Warsaw Ghetto
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The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos located in the territory of General Government in occupied Poland during World War II.
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[edit] Creation
The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. At this time, the population in the Ghetto was estimated to be 400,000 people, about 30 percent[1] of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4%[2] of the size of Warsaw.
The ghetto was split into two areas, the "small ghetto", generally inhabited by richer Jews and the "large ghetto", where conditions were difficult. The two ghettos were linked by a single footbridge. The Nazis then closed the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16, 1940, building a wall with armed guards.
[edit] Conditions
During the next year and a half, thousands of the Polish Jews as well as some Romani people from smaller cities and the countryside were brought into the Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhus) and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 1184 kcal, compared to 1669 kcal for gentile Poles and 2,614 kcal for Germans.
Unemployment was a major problem in the ghetto. Illegal workshops were created to manufacture goods to be sold illegally on the outside and raw goods were smuggled in often by children. Hundreds of four to five year old Jewish children went across en masse to the "Aryan side", sometimes several times a day, smuggling food into the ghettos, returning with goods that often weighed more than they did. Smuggling was often the only source of subsistence for Ghetto inhabitants, who would otherwise have died of starvation. Despite the grave hardships, life in the Warsaw Ghetto was rich with educational and cultural activities, conducted by its underground organizations. Hospitals, public soup kitchens orphanages, refugee centers and recreation facilities were formed, as well as a school system. Some schools were illegal and operated under the guise of a soup kitchen. There were secret libraries, classes for the children and even a symphony orchestra. The life in the ghetto was chronicled by the Oyneg Shabbos group.
Over 100,000 of the Ghetto's residents died due to rampant disease or starvation, as well as random killings, even before the Nazis began massive deportations of the inhabitants from the Ghetto's Umschlagplatz to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Gross-aktion Warschau, part of the countrywide Operation Reinhard. Between Tisha B'Av (July 23) and Yom Kippur (September 21) of 1942, about 254,000 Ghetto residents (or at least 300,000 by different accounts)[3] were sent to Treblinka and murdered there.[4] In 1942 Polish resistance officer Jan Karski reported to the Western governments on the situation in the Ghetto and on the extermination camps. By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to their deaths, and many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.[3]
[edit] Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and destruction of the Ghetto
On January 18, 1943, the first instance of armed resistance occurred when the Germans started the final expulsion of the remaining Jews. The Jewish fighters had some success: the expulsion stopped after four days and the ŻOB and ŻZW resistance organizations took control of the Ghetto, building shelters and fighting posts and operating against Jewish collaborators. During the next three months, all inhabitants of the Ghetto prepared for what they realized would be a final struggle.
The final battle started on the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, when the large Nazi force entered the ghetto. After initial setbacks, the Germans under the field command of Jürgen Stroop systematically burned and blew up the ghetto buildings, block by block, rounding up or murdering anybody they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 23, 1943, and the Nazi operation officially ended in mid-May, symbolically culminated with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on May 16, 1943. According to the official report, at least 56,065 people were killed on the spot or deported to German Nazi concentration and death camps, most to Treblinka. One of those sent to the death camps, Sol Rosenberg, was subsequently liberated and immigrated to the United States, where he became a steel industrialist and philanthropist.[5]
[edit] Remnants of the Ghetto today
The ghetto was almost entirely levelled during the uprising, however, a number of buildings and streets survived, mostly in the "small ghetto" area, which had been closed earlier and wasn't involved in the fighting. The buildings on ul. Próżna are the original residential buildings that once housed Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. The buildings have largely remained empty since the war and the street is the focus for the annual Warsaw Jewish Festival. Nearby, the Nożyk Synagogue also survived the war, as it was used as a stables by the German Wehrmacht. The synagogue has today been restored and is once again used as a temple. The last remaining piece of the ghetto wall is located at ul. Złota 62.
[edit] People of the Warsaw Ghetto
[edit] Casualties
- Tosia Altman - Resistance fighter, escaped the Ghetto in 1943 uprising through the sewers. Died afterwards after she was caught by the Gestapo when the celluloid factory where she hid caught fire.
