EXCERPTS OF TEXTS

ON THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING

The construction of the ghetto

“The construction of the Warsaw ghetto took up the greater part of the year 1940. At first, the ‘Jewish quarter’ was placed under quarantine and surrounded by barbed wire and palisades. But in September, a wall nearly 2.50 m high began to rise around the Jewish quarter (it was not completed until the summer of 1941). When it took shape, it enclosed a rectangle nearly 2 km in length, isolating, in addition to the medieval ghetto, the long, straight streets of the industrial quarter to the north of the railway station. To the northwest, the Wall almost touched the Vistula; it was crossed by the great railway line leading to Poznania and to Berlin. At first, the ghetto comprised 1,500 buildings grouped into about a hundred blocks of houses. In October 1940, the 80,000 Christians living in the quarantined quarter had to leave it within the space of two weeks; their dwellings were occupied by the 140,000 Jews who had resided outside that quarter. The transfer to the ghetto was an event foreseen and dreaded. What was feared above all was being cut off from the place where one’s professional occupation was carried out. (Nearly half the Jews of Warsaw were artisans, a quarter were engaged in commerce, another quarter practised the liberal professions, about 5% were industrial workers.) How were they going to live? The only hope was that this ghetto would be an open ghetto — that is, that its inhabitants could leave and enter freely through its twenty-two gates. On 15 November 1940, the Warsaw ghetto was condemned. Guards were posted on both sides of the Wall, Jewish police inside; those who could prove the absolute necessity of their movements could have special passes issued to them (Ringelblum mentions the difficulties the doctors of the Jewish hospital, situated in the ‘Aryan’ quarter of Warsaw, had in obtaining passes). Meanwhile, the ‘phoney war’ that had followed the invasion of Poland had ended in disaster. Germany had set off to conquer the world. The Netherlands and France were rapidly invaded by the German army. The British had to count themselves fortunate to be able to evacuate Dunkirk. At the mercy of the Third Reich, Western Europe was governed by puppet governments, which readily acquiesced in the persecutions of the Jews demanded by the Germans. In Eastern Europe, the massacres of Jews began as soon as Poland was invaded. The turn of Western Europe had now come. The Vichy government promulgated a ‘statute of the Jews,’ antisemitic measures were put into effect in the Netherlands, German troops entered Romania, the turn of the Balkan countries was approaching. Wherever the Germans installed themselves, the Jewish badge, forced labour, the Jewish quarters and the ghettos, and finally deportation and death followed one another in an immutable sequence. When the Jews of Warsaw were shut up in the ghetto, the situation seemed hopeless. They knew — as RINGELBLUM ceaselessly repeats: ‘Only a miracle can save us: the rapid end of the war.’ A few optimists believed in that outcome. The others expected the worst.”

Excerpt from: Emmanuel RINGELBLUM: “CHRONIQUE DU GHETTO DE VARSOVIE” (Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto) Éditions Robert Laffont — Pages 83 to 85.

Slaves for industry.

“The ghetto was an integral part of the economic machine of the Nazi war apparatus. Germans, such as Toebbens, set up, within the ghetto itself, gigantic workshops where military and civilian clothing was made from fabrics of excellent quality stolen by the Germans throughout Poland. A German from Danzig (Gdańsk), Schultz, who before the war had been in business with Polish Jews, opened several workshops on Nowolipie Street where leather and fur were worked (…) A commercial company composed of Germans, of Volksdeutschen (ethnic Germans), of Poles and of Jews undertook the manufacture of brushware. The raw material was supplied by the German authorities. The output was generally used for military needs. (…) In these factories, only Jews from the ghetto worked. Their number rose to several tens of thousands. At Toebbens’s, the workforce exceeded, at the start of 1943, 15,000 workers. The wages were derisory. Each worker was entitled to 2 litres of soup per day (…); his condition was that of a slave (…). Certain workers — about 3,000 to 4,000 — were employed in the ‘Aryan’ zone, on the railway, in war factories, in military establishments. Each day, at dawn, they gathered not far from the gates of the ghetto. From there, a military escort led them to the place of their work, then brought them back in the evening. Barter of goods was carried out through the intermediary of these workers. (…) Thanks to all sorts of ruses, they smuggled out objects that they exchanged in the ‘Aryan’ zone for articles unobtainable in the ghetto.”

