The Holocaust is one of the most terrible pages in the history of the 20th century. The extermination of the Jews during World War II is an inexhaustible topic. It has been touched upon 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 biggest protest of the Jewish people against the Nazis. It turned out to be more difficult for the Nazis to suppress it than to conquer Poland. The Germans invaded this small state in 1939, the Red Army managed to expel them only five years later. During the years of occupationthe country lost about twenty percent of its total population. At the same time, a significant part of the dead consisted of representatives of the intelligentsia, highly qualified specialists.
Human life is priceless, whether it belongs to a banker, a musician or a bricklayer. But this is from a humanistic point of view. From the economic point of view, the death of several thousand specialists, and most of them were Jews, was a heavy blow for the country, from which it managed to recover only decades later.
Genocide policy
Before the start of the war, the number of Jews in Poland was about three million. In the capital - about four hundred thousand. Among them were entrepreneurs and artists, students and teachers, artisans and engineers. All of them from the first days of the German occupation were equated in rights, or rather in the absence of them.
The Nazis introduced a number of anti-Jewish "laws". The Long Liver of Prohibitions was announced publicly. According to it, Jews did not have the right to use public transport, visit public places, work in their speci alty, and most importantly, leave their home without an identification mark - a yellow six-pointed star.
Anti-Semitism that existed for centuries was widespread among the Poles, and therefore there were not so many sympathizers of the Jews. The Nazis, on the other hand, constantly fueled hatred.
Six months after the occupation of Poland, the formation of the so-called quarantine zone began, based on an absurd claim about the spreadinfectious disease. The carriers of the disease, according to the Nazis, were Jews. They were relocated to quarters previously inhabited by 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 fall of 1940. The special territory was fenced with a three-meter brick wall. Escape from the ghetto was first punishable by arrest, then by execution. The life of the Warsaw Jews became more and more difficult 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 entrepreneurial spirit inherent in the representatives of the Jewish people contributed to the opening of small enterprises, schools, and hospitals on the territory of the ghetto. Many residents of this closed zone believed in the best, and almost none of them had any idea about the imminent death. However, the conditions became more and more unbearable.
Today, while watching a movie or reading a book dedicated to 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 their existence, it would seem, without thinking about the struggle for their own freedom. But it wasn't always like this.
The number of Jews decreased every day. People were dying of hunger and disease. Executions, while not yet massive, took place already in the first days of the occupation. During 1941 alone, about a hundred thousand Jews perished. But each of the survivorscontinued to believe that death would not overtake him or his loved ones. And he continued a peaceful, by no means militant existence. Until the Nazi leadership started the machine for the mass extermination of Jews. Then an event took place that went down in history as the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.
Treblinka
Eighty kilometers northeast of the Polish capital is a place whose name was unknown to anyone in the world before the start of World War II. 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 higher. Members of the resistance would not have passed death. But, unfortunately, most of them died in battle on the streets of the Polish capital. The uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto is an example of amazing heroism.
This is the backstory of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But a question arises. How could the exhausted prisoners fight the Nazis? Where did they get their weapons from? And how did the information about the existence of the death camp leaked into the ghetto?
Secret organizations
Since 1940, several socio-political associations have operated on the territory of the ghetto. Discussions about the need to fight against the Nazis had been going on since 1940, but did not make sense in the absence of weapons. The first revolver was handed over to the closed territory in the fall of 1942. Around the same time, the Jewish combatan organization that maintains contact with parties whose members were outside the ghetto.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The date of this event is April 19, 1943. There were about 1500 rebels. The Germans advanced through the main gate, but the inhabitants of the ghetto met them with fire. Fierce fighting went on for almost a month. The day of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto forever became a day of remembrance for the courageous rebels, whose weapons were negligible. The resistance members had no chance of winning. But even when the ghetto was completely destroyed, individual groups continued to fight. During the fighting, about seven thousand rebels died. Almost as many burned alive.
Participants in the ghetto uprising have become Israel's national heroes. In the Polish capital, a monument to fallen soldiers was opened in 1948.