- Mordechaj Anielewicz - Resistance leader in Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, died in the Ghetto in 1943 uprising when he committed suicide at the Miła 18 command post
- Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum - Resistance leader and commander of Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, died in the Ghetto in 1943 uprising
- Adam Czerniaków - Engineer and senator, head of the Warsaw Judenrat (Jewish council), committed suicide in 1942
- Yitzhak Gitterman - Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, resistance fighter, died in the Ghetto in 1943 uprising
- Itzhak Katzenelson - Teacher, poet, dramatist and resistance fighter, died in Auschwitz in 1944
- Janusz Korczak - Children's author, pediatrician, and child pedagogist, died in Treblinka in 1942
- Simon Pullman - Conductor of the Warsaw Ghetto symphony orchestra, died in Treblinka in 1942
- Emanuel Ringelblum - Historian, politician and social worker, and leader of the Ghetto chroniclers, died in Warsaw in 1944
- Lidia Zamenhof - Esperantist, daughter of Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, died in Treblinka in 1942
- Menachem Ziemba - Distinguished rabbi, died in the Ghetto in 1943 uprising
[edit] Survivors
- Icchak Cukierman - Resistance leader
- Marek Edelman - Political and social activist, cardiologist, and the last living leader of the uprising
- Bronisław Geremek - Social historian and politician
- Martin Gray - Soviet secret police officer and writer
- Ludwik Hirszfeld - Microbiologist and serologist
- Zivia Lubetkin - Resistance leader
- Uri Orlev - Author of the semi-autobiographical novel The Island on Bird Street recounting his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki - Literary critic
- Simcha Rotem - Resistance fighter, Nazi hunter
- Władysław Szpilman - Pianist, composer and writer, subject of the film The Pianist by Roman Polanski (survivor of the Kraków Ghetto) based on his memoir
- Menachem Mendel Taub - Kaliver rabbi
- Mietek Grocher -
- Kalonymus Kalman Shapira - Rabbi, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto
[edit] Associated people
- Władysław Bartoszewski - Polish resistance activist of the Żegota organization in Warsaw
- Henryk Iwański - Polish resistance officer in the charge of support for the Ghetto
- Jan Karski - Polish resistance courier who reported on the Ghetto for the Allies
- Szmul Zygielbojm - Polish-Jewish socialist politician, committed suicide in London in protest of the Allied indifference
[edit] See also
- Ghettos in occupied Europe 1939-1944
- Odilo Globocnik - Nazi leader responsible for the liquidation of the Ghetto
- Grossaktion Warschau - The massive deportation to Treblinka
- Great Synagogue in Warsaw - One of the largest synagogues in the world, destroyed in 1943
- Group 13 - Jewish collaborationist secret police also known as Jewish Gestapo, led by Abraham Gancwajch
- Hermann Höfle - A deputy to Globocnik
- Jewish Ghetto Police - Jewish collaborationist police force in Warsaw Ghetto and elsewhere
- Mila 18 - A book by Leon Uris
- Jürgen Stroop - Nazi commander during the suppression of the uprising
- Umschlagplatz - Collection point for the deportations to extermination camps
- Warsaw concentration camp - The concentration camp established in the former Ghetto
- Warschauer Kniefall - Gesture by Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt
- Żagiew - A group of collaborators posing as a resistance group (see also Hotel Polski affair)
[edit] References
- ^ population and percent source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005069
- ^ see http://www.warsaw-life.com/poland/warsaw-ghetto
- ^ a b "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising", United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Last Updated: May 20, 2008.
- ^ Treblinka, Yad Vashem
- ^ "Businessman Sol Rosenthal dies", Monroe News Star, Monroe, Louisiana, January 31, 2009
- Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ISBN 0-395-60199-1
- Martin Gray, For Those I Loved, ISBN 0-316-32576-7
- Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, ISBN 0-312-31135-4
- Georg, Willy: In The Warsaw Ghetto, Summer 1941
- Gutman, Israel: Resistance
- Gutman, Israel: The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943: Ghetto Underground, Revolt
- Kaplan, Chaim: Scroll of Agony
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Warsaw Ghetto |
- www.druhasvetovavalka.cz - Pages show pictures and videos of the day taken at places connected with the World War II
- Warsaw Ghetto from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"
- Historical Sites of Jewish Warsaw
- Warsaw Ghetto Internet Database hosted by Polish Center for Holocaust Research
- Detailed, interactive map of the Warsaw Ghetto plotted on pre-war plan of the city
- Documents and information about the Warsaw Ghetto from the Jewish Virtual Library
Coordinates: 52°14′35″N 20°59′35″E / 52.242925°N 20.9930305556°E