Excerpt from: Michel BORWICZ “L’INSURRECTION DU GHETTO DE VARSOVIE” (The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) — Éditions Julliard Collection Archives — (1966)

“The range of the clandestine press”

“DROR (the youth movement of the socialist party POALE-ZION), the most dynamic of the organizations of the Warsaw ghetto, had to its credit a Hakhshara (agricultural training) with 350 participants, the founding of the clandestine secondary school, of a library and of a drama circle. Thanks to its special emissaries, it maintained the link with the other ghettos; it published clandestine periodicals: Dror (‘Freedom’) and Yedies (‘News’), which were added to those of the Poale-Zion party: Unzer Weg (‘Our Path’), Befrayung (‘The Liberation’) and Nowe Tory (‘New Tracks’). The scout movement Hashomer Hatzaïr (of Zionist-socialist obedience) placed in the education of its members the emphasis on valour and personal courage. Its mutual-aid activities counted among the finest of the ghetto. It clandestinely published Neged Hazerem (‘Against the Current’), the monthly El-Al (‘Upward’), the weekly news bulletin Jutrznia (‘Dawn’), the periodical Przedwiośnie (‘The Fore-Spring’), as well as a daily bulletin (edited by S. Braslaw) giving news of the war fronts (thanks to the radio receiver hidden at M. Anielewicz’s). The Gordonia association (also of Zionist-socialist obedience) put out the periodicals Ofsdoyer (‘Endurance’) and Słowo Młodych (‘The Word of the Young’), which were added to the sporadic publications emanating from the Leadership. The Left Poale-Zion party, which, despite all obstacles, celebrated the workers’ festivals and anniversaries, published the periodicals Proletarisher Gedank (‘Proletarian Thought’), Yugnt-Ruf (‘The Call of Youth’), Avant-garde (‘Vanguard’) and Nasze Hasło (‘Our Watchword’). The Centre Zionists (with their youth organizations: Hanoar Hatzioni and Akiba) put out Unzer Hofnung (‘Our Hope’). The youth organization of the ‘revisionist’ party (right-wing Zionists), Betar, advocated the idea of resistance in its publications Magen David (‘The Shield of David’) and Hamedinah (‘The State’). Furthermore, a place of choice fell to the socialist party Bund (hostile to Zionism), which kept in contact with the Polish Socialist Party, and had its own youth organization: Tsukunft, and its scout movement SKIF, as well as numerous press organs; it published Biuletyn (‘The Bulletin’) and Yugnt-Shtime (‘the Voice of Youth’), a theoretical organ Tsayt-fragn (‘The Problems of the Time’) and, beginning in July 1941, the periodical Za naszą i waszą wolność (‘For Our Freedom and Yours’). Thanks to a distribution ensured by Polish socialists, this last was circulated even outside the ghetto, especially in intellectual and working-class circles. The Communists, disoriented and compromised by the German-Soviet pact, remained for a long time scattered. The turning point came among them at the start of 1942, with the founding of the clandestine P.P.R. (Polish Workers’ Party) and its G.L. (People’s Guard). Beginning in January 1942, the weekly of the P.P.R. that appeared in the ghetto, Morgn-Frayhayt (‘The Dawn of Freedom’), became a daily. Arrests followed by execution decimated not only the militants and the animators of the clandestine press, but also its distributors. Independently of the individual arrests carried out at various periods and moments, the German police made a surprise raid into the ‘Jewish quarter’ during the night of 17 to 18 April 1942: torn from their homes, several dozen people were executed, on the spot, in the streets of the ghetto. The date of this massacre indicates that this was already, if not the prelude to the ‘liquidation,’ at least a ‘purge.’ Meanwhile, most of the clandestine organizations enumerated above had constituted, in March 1942, the ‘Antifascist Bloc,’ with a view to preparing an armed response. It was then that the genocide fell upon the Jewish community of Poland, already tried by three years of inhuman oppression.”

