The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, 1943
Sixty years ago one of the most heroic struggles against
fascism took place. Fifty thousand Warsaw Jews resisted their final liquidation
by the Nazi army. Armed with petrol bombs, grenades and a few pistols, the
uprising lasted several weeks. How and why the uprising happened, and the effect
it later had on the thinking of many Israeli Jews, make it an important
anniversary event for study by socialists today. JON DALE writes.
AT THE OUTBREAK of World War Two there were three million
Jews in Poland. Three to four hundred thousand lived in Warsaw – one third of
the city’s population. Although Jews had lived in Poland since 1200, there was a
long history of anti-Semitism and discrimination, which increased during the
1930s. Most lived in poverty, working in small family workshops.
The Nazis invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, a week after
the Stalin-Hitler pact was signed. Sixteen days later Stalin ordered the Soviet
army to invade. By 1 October Warsaw had fallen to the German army. Within days
separate bread queues were established for Jews and Poles. The Nazis built on
pre-existing divisions and prejudice to keep the population divided. Himmler
later wrote to Hitler "… we have the greatest interest in not uniting the
population of the East but, on the contrary, in dividing it into as many parts
and splinters as possible". (25 May 1940)
Most leading public figures left Poland as war broke out. A
state of panic and chaos developed among the population left behind. There were
immediate cruel and random acts of terror as Jewish people were beaten, rounded
up for forced labour, and instructed to hand over all valuables. From November,
all Jews over ten years old had to wear the Star of David on armbands.
The punishment for breaking regulations was often death.
Obeying all of them, however, was no guarantee of escaping execution. An
unwritten law of collective responsibility was applied. In early November, 53
men in an apartment block were shot after one tenant hit a Polish policeman. A
paralysing fear overcame the community, increasing as Jews from surrounding
areas were forced in. Thirty per cent of the city’s population was crammed into
5% of its area. Food and water were restricted, so malnutrition and disease
spread. In January 1940, Jewish people were forbidden to live outside the ‘area
threatened by typhus’.
Gradually, political organisations renewed their activity,
mostly providing mutual aid. Soup kitchens were established for party members
and their families, who also used them as meeting places, educational and
cultural centres. The first act of resistance occurred at Easter 1940. Gangs of
Polish thugs were paid by the Nazis to mount a pogrom, violently attacking those
they could get their hands on. After three days, Jewish Labour Bund militia
carried out counter-attacks and four major street battles took place. Although
all the other groups and political parties opposed this action, fearing greater
reprisals, for a moment the Nazis’ plans were held up.
The Warsaw ghetto was established in November 1940. An
eleven-mile wall, ten- to twenty-feet high and topped with broken glass and
barbed wire, was built in days. One-hundred-and-thirteen thousand non-Jewish
residents were moved out and 138,000 Jews forced in. No Jewish people were
allowed to leave the area, apart from a few employed in war-related industries.
Communication with the outside world could only be through illegal and dangerous
means.
Thousands more, homeless and penniless, were moved in from
smaller cities and towns. Whole families occupied the sleeping space for one as
the ghetto became a concentration camp. Mass starvation occurred, the monthly
death totals between January and August 1941 rising from 450 to 5,600, many
dying on the streets.
Jewish organisation
DESPITE THE DAILY horror, aspects of community life
continued. Schools were set up, religious and cultural events organised, and
political debate took place. The Bund marked its 44th anniversary in October
1941, with 2,000 taking part in simultaneous small meetings in private
apartments. Their Central Trade Union Council registered 30,000 former union
members. The Socialist School Students’ Organisation was re-established and soon
had a few hundred members. A socialist children’s organisation also existed.
Underground newspapers were published – 47 titles are
recorded, although the names of contributors were changed often for security.
About two thirds were youth publications. Up to 500 copies were printed on
primitive machinery with great physical effort. They were passed from hand to
hand and it was estimated that 20 people read each copy. They were also smuggled
out to other ghettos and to the Polish underground, at great risk to the
couriers.
In early 1941 the earliest stories of the mass killings of
Jews filtered into the ghetto, with reports that 80,000 had been gassed in
trucks at Chelmno. Mass shootings at Vilna were reported in October 1941. Most
refused to believe these stories, however, or thought they were the actions of
victory-drunk troops, rather than the organised extermination of the entire
Jewish population.
