Bagley 1

Dalton Bagley

Mr. Larry Nueburger

English 110 Sec. 220

13 April 2011

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Heroes of the Slums

The summer of 1942 marked the start of the rebellion. The United States

Holocaust Memorial Museum suggests that between the months of July and

September, the German authorities murdered over 300,00 Jews from the

Warsaw Ghetto. Only 35,000 Jews were granted permission to stay in the

Ghetto, and about 20,000 Jews were in hiding in the Ghetto at that time. With

deportation breathing down the backs of 55,000 Jews, the resistance took shape

in the form of two groups, the Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska

Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB) and the Jewish Military Union (Zydowski Zwiazek

Wojskowy; ZZW) (USHMM).

According to John Radzilowski, On April 19 1943, a German police patrol

entered the Warsaw Ghetto to begin a round up that what would be the start of

the final extractment of all the Jewish inhabitants in the Ghetto. As the patrol

proceeded down Mila Street a barrage of shots rang out, killing the patrol's

commander and wounding several policemen. The police retreated in confusion

as the young men of ZOB ran to collect the weapons of the fallen Germans. For

the next 29 days the ZOB and its allies fought Nazi forces in the first Jewish

Resistance of World War II. Radzilowski says, “The outnumbered and poorly
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armed Jewish resistance were finally overwhelmed, but their actions became an

example of heroism in the face of unspeakable evil. Many of the Jewish fighters,

including most of the leaders of the ZOB, died at their posts rather than

surrender. In the end Jewish losses were 6,000 combat dead along with 55

fighters from the Polish Home Army. Although the Germans officially listed only

about 100 casualties, contemporary Polish sources reported German losses at

1,300 dead and wounded.” (Radzilowski).

According to Moshe Arens, the intense fighting in the ghetto between the

Jewish resistance fighters and the German army units, who were assisted by

Ukrainian and Latvian militias and Polish policemen, lasted for about a month.

Jewish fighters continued to hide in the many underground bunkers that had

been built in the ghetto and small fighting continued for several weeks thereafter.

The commander of the German assault on the ghetto was Gen. Juergen Stroop.

General Stroop "declared victory" over the Jews on the evening of May 16, and

to celebrate his victory he dynamited the great synagogue on Tomalckie Street.

After the resistance had been eliminated and all the Jews were evacuated, the

German army used flamethrowers to burn down most of the buildings. The rest

was dynamited; which turned the once massive Warsaw Ghetto into a pile of

rubble. Although the ghetto once housed more than half a million Jews, only a

small margin of the resistance fighters survived (Aren). Those who fought in the

resistance as fighters and supporters are heroes, and they should be

remembered as such.
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Jack Eisner was only 15 years old when he fought the Germans in the

Uprising. He raised the white-and-blue flag on top of

one of the houses in the Muranowska Square, the site

of the fiercest struggle. Eisner was lucky to survive,

and vowed to tell his story. He wrote a best- seller,

The Survivor (William Murrow, 1980, and

Kensington Publishers, 1995). The play of the same

name written by Susan Nanus, and the movie

Jack Eisner
written by Academy Award-winner Abby Mann

and directed by Moshe Mizrahi, were based on his autobiography. (Zvielli). In

1994, he led a group of survivors to meet with Pope John Paul II, part of the

rapprochement between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews that had allowed

the Vatican and Israel to establish diplomatic relations the year before. ''As a

young boy growing up in prewar Warsaw, I feared crossing the sidewalk next to a

church,'' Mr. Eisner said to the pope, ''Now, some 50 years later, the unthinkable

is happening.'' (Martin).

Abraham Lewents was lucky to survive the Warsaw Ghetto. In a family of

five, he was the only one to survive.

Lewents describes living conditions in the

ghetto, “The hunger in the ghetto was so

great, was so bad, that people were laying

on the streets and dying, little children

went around Abraham Lewents begging, and, uh,

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everyday you walked out in the morning, you see somebody is laying dead,

covered with newspapers or with any kind of blanket they found, and you

found...those people used to carry the dead people in little wagons, used to bring

them down to the cemetery and bury them in mass graves. And every day

thousands and thousands died just from malnutrition because the Germans didn't

give anything for the people in the ghetto to eat. There was no such thing. You

can't walk in and buy anything, or getting any rations. It's your hard luck. If you

don't have it, you die, and that's what it was.” In 1943, Abraham and his father

were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was

sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. U.S. troops

liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners. Lewents said his major

reason for rebelling was to try and to protect his family, and though he could not

save a single member, he is still a hero, and his family should be proud

(USHMM).

