Warsaw Ghetto Monument

Today marks the 68th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis with wreaths being laird at the Monument to the Heroes of the Uprising by representatives of Jewish organizations and of the Polish state.

The ghetto, set up in 1940 to isolate the thriving Jewish community in the Polish capital, contained over 460, 000 people at its height. 

About 100,000 died inside from hunger and disease, and over 300,000 were sent to Nazi death camps, mostly in mass deportations in 1942 to Treblinka in eastern Poland.

As the Germans moved against the remaining 60,000 ghetto dwellers, an estimated 1, 000 Jews decided to make a last stand against the ‘Final Solution’.

Having scraped together a small arsenal of home-made arms smuggled in by the non-Jewish Polish resistance, the insurgents first clashed with Nazi troops in mid-January 1943, and managed to hinder the deportations.

On 19 April, 68 years ago today,  they took up arms again rather than face near-certain death.

The fighters – members of the 500-strong Jewish Fighting Organization and the less numerous but better armed Jewish Military Union -  held out for almost a month.

Around 6,000 Jews died in combat and burned alive, another 7, 000 were killed inside the ghetto and some 43, 000 were  deported to the death camps. Estimated German losses were 300, dead and injured combined. 

The Nazi Germans marked  their ‘victory over the Jews’ by blowing up Warsaw’s main synagogue on 16 May. (mk)