In January 1942 the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) was
established in the Polish sector of Warsaw – a revival of the Communist Party
that had been disbanded under Stalin’s orders in 1938. It failed to make much
headway among Polish workers, however, as they could not forget the momentous
betrayal of the Stalin-Hitler Pact.
The PPR turned to the ghetto, hoping for a better response.
In March 1942 it formed the Anti-Fascist Bloc with two left-wing Zionist
organisations. Other movements joined, although not the Bund. Small combat
squads were organised with about 500, mostly young, people involved. A few
Molotov cocktails and simple grenades were manufactured and a single revolver
was smuggled in.
The PPR wanted these squads to join partisan fighters in the
forests, as part of the Soviet war effort. The Jewish organisations wanted to
defend the ghetto, overestimating the PPR’s support from the Soviet army and
among the Polish population. These disagreements grew and had not been resolved
when, on 30 May, three PPR leaders were arrested. Fearing that the details of
activists would be extracted by torture (although the arrested went to their
deaths without revealing their contacts) the Bloc disintegrated in June. The PPR
never recovered from this setback.
Random killings by Nazi troops increased. On 18 April, 60
prominent Jews were seized from their apartments and shot in the street. The
Nazis claimed this was retaliation for the publication of underground newspapers
- a warning that any evidence of opposition would result in a bloodbath. They
were removing those they thought could become a focus of resistance.
A Jewish Council had been appointed by the Nazis to act as
their administrative agency. Although its leader demanded the illegal
publications stop, he was ignored and papers continued to appear. But most
ghetto residents, struggling against hunger, disease and overcrowding, felt they
were being punished for the activities of a few.
Systematic mass extermination
A NEW PHASE of the ghetto’s short existence opened on 22
July 1942. Forty miles away at Treblinka a death camp had been built, with gas
chambers and a rail connection. The Jewish Council was ordered to supply 6,000
people a day for ‘resettlement’, who were then crammed into cattle trucks and
‘deported’. The Jewish police carried out the greater part of the round-ups.
Those in war-essential industries and their immediate families were exempted.
Few believed that deportation meant death. A Nazi poster
offered three kilos of bread and a kilo of jam to those reporting between 29-31
July. This fuelled rumours that they were going to labour camps: ‘Why feed those
about to die?’ Letters appeared, supposedly written by those ‘evacuated’,
describing better conditions. Any shred of hope that survival was possible was
clutched at.
To find out the truth, a Bund member, helped by a socialist
rail worker, secretly followed the trains’ route. He discovered the destination
was Treblinka, meeting two fugitives who had escaped and described the grisly
details. The information was published in the Bund newspaper but still most
refused to believe it.
Two hundred and twenty-five people were shot in the three
months before the round-up compared to 6,687 in the following three months,
indicating that many individual acts of resistance occurred. But organised
resistance was almost paralysed.
On the second day of the round-up a delegate meeting of all
underground political organisations was held. The Bund and some left-wing
Zionist youth proposed resistance, even though there were no arms. But the
majority felt that such action would be considered a provocation and that if the
required number of Jews were delivered the remainder would be safe. Some argued
that resistance was hopeless and that faith in God and miracles would save some
at least. At the end of the first week, socialist Zionist and Bund youth
organisations formed an Actions Committee, but were unable to mount any action.
In the extremely dangerous situation it only lasted a few days. Daring attempts,
sometimes successful, were made to rescue individuals who had been rounded up.
In the turmoil and panic, many members of political organisations were swept
into the cattle trucks, further weakening the resistance.
The right-wing Polish government-in-exile made no comment
and issued no call for assistance from the Polish underground. There was no
encouragement to Jews or offers to help hide them if they escaped. Five pistols
and six hand grenades had been smuggled in from the Communist underground during
the first week of August. An assassination attempt on the commander of the hated
Jewish police was made, wounding him. The arms were discovered on 3 September
1942, when several of the leading youth activists were captured or killed.
From despair to resistance
ROUND-UPS CONTINUED until September, by which time only
60,000 remained in the ghetto. During the pause that followed the mood of
survivors changed rapidly. Many of those left were younger workers in the large
factories. Fear that resistance would provoke Nazi retaliation against helpless
elderly people and children no longer held sway, as so few remained. Often only
one person was left from a family. Hope of survival had been replaced with the
expectation of death: would it be met meekly in Treblinka or fighting in the
ghetto? Despair turned to determination.