idem — Pages 21/24

The creation of the Jewish Combat Organization

“Around 20 October, a coordinating commission was created in which representatives of all the existing Jewish parties took part. Our representatives are Abrasza Blum and Berek — Adam Sznajdmil. At the same meeting, the command of the Jewish Combat Organization (JCO) was formed, with Mordechaï Anielewicz (Hashomer) as commander. Marek Edelman represents the Bund. The Coordinating Commission delegates to the ‘Aryan side’ Doctor L. Fajner (pseudonym Mikołaj) of the Bund. At the same time the presidium of this Coordinating Commission was constituted, along with a Propaganda Committee where we are represented by Abrasza. As the ghetto is divided into different sectors, practically cut off from one another, the Jewish Combat Organization must adapt its work accordingly. We take charge of the brushmakers’ sector (Grylak), of that of the Toebbens Workshops (Paw), and of that of Prosta Street (Kersz). We manage to create a few combat groups composed essentially of members of the SKIF. Thus, in the central ghetto, B. Pelc and Bernard Goldsztejn take the head of two groups of five fighters; Jurek Blones and Janek Bilak do likewise at the brush factory, A. Fajner and N. Chmielnicki at Schultz’s, and Welwl Rozowski at Roehrich’s. Once again, we build a large organization, but this time, we are no longer alone and we unite our efforts. Once again, the question of arms arises. There are practically none in the ghetto. It must not be forgotten that in 1942 the Polish resistance is still in its cradle, that the maquis is known only by hearsay, and that the first armed action will not occur until March 1943. There is therefore no cause for surprise if our efforts with the Government Delegation to acquire arms, and with other organizations, meet with many difficulties and yield few results. We nonetheless manage to obtain a few revolvers from the People’s Guard. Two attacks are then carried out within a month: on 29 November against Lejkin (Commander of the Jewish police) and against J. First (Representative of the Jewish Council at the Umsiedlungsstab). The Jewish Combat Organization becomes popular. Other terrorist attacks targeted organized Jews — foremen particularly ferocious toward the workers. In the course of one of these punitive expeditions, at the Hallmann joinery workshops, German Werkschutz captured three of our fighters and locked them up at the police post. The following night, the group of the Roehrich sector, commanded by G. Frysdorf, disarmed the German guards and freed the prisoners.”

MAREK EDELMAN and HANNA KRALL

“MÉMOIRES DU GHETTO DE VARSOVIE” (Memoirs of the Warsaw Ghetto)

— Éditions du Scribe (1983)

Excerpts pages 46/47

The first major action of the J.C.O.

At the end of December 1942, we receive our first delivery of arms from the Command of the AK. There are very few: ten revolvers. This nonetheless allows us to prepare our first major action. We set it for 22 January: it is to be an operation of revenge against the Jewish police. But on 18 January 1943, the ghetto is sealed off and the second great round-up begins. This time, the Germans cannot carry out their plans with impunity. For the first time in the ghetto, four entrenched groups resist them, weapons in hand. The Jewish Combat Organization receives its baptism of fire in a great street battle at the intersection of Miła and Zamenhof streets. We lose our best there. The commander of the JCO, Mordechaï Anielewicz, gets out by a miracle and thanks to his heroic conduct. This battle proves too costly. We are not ready for it. We do not have the adequate arms. So we change tactics, and four major skirmishes then take place in the buildings at 40 Zamenhof Street, 44 Muranowska Street, 34 Miła Street, and 22 Franciszkańska Street. In the Schultz workshops, the partisans attack the S.S. who are taking part in the round-up. Engaged in this action, our comrade A. Fajner meets his death there. One of our combat groups is taken by the Germans even before having received its arms, and it is led to the Umschlagplatz. At the door of the wagon, B. Pelc speaks a few words. They are so powerful that not one of the sixty people with him boards the wagon. Van Oeppen, the commandant of Treblinka, shoots them all himself on the spot. Pelc’s group shows the Jews that in every place, under any condition, one can and must oppose the Germans. Of fifty combat groups, only five took part in the confrontations of January. The others, which had not established quarters, were caught off guard and could not reach the arms depots in time.

Once again, as during the first great round-up, we lose four-fifths of the Jewish Combat Organization.

MAREK EDELMAN and HANNA KRALL

“MÉMOIRES DU GHETTO DE VARSOVIE” (Memoirs of the Warsaw Ghetto) — Éditions du Scribe (1983), pages 48/49.

20 April, the struggle

“On 20 April, the struggle unfolded in four different places: Muranów Square, in Miła and Sapieżyńska streets, on the ground of the brushworks, on that of the ‘shops.’ The Germans had installed batteries of light artillery on the outskirts of the ghetto, at Krasiński Square, not far from Nowiniarska and Bonifraterska streets. From the morning, Stroop’s detachments launched the attack on the blocks of buildings at 7 and 9 Muranów Street and on the building at the corner of Muranów and Nalewki streets. The flags, riddled with bullets, still flew on the rooftops. A transport of arms had reached the insurgents through the tunnel that connected number 7 to number 6.

