On April 19th, 1943 while British and Americans delegates were meeting on the sunny, warm island of Bermuda, to discuss how they could help the Jews of Europe, and deciding nothing could be done. The Nazis were trying to destroy the Warsaw Ghetto, which had been established by Reichfuhrir Heinrich Himmler 2 years earlier. In November Jews were collected like cattle into a separate part of the city. Sealing off a 3.5 sq. mi. part of the city with medieval-like 10ft. walls where approximately 400,000 Jews were kept away from the rest of the world. It was a horrifying experience like being sent to prison. One survivor wrote," We are segregated and separated from the world and the fullness thereof driven out of the society of the human race.” Hans Franda, the Governor of occupied Poland said, "I ask nothing of Jews except that they should disappear". Living conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto were appalling and inhumane. Unable to leave the ghettos for food they were dependent of the Nazis for their daily rations. Which usually consisted of nothing more than a bowl of soup. In a matter of months due to the over crowding, lack of medical care and the unsanitary conditions the death toll rose. If someone were found dead the body would be removed in hopes that they could continue to receive the extra daily rations, in hopes of surviving themselves a few more days. Death by hunger, exhaustion, exposure, heart attack and infectious diseases was a daily occurrence. They were threatened with death if found outside the walls of the ghetto. They were completely cut off from the rest of the world. No radios, telephones, mail was censored, packages confiscated. The Germans set up workshops in the ghetto where the Jews were forced to work in the small factories, which were mainly created to support Germany's war efforts. This managed to give some of the Jews a chance to escape being sent to the death camps. When word came about a “resettlement” program many of the Jews panic and discussed whether to try to resist further deportations. Originally many thought it a bad idea. On April 19, Jewish feast of Passover at 3:00 A.M. each political group formed their own "battle group", to fight more deportations to the death camps. A young 24-year-old Morderia Anielewicz led one of which. The groups consisted of men, women and children armed with only a few used pistols, grenades, rifles, light machine guns and Molotov cocktails that had been stockpiled to fight back against the Germans for the first time. The Germans were shocked when 700-750 Jews fought back that day, and lost 12 of their men. They found it difficult to capture or kill the small groups of Jews who continued to fight, hiding in a maze of cellars, sewers and other hidden passageways. However, the Germans returned with more firepower. Destroying buildings one by one, even breaking into the hospital and shooting those in their beds, then set it on fire. By the Fifth day Himmler ordered the entire ghetto burned to the ground block by block. Fire quickly spread throughout the ghetto, the flames intense and deadly. Those trying to escape through the sewers were killed when the Germans filled them with poison gases, others jumped from the burning buildings. Killing many of the Jews including their young leader Mordecai Anielewicz. In a letter sent to a friend before his death he said, “My life’s dream has been realized, I have lived to see Jewish defense in the ghetto rally its greatness and glory. By May 16, 1943, 44 months after being dominated by the Nazis the Warsaw Ghetto ceased to exist. Jews had been in a living and dying situation for 30 days with no help from the world. Several thousand of them had been buried in the debris and more than 56,000 captured, thousands more sent off to the death camps or shot. Their efforts to fight is an example of self- sacrifice after intimidation, coercion, hunger and how it can unite a population in the face of unbelievable terror.
Josh Johnson Rossville Jr. High - 7th Grade 2002 Holocaust Project	Bibliography