen in battle to Jews. Even with this effort, 4,000 Jews were taken away to Treblinka on the very first day.  After  the rest of the

 Jews hid, there was yet another one thousand Jews dragged out of buildings.  After this happened the Germans retreated. 

 

The Wait

          After the Germans retreated, there was yet another preparing for a fight.  The Jews got together and made underground hiding places called bunkers, with food, supplies, and connections with physicians and water.  The bunkers were disguised sometimes so will that the entrances were almost invisible.  Other Jews hid in sewage canals.  All the hiding places had an outlet to the sewerage canals.  The Z.O.B. was the only group of Jews that lived in temporary shelters.  This was so they could move suddenly at short notice. 

 

The Return

          On April 18, 1943, 2,000 German soldiers returned to Warsaw and surrounded it.  When the Germans and their tanks entered the ghetto, the Jews were no where in sight.  The first day the Germans were hurt badly by the Jews on the roofs and in the attics.  They returned to the ghetto day after day fighting the Jews.  Jurgen Stroop put his men by ladders that led to where 

the Jews were shooting from attics and roofs.  He also put listening devices near rooms in basements and brought in dogs to sniff out underground hiding places. The Germans set fire to the ghetto, house by house.  The Jews stumbled out of the burning buildings and were shot by the Nazis.  The Germans

thought that they were going to wipe out the resistance within a few days, but it ended taking at least a month and a half.  Here is a letter that Jurgen Stroop sent out to is superiors about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising:  

 

“If last night what was the ghetto was alight and burning tonight it is one mighty furnace.” He wrote. “Repeatedly we saw that the Jews and bandits preferred to go back into the fire than to fall into our hands”

 

The Germans diminished as the Jewish fighters fell into battle. May 16, 1943, the Germans located the center of Z.O.B. The Germans closed all the entrances and injected poisonous gas into it. The Germans also threw hand grenades into the room.  Z.O.B. refused to be taken alive.  The Germans soon heard gunshots from inside the room.  Approximately one hundred Jews committed suicide.  German forces destroyed the main synagogue in Warsaw.  The Warsaw Uprising ended. There was no building left intact.  Most of the Z.O.B. fighters died but, some survived and escaped to the sewers.  When they came out on the other side of the sewers the sprayed with bullets; few fighters survived after that.  There were still survivors emerging the ruins of Warsaw months afterwards.  Out of all the fighters only 75 of them survived.  

The End of Warsaw

     The Warsaw ghetto lasted four years (1939-1943.)  Nearly half a million Jews died, approximately 56,065, Jurgen Stroop wrote   

  in one of his letters.  Twenty Germans were killed in the raid at Warsaw and 50 were  wounded.  News of this uprising spread throughout Europe and gave hope to other Jews across the nation.

 

 

 

Ashley Shepard

7th Rossville Jr. High

Spring 2000

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