The fighting was fierce. Stroop himself acknowledged it in his report, where he insisted on the presence of Polish patriots in the ranks of the Jewish fighters. He also specified that a severe struggle took place around the flags that had been raised over the Jewish positions: a German officer, Untersturmführer Dehmke, was killed there. Stroop avenged this first German officer killed on the territory of the ghetto by having a hundred Jews executed. The insurgents were nonetheless forced to retreat. A part of them reached 6 Muranów Street, carrying off the corpse of one of their own, Leib Rodal. This first group of fugitives reached the Otwock line. The enemy having discovered its existence and pursuing it, it had barricaded itself in an abandoned villa, in the forest, which was soon surrounded by the German gendarmes and the navy-blue police. There was a struggle. The Hitlerites had the last word. The Jewish fighters died with weapons in hand. The local gendarmerie reported this fact on 23 April 1943. Seven men had remained on Muranów Street. They left it on the 21st, taking care to block the tunnel. Arriving at number 6, they reached the attics and hid there, awaiting the liaison agents who would have led them to the forest. But they were denounced by a tenant of the building, a certain Rysiek, an agent of the Gestapo and a member of the organization ‘Miecz i Pług’ (The Sword and the Plough). On 22 April, the gendarmerie and the navy-blue police surrounded the building. The insurgents defended themselves. Two or three were able to flee over the rooftops; the others perished. Certain groups of defenders of Muranów Square had been able to withdraw to Nalewki Street. The ground of the brushworks was an irregular square bordered, on the wall side, by Bonifraterska and Świętojerska streets meeting at a right angle, and, on the inside, by Franciszkańska and Wałowa streets. There was there a separate sector held by combat groups of the J.C.O. and ‘free’ groups. The population had been prepared for the struggle. During a meeting, Sławek, a representative of the P.P.R., had expressed what was the concern of all: the events of July will not be repeated; every shelter must be transformed into a fortress and, if need be, into a tomb; children will no longer be torn from their mothers, nor husbands from their wives… For a long time the underground passages and tunnels had been fitted out. On 20 April the non-combatant population could easily hide. Only the armed fighters remained in the courtyards. The little square onto which Wałowa Street opened — the entrance gate of the ghetto — had been mined. Its approach could be watched from the observation post installed on the third floor of 3 Wałowa Street. Three combat groups had taken position on the third and fourth floors of the buildings running from 28 to 38 Świętojerska Street. Stroop, present on the spot, launched the attack at three in the afternoon. Three hundred men entered the little square. The mine exploded. There were twenty-two dead. The rest of the troop fled. It returned two hours later, but in dispersed order and hugging the walls. It was received with grenades and Molotov bottles. It withdrew again, leaving other dead on the ground. The enemy then concentrated a powerful fire on the positions of the insurgents. The insurgents replied with their weak means. And an extraordinary thing occurred: the Hitlerites sent toward the fighters envoys bearing white cockades, who proposed to halt the combat for a quarter of an hour. It is true that at the same time S.S. men were setting houses ablaze. The request was rejected. The shooting resumed worse than ever. Stroop’s men, realizing that they would not get the better of the ghetto by direct attack, undertook to reduce it by systematic artillery fire. The cannon could be heard some ten kilometres away. Fires that no one thought to extinguish filled the sky with thick smoke. The night growing ever more uneven, the insurgents could not have held their positions for long; they would have been doomed to total annihilation had the People’s Guard not, on the other side of the wall, attacked the Germans and forced their cannon to fall silent. Night was coming. Stroop halted the combat: he was afraid of the dark. The insurgents used the night of 21 to 22 April to change positions. After having evacuated a part of the non-combatant population, they went to install themselves at 30 Franciszkańska Street, in the shelter of the supply service where a combat group of the P.P.R. already was. A detachment commanded by Jurek Blones of the Bund group covered the movement. A well-aimed shot fired by the fighter Romanowicz had shattered the enemy searchlight. An enemy patrol had been decimated. Only one soldier of the J.C.O., Berek Sznajdmil, had been hit by a grenade. Many insurgents had met their death in these battles: Renia Niemiecka, Michał Klepfisz… Young people had distinguished themselves: Szanan Lent, son of the tram-worker Hersz Lent, himself an insurgent, Lusiek Blones, brother of Jurek. Lusiek, in the course of a combat, had caught a German grenade in flight and thrown it back at the Hitlerites. The very young Szlamek Szuster was part of the group of the best marksmen. All, men and women, were animated by the most complete spirit of sacrifice. They fired from the rooftops. A witness recounted this: a Jew, posted behind