By Collin Box
When I was in middle school, there was a kid who liked to pick on me. Most days he would walk by and hit me with his trumpet case. One day I finally got up the courage to do something about it. I hit him with my French horn case. He had put me in a constant state of fearing what was coming each day. When I finally reacted to my tormentor I began to again live life on my own terms. The people who were forced into living in the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto in the 1940s had a much more vicious and cruel tormentor running their lives. For a while they merely watched their tragedy unfold. They saw their loved ones taken off to the death camps, and for a long while they did nothing about it. Finally, several leaders began to formulate the idea that they could, in fact, resist. Yet for the people of the Warsaw ghetto the odds were stacked against them. They were completely out-numbered and had no military training. Even those who had the training had very few arms. Resistance to their Nazi captors would be suicidal. We must then ask, what could be gained through their resistance? Did it have some deeper meaning to those who fought back? In the long run, what symbolism and purpose would it provide for other Jews and Gentiles throughout Europe? Simply put, resistance was a means for those under Nazi persecution to regain their humanity.
 
I would first like to illustrate what was happening in the lives of the Jews involved with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Warsaw ghetto was established on October 16, 1940 by order of Governor -General Hans Frank. The idea behind the ghetto was to place all Jews into concentrated locations where they could be controlled and monitored. The initial population of the Warsaw ghetto was some four hundred thousand Jews. That amounted to roughly thirty percent of the population of Warsaw. The four hundred thousand Jews were concentrated onto and area of land that amounted to two point four percent of the total land area of Warsaw. On November 16, 1944 the ghetto was officially close to the outside world. No one would be allowed to enter or leave, with the exception of German soldiers and officials. Even before the exportation of Jews to death camps a campaign to reduce their numbers was begun. The average food ration for the Jews of the ghetto amounted to two hundred and fifty calories a day compared to a food ration of almost two thousand six hundred calories a day for the average German. This was an obvious attempt to starve many of the Jews to death and to weaken those who did not starve outright.[1] Barbara Burstin in writing about the plight of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto states, “Starvation and disease were rampant. Given the circumstances in which they lived, it is likely that if the Germans had not killed the Jews, they would have been dead anyway within five or six years.”[2] On July 22, 1942 the Germans informed the Judenrat, headed by Adam Czerniakow, that all non-essential working Jews would be deported. Czerniakow tried desperately to convince the Germans not deport any of the Jews. When all his efforts failed he commited suicide. In his suicide letter he stated that, “I can no longer bear all this. My act will prove to everyone what is the right thing to do.”[3] Czerniakow would be one of the first to realize that facing death on his own terms was better than facing the death that awaited him through the Nazis. Between July 22 and September 21 the deportations would reduce the population of the ghetto to around thirty to sixty thousand. Those deported were sent to various concentration camps to be killed in the most efficient manner the Nazis could devise. Most often the Jews’ final destination would be Treblinka.[4] Dr. Lensky, a survivor of the deportations, would later describe the aftermath:
 
If we compare the mood of the Jewish population before and after the operations of the summer, we can readily establish that there was a profound change in the Jews’ state of mind. The sense of perplexity and impotence and the specious evaluations of the situation were all put behind them. Every man and woman, even every child, resolved not to give in to the German demands, to resist by all means possible, and not to go to Treblinka.[5]
 
Seeing so many of their own friends and family sent to be slaughtered by the Nazi machine had sown the seeds for armed resistance among the remaining survivors in the ghetto.
 
The Germans would be lead by SS-Grupenfuhrer Jurgen Stroop. Stroop was born on September 6, 1895. He was the son of a Policeman. By 1932 he had joined SS and had become a member of the Nazi party. In April of 1943 Himler would make Stroop the chief of the SS in the Warsaw district. After the Warsaw uprising Stroop would become the SS’ chief of police in Greece. Stroop, like many other Nazis, had a preconceived notion of the Jews. He believed they were “bandits, cowards, and sub-humans.”[6] I believe this attitude and his general overconfidence are a large reason why it took him much longer than the three days he believed he would need to crush the uprising in Warsaw.
 
