What Is The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?

Throughout the Holocaust, Jews organized resistance movements in ghettos, concentration, and extermination camps. Although they had virtually no weapons and faced one of the largest arsenals in the world, the Jewish people fought for their honor and freedom. Without any hope victory and in the face of death, resistance fighters found the courage to take on evil in its purest form. Their efforts must not go in vein; to them we must accord our respect. This is a brief testimony of their fight against the Nazi regime.

The resistance inside the Warsaw ghetto caused casualties on the German forces that were well armed and equipped SS and police units. Continuing to resist being taken as individuals and in small groups for four weeks before their resistance was stopped on May 16th.

    The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was organized by Jews in an underground group called the ZOB. The Jews were being held in the ghetto, and the Nazis began deportations to an extermination camp. The ZOB collectively organized an attack in order to stop the deportations. Then, “The resistance sprang into action. Jewish fighters could strike [the Nazis] quickly, then escape on rooftops,” (Berenbaum 4). Jews crowded the Nazis, using whatever weapons they could find to strike them. It had seemed like their efforts had been successful, because, “the German deportations effort ended within a few days… from then on the [ZOB] dominated the ghetto,” (Berenbaum 4). The Jews were in charge of their ghetto, and they felt freed. Unfortunately, a few days later the deportations to the extermination camps resumed, and the Jews could no longer fight.

The Holocaust was an example of how horrible humanity can be, with over 6 million deaths, it is still remembered today. Throughout Europe, many people were placed in concentration camps, and most were placed in ghettos before this. Many groups decided to rebel against this, however, including within the ghettos.

Like sheep led to the slaughter; this is one of the most famous analogies used to refer to the Jews during the holocaust. The Jews were being systematically murdered, beaten, and abused day after day, and there was almost no refusal on their part. Almost no one fought back. This however was not the case in the Warsaw ghetto.

When the ghettos were first developed, the Jews presumed it was a safe place free of the oppressing outside world: “In Poland, the Jews . . . resigned themselves to the establishment of ghettos and hoped that living together in mutual cooperation under self-rule would make it easier for them to overcome the period of repression until their country would be liberated from the Nazi yoke.” (Berenbaum 3). Most of the Jewish people were cooperative, believing they would be freed soon: “If within the ghetto, they presumed they would somehow be safer, as they would no longer interact with non-Jews in quite the same way and be freed of daily humiliations and dangers.” (Berenbaum 4). They tried to live their normal lives as each day passed by. Tragically, the Jews had no idea of the Nazis true plans for them. When the truth of the “final solution” for the Jews was revealed to the community, revolts against the police and officials

The Warsaw Ghetto held over 400,000 Jews, starving them and ravaging them with disease. After two years of persecuting and executing Jews, an uprising ended the reign of terror, killing hundreds of thousands of rebellious prisoners and leaving the rest to be sent to other death camps. The story of the Warsaw Ghetto gave many, many Jews hope that they could indeed fight back against Hitler and survive.

was a World War II ghetto established by the Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews

When people think of the word ghetto today they think of an impoverished area of a city. The ghettos of World War II have a similar but nonetheless different definition. The ghettos of World War II were small parts of cities sectioned off to keep Jews in a confined area before eventual extermination. The Jews held there were more than just impoverished like today’s residents of ghettos. They were starved, beaten, and overworked. Ghettos were seen as just a step to Hitler’s final solution, or the extermination of Jews from Nazi occupied territory. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe. It held 400,000 Jews in 1.3 square miles. From the Warsaw Ghetto only 11,500 Jews survived. The Warsaw Ghetto was a place that

Despite the Nazis best attempt to destroy their lives and strip away all their humanity, the Jews still found a way to resist the oppression and fight back. Their were often uprisings in the ghettos and camps, where the Jews would use all they could and fight the Nazi soldiers for their freedom. Today I will be talking about the Auschwitz Birkenau Uprising.

Some of the Jews were able to hide out in the ghettos. Others were able to escape from the concentration camps. In some cases organized resistance was formed in the ghettos amongst the Jews. For example, in the Polish capitol of Warsaw, individual Jews continued to hide themselves in the ghetto ruins for many months after they were forcefully told to leave by the Nazis. These resistance fighters often attacked German police officials on patrol. Approximately 20,000 Warsaw Jews continued to live in hiding in Warsaw long after the liquidation of the ghetto.

Their main goals were to organize uprisings, break out of the ghettos, and join partisan units in the fight against the Germans.The Jews knew that uprisings would not stop the Germans and that only a handful of fighters would succeed in escaping to join the partisans. Still, some Jews made the decision to resist. Weapons were smuggled into ghettos. Inhabitants in the ghettos of Vilna, Mir, Lachva , Kremenets, Częstochowa, Nesvizh, Sosnowiec, and Tarnow, among others, resisted with force when the Germans began to deport ghetto populations. In Bialystok, the underground staged an uprising just before the final destruction of the ghetto in September 1943. Most of the ghetto fighters, primarily young men and women, died during the fighting.The Warsaw ghetto uprising in the spring of 1943 was the largest single revolt by Jews. Hundreds of Jews fought the Germans and their auxiliaries in the streets of the ghetto. Thousands of Jews refused to obey German orders to report to an assembly point for deportation. In the end the Nazis burned the ghetto to the ground to force the Jews out. Although they knew defeat was certain, Jews in the ghetto fought desperately and

“Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the “Soviet Union”(Jewish resistance). The holocaust lasted from about 1939-1945. In that time frame, jews were forced to wear stars that labeled them as jews, lived in ghettos, and did labor. Many tried to escape this way of living but ended up being killed. During the Holocaust, Jews used armed, spiritual and unarmed forms of resistance in order to retain their humanity.

During the Holocaust, there were many resistance groups and people. The Jewish resistance, however, started in 1942. The people in the Jewish resistance consisted of people who were against the German and Nazis’ ways. There were not many Jews who knew what was going on or where they were going when they got on those trains but the people who knew tried to resist. They would either run away from the trains or attack the captors. Others committed suicide that way they didn’t even go to the camp to get tortured. The people that would disobey the Nazis would get a punishment, which may include additional work to more extreme, execute on the spot. ("The White Rose - A Lesson In Dissent")