a chimney, fired on the Germans; he fired for two hours by the clock; at last his body, mortally struck, fell from the roof. In the course of this second day the insurgents held Miła Street. They thus covered the sector that lies between Świętojerska Street and Muranów Square. They constituted a threat to the Hitlerites. So Stroop entrusted the task of attacking Miła Street to seasoned units. The fighting took place in the afternoon of Tuesday 20 April. The combat groups of the JCO were composed of politically aware elements, of metalworkers, weavers, tailors, dockers, ‘red’ sportsmen. To mark clearly the meaning they gave to their combat, they had hoisted a red flag in a building: Stroop would boast on the 21st to Sławoboński of having been able to take this trophy. On Miła Street, nine casemates resisted to the death. The details of this struggle have unfortunately not come down to us. The ground of the ‘shops,’ the ‘productive ghetto,’ comprised Nowolipie, Nowolipki, Smocza streets and the even numbers of Leszno Street. The odd numbers of this last street were on the ‘Aryan’ side: the wall cut the thoroughfare in two lengthwise. The sector had the form of a rectangle slightly inclined from east to west on the long sides (Leszno Street to the south, Nowolipki Street to the north) and cut in two in its great dimension by Nowolipie Street. It enclosed the Toebbens, Schultz, Hallmann, and Roerich factories. … On the 19th, nothing had happened. The Germans had undertaken nothing. All remained calm. The industrialists Toebbens and Schultz were still trying to convince the Jews that it was in their interest to let themselves be deported. In vain: there was not a single volunteer for the transport. The whole population lived underground. The JCO kept watch. The Germans could let themselves be deceived by the calm that reigned over the ‘shops’: it was only the calm that precedes the storm. The JCO kept watch. It had its plan. During the night of the 19th to the 21st, the final preparations are made. The munitions were distributed. Roza Rosenfeld spoke to the …. The morning of 20 April, there was still no German detachment on the ground of the ‘shops.’ Toebbens lived in the illusion that the Jews would end by taking the road to the place of embarkation of their own accord. At six o’clock in the morning, music in front, followed by tanks, a German column was filing along Leszno Street. The surprise occurred. Setting out from numbers 74 and 76, passing over the wall, gunfire, Molotov cocktails, grenades cast disarray and death into the German column. Like a trail of burning powder, the action thus unleashed spread from building to building. It extended from number 42 to number 82, to the east, as far as Żelazna Street. A witness expressed himself thus: ‘The hand grenades fell thick from the windows looking onto the street. The wounded soldiers were heard to moan. On both sides, the fire became violent. Our men fought as they could. The women passed the grenades. Among us we were sternly resolved. I looked at the calm faces of the women, faces without tears, without fear, faces of people determined to die with dignity. I will never forget either that moment or those faces…’ Eight Germans had been killed. At the signal given on Leszno Street, the territory of the ‘shops’ bursts into flame. A Hitlerite column was assailed by the groups of Smocza Street. The tank that preceded the column went up in flames. Stroop reacted violently. His detachments ended by getting the better of the fighters of Leszno and Smocza streets. Mad with rage, they blew up the houses and the cellars and shot their inhabitants. Toebbens, Schultz, and Hoffmann took fright: they feared the vengeance of the insurgents, they feared for their machines and for their merchandise. They intervened with Stroop to have him put an end to the destruction, and undertook to furnish for the following day, 21 April, 4,000 to 5,000 workers fit for departure. Stroop accepted the bargain but was at pains to underline that if this commitment were not kept, he would do to the ‘shops’ what he had done to the brushworks. It is right to cite here those of the fighters of Leszno and Smocza streets who set an example: Ryva Szmutke, Eliazar Geller, who were the first to throw the explosive bottles and the grenades onto the marching column, Isaac Lewski, Sewek Nulman, Ignacy Podolski, Tauba Dawidowicz, Wolf Rozowski, Cwi Rotman, Aleksandrowicz. Others conducted themselves with no less heroism: they carried their names into their graves, the sufferings and the time have effaced them from the memory of the rare survivors. One of these unknown heroes was fighting on Smocza Street. He came out onto the gateway of his building and cried, raising his hands: ‘Number 5 Smocza Street surrenders!’ The Hitlerites, seeing and hearing this, advanced openly toward the house; when they were within good range, the fire coming from the windows decimated them. They had, however, had time to bring down the man who had caused their loss. Another fighter came out onto the pavement; the Germans having seen him, he fled, plunged into the gateway of his building, climbed the stairs four at a time, pursued by an officer and three SS. And all at once, he vanished from the eyes of his pursuers; he had slipped into a hole with extreme rapidity. The Nazis, uneasy, hesitated to go any farther.”

