WARSAW GHETTO

The 'Warsaw Ghetto' was the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany in the General Government during the Holocaust in World War II.
Between 1940 and 1943, starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps dropped the population of the ghetto from an estimated 450,000 to approximately 70,000. In 1943 the Warsaw Ghetto was the scene of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the first mass uprisings against Nazi occupation in Europe.

Contents

History

Ghetto under the German occupation

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the destruction of the Ghetto

Map

People

Casualties

Survivors

Associated people

See also

References

External links

History

Ghetto under the German occupation

The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. At this time, the population of the Ghetto was estimated to be 440,000 people, about 37% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 4.5% of the size of Warsaw. Nazis then closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16th that year, building a wall.
During the next year and a half, Jews and Roma people [1] from smaller cities and the countryside were brought into the Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhoid) and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 253 kcal, compared to 2,325 kcal for gentile Poles and 5,613 kcal for German people. The life in the ghetto was chronicled by the ''Oyneg Shabbos'' group. In 1942 Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski reported to the Western governments on the situation in the Ghetto and on the extermination camps.
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. Between Tisha B'Av, July 23, 1942, and Yom Kippur, September 21, 1942, about 254,000 Ghetto residents were sent to Treblinka and murdered there. [2] By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to their deaths, and many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.^[1]

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the destruction of the Ghetto

Main articles: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

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 systematically burned the ghetto block by block, rounding up or killing any Jew they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 23 1943, and the German 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 56,000 people were killed on spot or deported to Nazi concentration and death camps, mostly to Treblinka.

Map

People

Casualties

★ Tosia Altman - Resistance fighter, killed in Warsaw in 1943

★ Mordechaj Anielewicz - Resistance leader, committed suicide in 1943

★ Adam Czerniaków - Engineer and senator, head of the Warsaw ''Judenrat'', committed suicide in 1942

★ Itzhak Katzenelson - Teacher, poet and dramatist, killed at Auschwitz in 1944

★ Janusz Korczak - Children's author, pediatrician, and child pedagogist, killed at Treblinka in 1942

★ Simon Pullman - Conductor of the Warsaw Ghetto symphony orchestra, killed at Treblinka in 1942

★ Emanuel Ringelblum - Historian, politician and social worker, and leader of the Ghetto chroniclers, killed in Warsaw in 1944

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

★ Ludwik Hirszfeld - Microbiologist and serologist

★ Zivia Lubetkin - Resistance leader

★ Marcel Reich-Ranicki - Literary critic

★ Simcha Rotem - Resistance fighter, Nazi hunter

★ Władysław Szpilman - Pianist, composer, and memoirist

Associated people

★ 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 - Socialist politician, committed suicide in London in the protest of the Allied indifference

See also

★ Ghettos in occupied Europe 1939-1944

★ Great Synagogue (Warsaw) - One of the largest synagogues in the world, destroyed in 1944

★ Jewish Ghetto Police - Collaborationist police force

★ ''Mila 18'' - Book by Leon Uris

★ Mi%C5%82a 18 - Command post of the Jewish Resistance during the uprising

★ ''The Pianist'' - The movie about the survival of Władysław Szpilman

★ Warsaw concentration camp - The concentration camp established in the former Ghetto

★ Warschauer Kniefall - Gesture by Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt

★ Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa - Resistance group

★ Żydowski Związek Wojskowy - Resistance group

References

★ Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Houghton Mifflin, 1998, trade paperback, ISBN 0-395-90130-8, hardcover, 1994, 277 pages, ISBN 0-395-60199-1

★ Martin Gray, For Those I Loved, Little Brown Company, 1984, 351 pages, hardcover, ISBN 0-316-32576-7

★ Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, 2002, ISBN 0-312-31135-4

External links

★ Warsaw Ghetto from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Network

★ Documents and information about the Warsaw Ghetto from the Jewish Virtual Library

★ Warsaw Life: A detailed account of the Warsaw Ghetto