On Sunday, 19 April, Warsaw is the venue of events commemorating the 66 th anniversary of the uprising in the city’s Jewish Ghetto.
Click on the audio icon to listen to the report by Michał Kubicki.
Before the war Warsaw was the largest Jewish city in Europe. After invading Poland in 1939, the Germans set up ghettos across Poland to isolate and later wipe out the Jews. In Warsaw’s Jewish quarter, around 450,000 people were crammed behind the walls. More than 300, 000 of them were sent to the Treblinka death camp. In April 1943 the Nazis decided to wipe out the remaining tens of thousands of ghetto inhabitants. This sparked an uprising which broke out 66 years ago this Sunday. Some 7,000 Jews died in the month-long revolt and over 50, 000 were deported to the death camps.
A wide range of events is planned for the day, including the wreath-laying ceremony at the monument to the heroes of the Uprising, a meeting with the Warsaw Rabbi, sightseeing tours of the Nozyk Synagogue as well as a performance in the city’s Jewish Theatre based on the poetry and songs of Wladyslaw Szlengel, a prominent poet and lyrics writer who died in the Ghetto at the age of twenty nine.
We hear from Eleonora Bergman, the director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and Edward Odoner of the Cultural Association of Jews in Poland.