Bernard MARK

“L’INSURRECTION DU GHETTO DE VARSOVIE” (The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising)

Excerpt from pages 146 to 153.

Isaïe SPIEGEL

Born in 1906 in Łódź (Poland), has lived in Israel since 1951. He made his debut in the thirties, was an accountant in the Łódź ghetto. Deported to Auschwitz and to Terezín. His sole collection — for Spiegel is first of all a great novelist — is a moving testimony on the universe of separation, of annihilation, but also of the revelation of the human, whose secrets and irreducible presence he recovers, through poetry, at the very heart of hell. Work: Et la lumière fut (And There Was Light), Łódź, 1949.

GIVE ME THE MEMORY: Of so many dead give me the memory, / Of all those who became ash, / Of a generation give me the memory, / Its last fury, its last grief. / Of the hair singed by the red flames, / Of the naked flesh in the fire of hell, / Of so many dead give me the memory / And give me, sacred, the avenging words. / And the eyes by the millions shut in with you, / And the prayer smothered in the mouth, / Of so many dead give me the memory, / Of the furnace and the gibbets and the horror. / Of the hands by the millions in the wind

that pursue me / Setting the nights ablaze, the frightened dawns, / Of so many dead give me the memory / That I cannot weep with words. / For the words are mute like the sands / When the blood has slipped into them, / Of so many dead give me the memory / And their breath on the road of the tortured. / Leave to my lashes at least one tear / To pearl from all these open eyes, / Of so many dead give me the memory / With the depths of all the seas. / Beheaded, behold, a whole people has passed / That was poisoned and that was massacred, / Of so many dead give me the memory / O give me the avenging words, the sacred words.

The last organized battles.

Berlin was anxious to see things dragging on. Himmler telegraphed to Stroop to finish it as quickly as possible. Stroop decided to set everything ablaze, the residential buildings and the armament factories themselves. He also had the shelters blown up with dynamite. The resistance continued amid the flames. No one laid down their arms. No one went to the embarkation platform. In the gateway of a burned house, 39 Nalewki Street, there were dead, there were wounded. One of these stirred and spoke: “I jumped from the window, I’m in pain.” His spine was broken, a thread of blood ran from his mouth. He asked: “Tell me, has Tunis been liberated?” He asked again: “The Russians, when will they arrive?” Another wounded man intervened: “What does it matter to you?” — “It will be easier to die,” replied the dying man, who expired shortly after. Despite the fires and the explosions, contact was maintained between the various combat groups of the J.C.O. This was confirmed on 24 April. They fought at 41 Nalewki Street, 74, 76, 78 Leszno Street, 67, 68 Nowolipki Street. They fought and ensured the evacuation of the population toward the least threatened shelters. Toward the end of the day, a German detachment invaded Niska and Muranów streets. It removed the merchandise of the Werterfassung, then set fire to the buildings. The insurgents did their duty well, but they could not master the situation; they were dealing with an adversary who could only prevail by number, armament, and combat experience. They had to withdraw and fall back to Nalewki Street, where they joined a local group. The fire raged. The German artillery and aviation pounded the ghetto. The staff of the insurrection ordered a shift from the tactic of open struggle to that of guerrilla warfare, this second tactic requiring a systematic defence of the shelters. The groups now went out only at night. The men were dressed as Germans; they had their feet wrapped in rags. Their mission was threefold: to gather intelligence, to destroy as many Germans as possible. It was thus that German patrols were decimated in Kurza, Miła, Dzika, Szczęśliwa,