Jozef Wilk was a hero of the Warsaw ghetto

uprising, and his memory lived on through the

survival of his two sisters. In Warsaw, Jozef

became a demolition man in a special unit of the

Polish resistance. His code name was "Orlik." On

April 19, 1943, his resistance group got a

mission to blow open part of a ghetto wall so other

Jews could escape. As his unit approached the

wall on Bonifraterska Street with explosives and weapons under their coats, his

Jozef Wilk
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friend "Mlodek" tripped and his pistol accidentally dropped to the pavement. A

policeman spotted the pistol and opened fire. Chaos erupted. German units

opened fire on the unit before it could reach the wall. Jozef and "Mlodek" were

killed. Their retreating unit detonated the explosives, blowing up Jozef's and

"Mlodek's" bodies to make them unrecognizable. Jozef was only 18. Jozef Wilk

sacrificed his life to rebel against the German army. Jozef Wilk died a hero

(USHMM).

Yitzhak Zuckerman was another hero of the Warsaw uprising. After the

Holocaust Zuckerman was haunted by the events.

“I started drinking after the war,” Zuckerman sadly

claimed. “It was very difficult… If you could lick

my heart, you would be poisoned.” When the

Holocaust was over Zuckerman has said that he

acted as if the Holocaust never ended and never

would. Zuckerman never tried to forget what he

Yitzhak Zuckerman
witnessed and participated in, “It doesn’t

get easier or weaker with the years; on the contrary, it gets sharper.” Zuckerman

is a brave man for taking his past head on. Zuckerman’s story is said to be

repetitious and emotional and when he moves his words no eye remains dry.

According to Zuckerman on when he talks about his gruesome past, “I’m not the

one who determines the timing and it burst out of me it’s a part of me.”

Zuckerman is a hero for living to tell his story (Marrus).

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising will go down in history as a heroic rebellion

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lead by courageous and heroic men. In Jack Eisner’s Autobiography, Germans

have the role of confirming the heroism: ‘‘So you were part of the uprising in

Warsaw,’ he said, ‘we heard about it here. It was a gallant and courageous

battle. Even the SS men are still talking about the Warsaw rebels.’’ The Warsaw

Ghetto Uprising was a bloody and courageous battle. According to the USHMM,

“It is estimated that 18,000 insurgents were killed and another 6,000 were

seriously wounded. A further 150,000 civilians were also killed during the

uprising.” (USHMM). The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has only gained more respect

as time passes. As Markus Meckl states, “In the decades after the war the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gained a central place in the collective memory of the

Holocaust.” (Meckl). Adolf Eichmann used the Warsaw Ghetto as a way to

manipulate more Jews. He claimed in his interrogation in Israel: ‘‘The Uprising in

the Warsaw Ghetto in the year 1943 taught us a bitter lesson concerning the

gathering of so many people. Elsewhere the Uprising resulted in severer

measures against Jews still working as forced labourers in factories...We could

use, and we did use, the example of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising like a salesman

who could sell easily because he had a very effective promotional item.” (Meckl).

The outcome of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising may not be the outcome intended

by those involved in the resistance, but those who resisted are heroes.
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Works Cited

Arens, Moshe. "The Development of the Narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto

Uprising." Israel Affairs 14.1 (2008): 6-28. Academic Search Elite.
EBSCO. Web. 11 Apr. 2011.

Marrus, Michael R. "Ghetto fighter: Yitzhak Zuckerman and the Jewish

underground in Warsaw." American Scholar 64.2 (1995): 277. Academic
Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.

Martin, Douglas. "Jack Eisner, 77, Holocaust Chronicler, Dies." The New York
Times 30 Aug. 2003. Web. 16 Apr. 2011.

Meckl, Markus. "The Memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising." European Legacy
13.7 (2008): 815-824. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2011.

Radzilowski, John. "Remembering the ghetto uprising at the U.S. holocaust

muesum." Historian 55.4 (1993): 635. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO.
Web. 6 Apr. 2011.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Warsaw – Personal History:

Abraham Lewent" “Warsaw Personal History – Personal History: Jozef
Wilk” "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising." United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2011.

Zvielli, Alexander. "Holocaust Survivor Challenges Christians." The Jerusalum

Post 27 June 1996: 7. Academic Search Elite. Web. 16 Apr. 2011.