At one meeting towards the end of the round-up, a survivor
wrote: "There was great uproar, shouting down the comrade who wanted to postpone
the last possible act. If we don’t go out into the streets immediately, by
tomorrow we won’t have the strength to do so… the discussion was heated, the
atmosphere torrid. But gradually more tempered voices began to be heard.
Concrete suggestions were raised. It was a fateful night for the remnants of the
Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB). We took a vote and resolved to pluck up our
courage and rebuild the armed Jewish force. Our remaining strength would be
dedicated to that end. No effort would be spared. The fate of January and April
1943 was sealed on that night".
The ZOB emerged in the early days of the round-ups, from
members of left-wing Zionist youth movements. Until October it remained largely
isolated and powerless. With the new mood it took on a new character. Other
organisations joined, including the Bund and PPR. Right-wing Zionist youth
organisations formed their own Jewish Fighting Union (ZZW).
There was a long history of rivalry between the Bund, which
stood for a socialist Poland with emancipation of the Jews as a national
minority, and the left-wing Zionist movements, which stood for a socialist
Jewish state in Palestine. Now the remaining members of these organisations
recognised a united front was needed.
Groups of five or seven from the same organisation formed
combat units. A joint commander was appointed, Mordechai Anielewicz, a
23-year-old who had been organising youth movements full-time since before the
war.
Eventually the ZOB had 450-500 members, women and men,
carefully vetted to avoid potential informers. Most were under 25, the youngest
being thirteen. A desperate drive began to acquire arms. In December 1942, it
received its first shipment from the Polish Home Army (linked to the Polish
government-in-exile) – ten pistols, four of which did not work. More were
smuggled in, but the total remained pitifully small.
Assassinations of the Jewish police commander and others who
had caused suffering to their fellow Jews built the ZOB’s popularity and started
to instil the idea that resistance was possible. Plans were made for further
action against the Jewish police.
However, on 18 January 1943, the ghetto was surrounded again
and the second wave of mass liquidation began. Although caught by surprise,
Jewish people fought back this time. ZOB members joined those being marched to
the trains. At a signal they attacked the SS, killing several and allowing the
Jews to flee. Four major street battles occurred, but most street fighters were
killed so they turned to guerrilla attacks from apartment houses. Meanwhile,
most residents refused to report for the round-up, hiding in cellars and attics.
After four days the round-up stopped. A psychological
turning point had taken place. The Nazis had met no popular resistance until
then. One resident wrote on 20 January that, "thanks to the resistance, during
today’s ‘Aktion’ there wasn’t a single instance of the murderers seeking people
out in cellars; they were simply afraid to go down [into them]".
The resistance fighters, with a handful of pistols, grenades
and captured weapons, had broken the fatalistic mood that nothing could be done.
Fighting in dark, narrow apartment passages, escaping over rooftops and through
alleyways, they grew in confidence.
The Polish underground also looked on the Jews in a new
light. There was widespread interest and admiration for the stand taken. The
Communist paper wrote, "The Jews have awoken from apathy in a demonstration of
resistance worthy of emulation". It argued for armed struggle in Poland to
assist the Soviet Union.
Influenced by this new mood, the Home Army smuggled in 50
pistols (although only 36 worked), 55 grenades and nine pounds of explosive. But
few further arms were sent, despite frantic appeals from ZOB. Preparations were
now made for the inevitable battle to come. The resistance effectively
controlled the ghetto. German troops dared not enter alone and withdrew before
nightfall, so the curfew had been broken. This period of dual power lasted 87
days.
Informers were shot. The Jewish Council was forced to follow
ZOB orders and hand over money. Taxes were raised on wealthy individuals, who
either paid voluntarily or were forced to pay up. The money was used to buy more
arms and ammunition from outside the ghetto. Two thousand litres of petrol were
smuggled in and a ‘factory’ set up producing Molotov cocktails. Training and
weapons drill were daily routine. Eventually, each fighter had a pistol, ten to
fifteen rounds of ammunition, four or five hand grenades and four or five
Molotov cocktails. There were ten rifles and one machine gun in the entire
ghetto.
Those not in the fighting organisations prepared bunkers to
hide in. These were more sophisticated than the cellars used in January, with
camouflaged entrances, food and water supplies, electricity in some cases, and
underground passages linking them together. Some could hold several hundred
people.