On the Jewish side the first organization of note is the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB) or Jewish Fighting Organization. It was founded on July 28, 1942 by younger Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. The most serious problem that was initially faced by the ZOB was a lack of arms and ammunition. The ZOB was sympathetic to the Soviets, so there was little support from the Polish underground. The Poles hated the Germans but were also very reluctant to support anyone who supported the Russians. Burstin observes, “Jewish efforts to secure arms from the underground Polish home army, to find shelter on the Aryan side, and to secure Polish assistance were met with apathy, if not outright hostility.”[7] Despite a lack of arms the ZOB moved forward with its plan to implement violent resistance within the Warsaw ghetto. Initially they did not target the Germans. They believed that it was more important to target fellow Jews who were collaborating with the Germans and therefore hurting the residents of the Ghetto. Their first target of any prominence would be the head of the Jewish police. Their most famous target would be Dr. Alfred Nossig, a Zionist, who turned informer for the Germans. The ZOB would fire the first shots that began the uprising in January of 1943.[8]
 
The other major Jewish organization to play a role in the uprising was the Zydowski Zwinek Wojskowy (ZZW) or Jewish Fighting Union. The ZZW was founded in November of 1939 by former Jewish/Polish military officers. Due to the fact that the ZZW was not as radical as the ZOB, as such they had a much easier time securing arms from outside the ghetto through contacts with the Polish underground. When the main uprising began in April of 1943 the ZZW would supply almost four hundred semi-trained men to help in the fighting.[9]
 
Fighting began in January of 1943. It was at this time that the Germans announced there would be a second wave of deportations. Yechiel Gorni described the morning of the 18th as follows, “The street is surrounded by gendarmes, the palazovkas are not being allowed out of the ghetto, a blockade-its definitely an Aktion…The house dissolves into an uproar-we must hide, and we all crawl into the shelter.”[10] The ZOB decided to act against the Germans. “Organized resistance only began when all hope had been crushed, when young leaders who no longer had any illusions about Nazi intentions were able to wrest control from an older generation who could not believe in the reality of the final solution.”[11] On the 18th they blended into the crowds preparing to be loaded onto the trains for deportation. When the Germans began to load people onto the trains the ZOB opened fire. Fighting would go on sporadically for four day. At the end of this time the Germans abandoned their second deportation and left the ghetto.[12] Despite the fact that an estimated one thousand Jews were killed and another three thousand deported in the four days, most of the fighters viewed the January resistance as a victory. Gutman reminds us that the Jews regarded the renewal of the action as a sign of the final total liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto.[13] Therefore the fact that they had delayed their inevitable deaths even a little bit was reason enough to consider it a victory. Furthermore the Jews had come to the realization that armed resistance could repel the Germans. This gave them even more confidence. Gutman acknowledges that at this point he and other Jews truly realized that there was an alternative to the system put in place by the Judenrat and the Germans. Dr. Lensky further observes, “This organization (the ZOB) has chosen a new way of dealing with the Nazis. Hope was revised in the hearts of the doomed.”[14] Fighting would not resume for three months. During this time the Jews realized that they must prepare for the death blow that would come from the Germans.
 
“The interval between January 22 and April 19, 1943-a total of eighty seven days-was a time of intensive and decisive consolidation for the resistance forces and reinforcement of the combat organizations in anticipation of the final uprising.”[15] Curiously, the Germans seemed to just leave the Jews in the ghetto alone during this three month period. The Jews used the extra time to prepare and mount an effective resistance when the Germans counter-attacked. Prior to the Aktion of January 1943 the Jews had already found many places to hide. Most of these were simply cellars and attics of various buildings in the ghetto. After the Aktion it was deemed necessary to create better shelters and hard points from which to fight a more effective resistance. In this three month period the Jews would create an elaborate underground network. When all was said and done over seven hundred bunkers had been constructed.[16] Many of the bunkers were set up as elaborate living quarters. They had spaces for eating, sleeping, and leisure. All of the bunkers were connected together using the Warsaw sewer system. The sewer was also used to access the Aryan part of Warsaw. The use of the sewer also allowed for access to fresh water and electricity.[17] In addition to creating the bunkers the Jews went about the process of arming themselves for the fight. Limited amounts of arms were obtained through the support of the Poles. The majority of the makeshift weapons the fighters used came from a munitions factory within the ghetto itself. They took the munitions and made improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails. When the eighty seven days were up, the Germans mounted their assault on the ghetto.[18]
 