Świętojerska, Wałowa, and Leszno streets. The night was full of gunfire. On the 25th, a painful loss occurred for the J.C.O.: a group of liaison agents heading toward the “Aryan” side fell upon an enemy detachment and was annihilated in the course of an unequal struggle. From the 25th to the 27th the defence of the shelters became fierce. Ordered by the J.C.O., often spontaneous, it bore witness to the will to resist of all. On the 26th, Stroop threw new forces into the battle. He noted in his report of that day: “All the units without exception report the resistance encountered. It appears more and more that the most stubborn of the Jews and of the Polish bandits have now intervened in the struggle.” Three hundred sixty-two Jews were killed. On the 27th new fighting took place in Nowolipki, Leszno, Nowolipie, and Niska streets. It was especially hard at numbers 39, 41, and 40 of Nowolipki Street, whose shelters the Germans had learned of following a denunciation. In the shelter of number 40 the Jews had only three pistols: they resisted as long as they could. When the Germans penetrated the shelter, a part of the fighters poisoned themselves with cyanide while Hélène Sterling, a woman of 36, threw herself on the Hitlerites with a club in hand and was killed at point-blank range. The survivors were murdered or taken to the embarkation place. At the same moment the shelters at 67 and 69 Nowolipki Street fell. On Leszno Street the shelter at 74 was flooded. The insurgents were able to change place several times. It was in the course of these battles that Roza Rosenfeld, Hersz Kawe, Halinka Rochman, Adek, Roza’s brother, Zocha Brzezińska, Tosa Cebularz, Sara Klejman, Lew Rudnicki, Szymon Heller, Ryba, Aron Alter, Chawa Brander, Lejb Czerniaków, Chana Płotnicka met a heroic death. The latter, a liaison agent, was killed at the moment when she was crossing the wall. At Toebbens’s and Schultz’s, still on 27 April, the deputy directors of the factories tried once again to persuade the workers that it was in their interest to present themselves voluntarily for departure. Jewish fighters appeared in the courtyard where the assembly was being held; they threatened with their weapons the zealous servants of the Germans. The workers scattered. The shooting broke out between the Jewish fighters and the German soldiers who were standing guard around the courtyard. The unforgettable leader that was Jakub was killed in the course of this operation. To reduce the posts of Niska Street, Stroop engaged 320 soldiers and officers. There again the Jews resisted to the last cartridge, then, not wishing to fall alive into the hands of the Hitlerites, they threw themselves from the windows and the burning balconies, their mouths full of curses and insults addressed to the Germans, to the Führer, and to his soldiers. On a balcony a woman appeared carrying a child in her arms. She cried out, addressing Stroop, who was in the vicinity: “I do not ask you for mercy, but remember that you will not escape punishment for all that you are doing today.” The fire had reached the balcony. The woman took the child in her arms and, uttering a cry, threw herself onto the pavement of the street. At Muranów Square one of the last groups that was still fighting managed to pass over to the “Aryan” side. It was a relatively well-armed group. Polish patriots had helped its breakout. According to Stroop, it was composed of 120 fighters disposing of 3 rifles, 12 revolvers, 100 hand grenades, 27 German steel helmets, 300 cartridges. Stroop was informed of this movement by an anonymous letter. He was very anxious about it: the presence of this Polish-Jewish group outside the ghetto enclosure could only make him fear that extension of the struggle which the Germans and the men of the London Delegation so dreaded. Stroop entrusted to Lieutenant Diehl of the Schupo the mission of annihilating this dangerous detachment. In the combat that ensued 24 insurgents were killed, others were taken prisoner, others were able to escape. The police carried out arrests of suspect Poles. On Wednesday 28 April, the tenth day of the insurrection, the fighting unfolded chiefly at the northern and southern extremities of the ghetto, near Sapieżyńska Street, and on Leszno Street, where groups had re-formed. To the north the Germans lost men. On Leszno Street, the situation had in part changed. The personnel of Toebbens, composed of petty-bourgeois elements who could no longer bear to suffocate in the shelters, had let themselves be taken and deported. The properly working-class element, which had full confidence in the J.C.O., continued to hide and to resist. At numbers 76 and 78 of Leszno Street, in the Schultz workshops, the fighters and the workers fought fiercely, to such a point that Stroop saw himself obliged to send reinforcements to overcome the resistance of the Jews. During the night of the 28th to the 29th the German aviation carried out merciless bombardments. On the 29th, the Schultz workshops were still resisting. Stroop, in his report, attacked the German industrialist who had done nothing, he wrote, to carry out the evacuation orders that he, Stroop, had given as early as the second day of Easter. In the course of these battles of 28 and 29 April one hundred and ten Jews had met their death. Other battles had taken place on the ground of the “shops” and on Nowolipki Street, in the Hallmann workshops, at numbers 53 and 82: one hundred and eight Jews had been killed. On Leszno Street resistance was becoming difficult against an enemy superior in every respect. The physical strength of the insurgents was running out. In agreement with the People’s Guard, it was decided to evacuate a part of the fighters. The Communist Franciszek Łęczycki mounted the operation, which was carried out under the direction of Lieutenant Władysław Gaik (“Krzaczek”) of the People’s Guard. Forty men were led by the underground route to the corner of Ogrodowa and Żelazna streets, from which they reached the tracks of Łomianki: they were to wait there for the rest of their group before joining the partisans. The passage through the underground had been agonizing: the sewers were largely flooded; on the viscous waters floated corpses. When this sinister course had been completed and it was a matter of appearing in the free, pure air under the stars, Regina Fuden and Salomon Barzyński turned back. They were never to be seen again. Stroop very quickly learned of this expedition. He had sewer vaults blown up and exits out of the ghetto sealed. The road to freedom was momentarily cut off. On the 29th, the sewer mouths were guarded militarily. Searches took place in the vicinity of the Traugutt Fort. On the “Aryan” side observers expressed their admiration for a struggle waged in such extraordinary conditions. They thought, however, that this struggle was nearing its end. “The fire continues to spread,” wrote Ludwik Landau, “the armed resistance weakens little by little, exhausted, before enemy forces by far superior.” And the same chronicler added that since the holidays there was no longer any unity in the struggle, that there was no longer any link between the positions that still held, and that the groups now each thought, on their own side, only of crossing the cordon of the German forces. These last observations are not in keeping with the truth of history. After the twelve days of incessant and very hard fighting, the unity of organization and command had in general been maintained. Even in the defence of the shelters, however immediate it often had to be, a tactical coordination had existed. For all the reasons relating to the conditions in which the insurrection had been prepared and in which it unfolded, there could not exist a centralization of command and a unity of execution such as can be achieved in an ordinary army. Between the staff that remained in the central ghetto, on Miła Street, and the sectors of Leszno Street and its surroundings, the link could only be loose with the groups that defended the shelters. But the dispersion of the forces was only apparent. All converged toward the same goal; the same spirit animated them all; each knew why he was fighting; the ideological preparation of the insurrection, patiently undertaken, had brought about the rising of the greatest number and achieved that moral unity which allows each to know what he has to do in relation to the work undertaken by all. The antifascist Zygmunt Frydrych, who, on 28 April, reached the “Aryan” side with a group of the J.C.O. by taking the underground route, declared that the group that had remained on Leszno Street had itself decided to pursue the struggle despite conditions becoming ever harder. And it is true that if by day the streets belonged to the Wehrmacht, by night it was another matter. The armed detachments of Jews made their sorties, attacked the German sentries and patrols, and transmitted the instructions to the population of the shelters. The insurrection was not dead. The observers were convinced of it on 1 May.