The SS ordered the German factory owners to move machinery
and workers to labour camps under their control. But the machinery was set on
fire and workers ignored appeals to report for deportation.
The uprising
ZOB MADE NO preparations to escape. "Our fear", wrote a
survivor, "was that we might arouse the notion that a man could save his life
even if he did not fight... We saw ourselves as a Jewish underground whose fate
was a tragic one, as an underground that was not part of the overall war of
undergrounds the world over and would have to stand, cut off and alone; as a
pioneer force not only from the Jewish standpoint but also from the standpoint
of the entire embattled world – the first to fight. For our hour had come
without any hope of rescue".
In the early hours of 19 April, troops massed outside the
ghetto walls. While residents rushed to the bunkers, the fighters took their
positions and waited. At 6am hundreds of SS troops poured in, along with tanks,
armoured cars and artillery. A column marching up the road singing loudly was
suddenly attacked with bombs and hand grenades, retreating in disorder. A second
column was ambushed with grenades. Two tanks were set on fire. At the end of the
first day, all Nazi forces withdrew, having lost 200 killed or wounded.
A short message was broadcast over the partisan secret
radio. "Hello, hello! The survivors in the Warsaw ghetto have begun an armed
resistance against the murderers of the Jewish people. The ghetto is aflame!"
The battle continued over the next few days. A mine was
detonated under a column of troops killing up to 100. A four-pound explosive
charge was thrown into a truck, with 60 casualties. A banner saying, ‘We shall
never surrender’, was unfurled across a roof. On the fifth day, an appeal was
published: "Poles, citizens, soldiers of freedom… we, the slaves of the ghetto,
convey heartfelt greetings to you… Every doorstep in the ghetto has become a
stronghold and shall remain a fortress until the end… It is a fight for our
freedom, as well as yours; for our human dignity and national honour, as well as
yours… Long live the fraternity of blood and weapons in a fighting Poland… We
must continue our mutual struggle against the occupant until the very end!"
Within a few days, the ammunition and grenades were almost
used up. Food and water ran short. Fighters retreated to the bunkers, coming out
only at night. The Nazis set fire to building after building, reducing the
ghetto to rubble, burying those in their bunkers. Others were forced out into
the open, only to be shot or rounded up and deported. Although the full-scale
battle of the ghetto lasted only three days, the ‘battle of the bunkers’ lasted
weeks as those hiding supported the fighters. Sporadic incidents continued until
July.
On May Day the fighters "were briefly addressed by a few
people and the ‘Internationale’ was sung. The entire world, we knew, was
celebrating May Day on that day and everywhere forceful, meaningful words were
being spoken. But never yet had the ‘Internationale’ been sung in conditions so
different, so tragic, in a place where an entire nation had been and was still
perishing. The words and the song echoed from the charred ruins and were, at
that particular time, an indication that socialist youth was still fighting in
the ghetto, and that even in the face of death they were not abandoning their
ideals".
Anielewicz and other ZOB leaders were surrounded in a bunker
on 8 May. The fighting lasted two hours before a gas bomb was thrown in. Most
still surviving chose to commit suicide rather than be taken alive. Some entered
the sewers, where more died. Two days later, 80 managed to climb out on the
Polish side and escape to join the partisans in the forests, where all but a
dozen were eventually killed. A few lived in the sewers for months.
Left to fight alone
THE DAMAGE TO Nazi prestige was enormous, however, and the
inspiring news quickly spread, despite the lack of modern communications. An
eight-day battle took place when the Bialystok ghetto was liquidated in August.
Organised resistance occurred in dozens of other ghettos across Eastern Europe.
Uprisings and mass breakouts shook Treblinka and Sobibor death camps.
But why did the ghetto resistance not spread to the rest of
Warsaw? Some individuals risked their lives to hide Jews who escaped. The amount
of arms at the Polish underground organisations’ disposal was undoubtedly more
limited than ZOB realised. Nevertheless, the underground did not call for mass
resistance. The strongly anti-Semitic and anti-socialist government-in-exile had
little sympathy with the ghetto fighters. It feared the now advancing Soviet
army would defeat it if a Polish uprising occurred. Its US and British allies
still showed no signs of landing in Europe.
Despite this, as the uprising fought on, admiration amongst
many ordinary Poles grew. It helped inspire the magnificent workers’ uprising
throughout Warsaw in August 1944, which took place as the Soviet army was within
ten kilometres of the city. But, instead of moving in as expected, the Soviet
forces retreated under Stalin’s orders. He was fearful that any independent
workers’ action might encourage Russian workers to move against the bureaucratic
elite he represented. As a result, the Nazis regrouped, massacred 200,000 people
and razed the city to the ground.
