The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and others
Despite the many obstacles to resistance, there existed secret networks of communication between some of the ghettos. It was very often women who established and maintained these networks, at great risk, and their very existence was an act of daring resistance which led to even more, such as the Warsaw Ghetto revolt.

Arrest of a Jewish Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighter

Between July and September of 1942 approximately 300 000 Jews were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to what they assumed was certain death at the camp of Treblinka. By 1943 just under 60 000 Jews remained in the ghetto. When Himmler visited that year he ordered the deportation of another 8000 of them.

But for once, en masse, the Jews did not report as ordered. This marked the start of a full-scale revolt with partisan tactics and bitter street fighting. Using stolen, smuggled and captured weapons, the Jewish Ghetto Fighters led by Mordechai Anielewicz drove the German soldiers out. On April 19 1943 a major German attack using both tanks and heavy guns was also repelled and again the German soldiers retreated. On April 20 the Germans attacked a factory area of the ghetto but were forced to retreat yet again when the Jews set off a mine. The Germans cut off the ghetto’s electricity, water and gas but still the Jews did not surrender, using as their motto “LIVE AND DIE WITH DIGNITY”. The next day the Germans returned and set the ghetto on fire. As the buildings burned, Jews leapt from their windows and emerged from cellars. “We took pains,” said the German commander General Jurgen Stroop, “to ensure that those Jews, as well as others, were wiped out immediately.”

The Germans expected to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto within three days; in fact it took them almost one month, until May 10th. At the end they had to send gas into the ghetto sewers, where the last fighters remained. In total, 56 000 Jewish resistance fighters were killed, including Mordechai Anielewicz, but the triumph was all theirs. As Anielewicz had written on April 23rd: “The dream of my life has come true. Jewish self defense in the Warsaw ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and retaliation have become a reality. I have been witness to the magnificent heroic struggle of the Jewish fighters.”

Warsaw is the most famous of the Jewish ghetto revolts, but it was by no means the only one. During the period 1942-3 there were no fewer than 20 such revolts in ghettos including at Mir (August 9 1942), Brody (May 17 1943) and Lublin (November 3 1943).