“L’INSURRECTION DU GHETTO DE VARSOVIE” (The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) (Bernard MARK) Excerpt from Pages 168 to 174

The suicide of S. Zygielbojm

The last message of S. Zygielbojm. It is addressed to the President of the Polish Republic in exile, Władysław Raczkiewicz, and to his prime minister, General Władysław Sikorski. The last act of a tragedy that has no equal in history is now unfolding behind the walls of the ghetto. The responsibility for the crime of the total extermination of the Jewish populations in Poland falls in the first place on the perpetrators of the massacre, but it weighs indirectly on the whole of humanity, on the peoples and the governments of the Allied nations, which have until now undertaken no concrete action to halt this crime. (…) I must observe that the Polish government has not stirred public opinion with sufficient vigour, even when it has tried to do so. Its efforts, indeed, have been out of all proportion to the drama that has unfolded in Poland. (…) I cannot keep silent. I cannot go on living while the last remnants of the Jewish people of Poland — to which I, too, have the honour of belonging — are being exterminated. My comrades of the Warsaw ghetto fell in the course of a heroic struggle. It was not granted me to die as they did, nor among them. Yet I belong to them, to them and to their common graves. Through my death, I would like for the last time to protest against the passivity of a world that witnesses the extermination of the Jewish people, and admits it. I know the infinitesimal value of a human life in these times, but having been able to accomplish nothing during my life, perhaps through my death I shall be able to help shatter the indifference of those who have the possibility — the last, perhaps — of saving the last Polish Jews still alive. My life belongs to the people of Poland, and that is why I make to it the sacrifice of it. (…) 11 May 1943, Samuel Zygielbojm.

Michel BORWICZ L’INSURRECTION DU GHETTO DE VARSOVIE (The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) excerpt pages 194/195