Only 200 Warsaw Jews survived until the end of the war. But
the heroism of the ghetto uprising remains an inspiration to socialists. It
showed that, no matter how desperate the circumstances, struggle is possible.
The socialist youth organisations took the lead in convincing Jews that
resistance was possible. Their determination reinforced the change from the
earlier moods of panic and fatalism.
But it also appeared to show that Jews could only rely on
themselves. They had not received significant help from the Polish working
class, and none from Western Allied or Soviet forces. After the war this mood
was used to justify the formation of Israel and its armed struggle. "For
centuries, the Jews had been persecuted, driven from country to country in
search of a home, herded into ghettos and denied the rights of citizens. They
had been forced to fight for their very existence… But they won the victory.
With the dead fell the ghetto walls, and in their place today stands the state
of Israel". (M Barkai, The Ghetto Fighters, 1962)
Annual commemorations of the uprising were held there,
including a two-minutes’ silence, marches and lessons in schools and army camps.
Yet the irony is that a capitalist Israel has been unable to meet the needs of
Jewish or Palestinian workers, trapping them instead in a continual state of war
and insecurity. That irony is compounded by the fact that most ZOB fighters,
whether from Zionist or anti-Zionist organisations, were socialists.
Box:
Guide to the ghetto underground
Jewish Labour Bund: A mass workers’ party with links to the
Polish Socialist Party. Affiliated to the reformist Socialist International,
although it regarded itself as Marxist. Strongly opposed Zionism, calling for a
socialist Poland with full minority rights for Jews: "Whenever the reactionaries
launch an attack on the freedom of the workers’ movement accompanied by
expressions of anti-Semitism, Jewish nationalism stirs beneath the surface… and
tries to dampen the fighting spirit of the masses of the Jews who have
integrated into the general struggle against reactionism and for liberty".
Communist Party: Renamed Polska Partia Robotnica (PPR,
Polish Workers’ Party) in 1942. Stalinist. Was smaller than the Bund pre-war but
controlled several trade unions.
Left Po’alei Zion (Labour Zionists): Smaller than the Bund
and Communist Party pre-war, but became more influential in the ghetto due to
the activity of its youth. Politically close to Stalinism: "In the struggle for
a new world of labour and social justice, we are not isolated. The working
masses of the whole world, with the heroic Red Army in the vanguard, are with
us".
Dror: Youth movement linked to Left Po’alei Zion: "…the
building of Israel is undeniably connected with the collapse of capitalism; a
socialist Israel will rise or fall with the success or failure of [world]
socialism". Had over 1,000 members.
Hashomer Hatzair: Pro-Soviet Union, socialist Zionist youth
movement, with 800 members in Warsaw. Mordechai Anielewicz was a full-time
organiser.
Gordonia and Akiva: Other youth movements, believing Israel
needed to be created before socialism could be achieved.
Right Po’alei Zion: Smallest of the Labour Zionist parties.
Put Jewish identity before class identity, but believed this would change in a
Jewish state.
General Zionists: Conservative party, many of whose leading
members were appointed by the Nazis to the Judenrat (Jewish Council).
Members from all the above eventually took part in ZOB
(Jewish Battle Organisation)
Revisionists: Right-wing Zionist party. Believed Jews were
entitled to the Biblical land of Israel.
Betar: Right-wing Zionist youth movement. Menachem Begin,
later a prime minister of Israel, was a member but left Poland in 1938.
Revisionists and Betar formed the ZZW (Jewish Military
Union)
Aguda: Right-wing, orthodox religious party. Did not
participate in armed resistance.
Box:
Bibliography
M Barkai, The Ghetto Fighters, New York 1962
J Bauman, Winter in the Morning, Virago Press 1991
L Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews 1933-45, Penguin 1975
M Edelman, The Ghetto Fights, 1945 (English translation,
Bookmarks 1990)
Y Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939-43, Harvester Press 1982
J Klajman, Out of the Ghetto, Valentine Mitchell 2000
I Schwarzbart, Carry High the Flag of the Bunker! World
Jewish Council 1960
W Szpilman, The Pianist 1946, (English translation, Phoenix
2002) |