When fighting commenced on April 19, 1943 Gutman estimates that the total fighting force of the ZOB and ZZW combined was some 750 men.[19] This is compared to a force of 2054 men and 36 officers making up the daily force assigned to ghetto operations by the Germans.[20] The Jews divided themselves into three main battle groups. One held the central ghetto, the second would be responsible for the area called the “shops,” the final group took what was called the “Bushmakers’” area. Beginning at 3:00am on April 19 the Germans entered the ghetto. The first fighting occurred on Nalewski St. Gutman writes that, “The surprise was total and the power of the fire-especially the bombs and hand grenades-inflicted injuries to the enemy and sowed havoc in its ranks, so much so that the Germans retreated and dispersed, leaving their casualties lying in the streets.”[21] Most of the fighting on the first day took place around the square at Zamenhofa and Mita streets. It was here that the Germans had decided to establish a makeshift headquarters. They arrived at this place with several light tanks and the rest of their equipment. Stroop describes what took place, “As soon as the units deployed, a premeditated attack by the Jews and the bandits; Molotov cocktails were thrown on the tank and on two armored cars. The tank was burning fiercely.”[22] The first day of renewed combat was a success for the Jews. They had successfully repelled the Germans. That would be the last of their success. Adam Halperin describes what he witnessed on the second day of fighting, “As the battle grew more heated, the situation of the Betar fighters (part of the ZOB) deteriorated…The Germans began to set fire to the buildings on Meranowska Street, and the Jewish fighters were forced to leave the burning buildings under a hail of machine-gun fire.”[23] By the end of day two the Germans had taken almost all the open areas of the ghetto. They had pushed the Jews back to Meranowska Square in the North-Eastern part of the ghetto. Day two would also see the Germans recapture the munitions factory that had been abandoned three months earlier. The Germans found that they had great success against the hidden Jews when they used flamethrowers against their bunkers. Five days into the fighting, on April 23, Stroop would receive an order from Himler calling for the “complete combing out of Warsaw ghetto with greatest severity and relentless tenacity.”[24] The following day Stroop began a campaign in which the Germans would burn the entire ghetto, block by block. Using this method of burning combined with artillery support, Stroop would comment that at the end of the fighting only eight buildings remained standing in the ghetto. The fire had its desired effect and forced the remaining Jews completely underground. Stroop reported that, “Scores of burning Jews-whole families-jumped from windows or tried to slide down sheets that had been tied together, etc. We took pains to ensure that those Jews, as well as others, were wiped out immediately.”[25] Stroop would later admit that though he found success in his method of burning everything to the ground it was not effective against the bunkers the Jews had constructed. Gutman gives a description of what life in the bunker was like at this time:
 
I can’t think of anything but breathing air. The heat in the bunker is unbearable. It’s not only the heat. The steaming walls give off an odor as if the mildew absorbed during decades had suddenly been released by the catalyst of heat. And there’s no air. I sit here open-mouthed, as do all those around me, deluding ourselves that we can gulp down some air. There is no talk in the bunker it is more difficult to breathe when you talk. But from time to time shouting and scuffles break out; nerves are taut, and for the most part the shouts are over nothing. We haven’t eaten for twenty four hours. Only dry bread is left and the water is more or less fit for drinking. All the food has spoiled. The heat and the odor have tainted it, so that the ample reserves are inedible.[26]
 
