The Holocaust is one of the worst pages in the history of the 20th century. The extermination of Jews during World War II is an inexhaustible topic. It has been touched many times by both writers and filmmakers. From films and books we know about the cruelty of the Nazis, about their many victims, about concentration camps, gas chambers and other attributes of the fascist machine. However, it is worth knowing that the Jews were not only victims of the SS, but also active participants in the fight against them. The uprising in the Warsaw ghetto is proof of this.
Occupation of Poland
The uprising in the Warsaw ghetto is the largest uprising of the Jewish people against the Nazis. It was more difficult for the Nazis to crush him than to conquer Poland. The Germans invaded this small state in 1939, the Red Army managed to expel them only after five years. During the years of occupation, the country lost about twenty percent of the total population. Moreover, a significant part of the victims consisted of representatives of the intelligentsia, highly qualified specialists.
Human life is priceless whether it belongs to a banker, musician or bricklayer. But this is from a humanistic point of view. From the economic point of view, the deaths of several thousand specialists, and the majority of them were Jews, became a heavy blow for the country, from which it managed to recover only after decades.
Genocide policy
Before the war, the number of Jews in Poland was about three million. In the capital - about four hundred thousand. Among them were entrepreneurs and people of art, students and teachers, artisans and engineers. From the first days of the German occupation, they were all equal in rights, more precisely, in the absence of such rights.
The Nazis introduced a number of anti-Jewish "laws." The long liver of bans was announced publicly. According to him, Jews did not have the right to use public transport, visit public places, work in their specialty, and most importantly, leave their home without an identification mark - a yellow six-pointed star.
For centuries, anti-Semitism was prevalent among the Poles, and therefore there were not so many sympathizers for the Jews. The fascists, on the other hand, constantly fueled hatred.
Six months after the capture of Poland, the formation of the so-called quarantine zone began, based on an absurd statement about the spread of an infectious disease. The carriers of the disease, according to the Nazis, were Jews. They were relocated to the quarters previously inhabited by the Poles. The number of former residents of this part of Warsaw was several times less than the number of new ones.
Ghetto
It was created in the autumn of 1940. A special territory was fenced with a three-meter brick wall. The escape from the ghetto was first punished by arrest, then by execution. The life of Warsaw Jews became harder every day. But a person gets used to everything, even to life in the ghetto. People tried, as far as possible, to lead a normal life. The enterprise characteristic of the representatives of the Jewish people facilitated the opening of small enterprises, schools, and hospitals in the ghetto. Many residents of this closed zone believed in the best, and almost none of them knew about the imminent death. However, the conditions were becoming increasingly unbearable.
Today, while watching a movie or reading a book on the Jewish ghetto, knowing the further course of events, one can be surprised at human humility. About 500 thousand people, imprisoned in stone walls and deprived of the most necessary for life, continued to exist, it would seem, and not thinking about the struggle for their own freedom. But that was not always the case.
The number of Jews decreased every day. People were dying of hunger and disease. The executions, not yet massive, took place in the early days of the occupation. In 1941 alone, about one hundred thousand Jews died. But each of the survivors continued to believe that death would not overtake him or his loved ones. And he continued a peaceful, not at all warlike existence. Until the Nazi leadership launched a machine for the mass extermination of Jews. Then an event occurred that went down in history as an uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
Treblinka
Eighty kilometers north-east of the Polish capital is a place whose name before the start of World War II was not known to anyone in the world. Treblinka is a death camp in which, according to rough estimates, about eight hundred thousand people died. If not for the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, the number would have been much greater. Participants of the resistance death would not have passed. But, unfortunately, most of them died in battle on the streets of the Polish capital. The Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto is an example of amazing heroism.
This is the background to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. But the question is. How could exhausted prisoners fight the fascists? Where did they get the weapons from? And how did information about the existence of the suicide camp leak in the ghetto?
Secret organizations
Since 1940, several socio-political associations have functioned in the ghetto. Discussions about the need to fight against the Nazis were conducted since 1940, but they did not make sense in the absence of weapons. The first revolver in the closed territory was transferred in the autumn of 1942. Around the same time, a Jewish militant organization was established that maintained contact with parties whose members were outside the ghetto.
Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto
The date of this event is April 19, 1943. There were about 1,500 rebels. The Germans advanced through the main gate, but the inhabitants of the ghetto met them with fire. Fierce battles were fought for almost a month. The day of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto has forever become a day of remembrance for courageous rebels, whose armaments were insignificant. Resistance participants did not have a chance to win. But even when the ghetto was completely destroyed, individual groups continued to struggle. During the fighting, about seven thousand rebels died. Almost as much burned alive.
Participants in the ghetto uprising became the national heroes of Israel. In the Polish capital in 1948, a monument was opened to the fallen soldiers.