Despite all their careful preparations the Jews had essentially created ovens in which they were being baked alive. When Mordecai Anielewicz, the commander of the ZOB, saw what was taking place in the ghetto from his position in the Aryan side of the city he wrote, “I can’t begin to describe the conditions under which the Jews are living. Our fate is sealed.”[27] Despite the fact that not even Stroop would declare the uprising over for another twenty four days, it was painfully obvious that the real resistance ended with the burning of the ghetto. Stroop estimates that the fires alone killed approximately five to six thousand Jews.[28] A fighter named Eldelman seems to some it up best when he says, “It is difficult to speak of victory when people are fighting for their lives and so may are lost, but one thing can be said of this battle: We did not allow the Germans to execute their plans.”[29] One of the most decisive blows to the Jews would come on May 8th when the Germans attacked and destroyed a bunker at 18 Mita Street. This was the headquarters of the ZOB. Mordecai Anielewicz died there. In Stroop’s view the uprising was officially over when he destroyed the Synagogue on Tlamackis St. on May 16th. Two thousand years before, Tiberius leveled the synagogue in Jerusalem after the Jews revolted. I have no doubt that Stroop viewed his destruction of the Warsaw ghetto synagogue as a perfect parallel to Tiberius’ actions. Stroop reports that 56,065 Jews were captured during the uprising. Of these, seven thousand were shot on location. Another six thousand nine-hundred twenty-nine were shipped to Treblinka for immediate extermination. The surviving Jews were distributed to various work camps. His official report listed the German casualties as sixteen dead and seventy eight wounded. Burstin makes some argument against Stroop’s report sighting several sources saying that those numbers were extremely low so as to allow Stroop to retain some of his dignity. She placed the German casualties at around 400 dead and 1000 wounded.[30] An estimated nineteen thousand Jews were killed and another forty two thousand captured. The Jews of Warsaw were gone.[31]
 
It can be said that resistance was almost a foreign concept to the Jews of Europe. Prior to World War II, the last time the Jews as a race had put forth major resistance was their uprising against the Romans in Jerusalem almost two thousand years before. Raul Hilberg reflects that, “The Jews were not oriented toward resistance. They took up resistance only in a few cases, locally, and at the last moment.” He continues, “The Jews attempted to tame the Germans as one would attempt to tame a wild beast. They avoided provocations and complied instantly with decrees and orders.”[32] This makes it look as if the Jews were a passive people who cared little for what was done to them. On the contrary they simply did what was necessary to survive in modern Europe. Anti-Semitism was not something that Hitler created. It has existed as long as there have been Jews. The Jew’s seemingly passive nature and their efforts to fit in to European society were just methods they used to help them live a more peaceful life. Because of this I think it is no shock that the Germans were completely surprised when they met with armed resistance in Warsaw. This race of people who they considered subhuman were standing up to them. Jerzy Kirchman, a Polish General summed it up well when he said, “The blow delivered by the Jewish fighters hurt badly the prestige of General Stroop’s heroes, who also armed to the teeth, were forced to bring in tanks, artillery, and planes against insurgents who were almost completely devoid of arms.”[33] This leads us to the purpose of the resistance and the consequences that came as a result of the Jews willingness to fight to the death.
 
The Jews’ resistance is what Werner Rings would call Resistance enchained which was, “The desperate fight of those who were cut off, without help, and with practically no hope of surviving.”[34] Despite this condition, the Jews had several goals in mounting a knowingly suicidal resistance to the Germans.
 
Their first goal was to provide themselves with some relief from the persecution they were subject to daily. Burstin states, “relief for Hitler’s victims began on April 19, 1943, the very day the last survivors began their last futile battle in Warsaw.”[35] Relief, as far as the Jews could tell, would come from nowhere but their own actions. The Bermuda Conference on Refugees would begin on the very same day as the Warsaw uprising. Its purpose was to plan relief for Hitler’s victims. The conference was a farce. Richard Law called it a, “façade for inaction.”[36] The Jews were right; only they could help themselves. Furthermore the Jews wanted death to come on their terms. “They will consider it a victory if some of those imprisoned in the ghetto can escape; they will consider it a victory if the enemy’s forces are weakened a bit; and finally, they will consider it a victory if they can die with weapons in hands.”[37]
 
By resisting they established that they were human. They could think and act independently of what the Germans tried to get them to do. They were not animals that would go peacefully to their deaths. They wanted to control the way in which they died. No longer would they be lead to the gas-chambers like lambs to the slaughter. Hannah Arendt states, “The glory of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and the heroism of the few others who fought back lay precisely in their having refused the comparatively easy death the Nazis offered them-before the firing-squad or in the gas chamber.”[38]
 
Finally the Jews wished to assert their right as human beings to exist. “From a helpless people, a flock slaughtered by the German murderers, the Jews have risen to the level of a fighting people. And even if they do not fight for their existence-which is out of the question, considering the absolute superiority of the enemy-they have nonetheless demonstrated their right to national existence.”[39] The Jews willingness to fight for their existence demonstrated that they indeed deserve to exist.
 
The Jews in the Warsaw ghetto could not have known the consequences their actions would have outside of their confined existence. Nonetheless their actions served as a catalyst to jumpstart the actions of others. In Poland for example, Kirchmayer would write that the Jewish uprising, “gave birth to the intensified struggle against the fascist invaders and from this struggle cam victory.”[40] The Polish people saw the success of an untrained group against the Nazis. After seeing this they too came to believe that they could mount a more successful resistance against the Nazis. In the end their attempt ended in a massive failure as is evident from the destruction of the Polish forces at the Warsaw revolt of 1944.
 
What is gained through a suicidal resistance? The Jews gained their humanity. In the face of an enemy that regarded them a cowards and sub-human, they fought back. They were not the animals that the Nazis thought them to be. They would not allow themselves to be slaughtered like animals. Their resistance to the Nazi machine proved that the Nazis were wrong. The Jews were as human as they were. They had a will to live and they fought for their lives. Everything they did countered the arguments that the Germans made for why they should be exterminated. Friedrich Nietzsche’s comment is apropos, “How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.” By this reasoning the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto uprising were “the highest type of free man.”

[1] Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943 Ghetto, Underground, Revolt, (Bloomington: Indian a University Press, 1982). 48-118[2] Barbara Burstin, “The Warsaw Ghetto: A Shattered Window on the Holocaust,” The History Teacher (Aug., 1980). 536[3] Adam Czerniakow, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, trans. Stanislaw Staron (New York 1979). 385.[4] Gutman, 197-227.[5] Dr. Lensky, in Ibid. 284[6] Burstin, 533.[7] Ibid, 535.[8] Gutman, 228-249 324-335.[9] Ibid, 228-249.[10] Yechiel Gorni, “Aktsiye Nr. 2, 28 January 1943″ in Gutman, 310.
[11] Burstin, 540.
[12] Jurgen Stroop, The Warsaw Ghetto is No More, (New York, 1979). 2-5. This is also know as the Stroop Report, it consists of 75 pages documenting the uprising. In future references I will use dates do to the lack of page numbers.
[13] Gutman, 317.
[14] Dr. Lensky, 319
[15] Gutman, 325.
[16] Stroop, Number comes from his report on total bunkers found.
[17] Facts in this paragraph from descriptions by Stroop in part I of the report.
[18] Gutman, 336-363.
[19] Ibid, 365.
[20] Stroop, 1. See Table.
[21] Gutman, 372.
[22] Stroop, daily report from April 20th
[23] Adam Halperin, in Gutman, 377.
[24] Stroop, report from April 24
[25] Ibid, reports from April 22
[26] Gutman, 388.
[27] Mordecai Anielewicz, in Gutman, 390.
[28] Stroop, Final Report
[29] Edleman, in Gutman, 392.
[30] Burstin, 534.
[31] Stroop, Report from May 16 and Final Report.
[32] Raul Hilberg, Czerniakow. 87.
[33] Jerzy Kirchmayer, in Reuben Ainsztein, The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt (New York, 1979), 171.
[34] Werner Rings, Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler’s Europe 1939-1945 (New York 1982), 280.
[35] Burstin, 532.
[36] Richard Law, in Ibid 532.
[37] Biuletyn Informacyjny, Gutman, 404.
[38] Hannah Arendt, Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York 1966) 12.
[39] Mysl Panstwowa, in Gutman, 404
[40] Kirchmayer, 171.