Resistance

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. THE FIRST WEEKS OF WAR

2. THE JEWS OF WARSAW BETWEEN THE WARS

3. A NEW AND DIFFERENT EXISTENCE

4. THE GHETTO IS SEALED

5. THE TURNING POINT

6. POLITICAL PARTIES AND YOUTH MOVEMENTS

7. DEPORTATION TO DEATH

8. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE JEWISH FIGHTING ORGANIZATION

9. BETWEEN THE EXPULSION AND JANUARY 1943

10. JANUARY 1943: THE FIRST INSTANCE OF RESISTANCE

11. THE END

Bibliographical Notes

Index

About the Author

Published in association with the Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

 

Copyright © 1994 by Israel Gutman
All rights reserved

 

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

 

www.hmhbooks.com

 

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print version as follows:
Gutman, Israel.

Resistance : the Warsaw Ghetto uprising / Israel Gutman.
p. cm.
"A Marc Jaffe book."

"A publication of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-395-60199-1 ISBN 0-395-90130-8 (pbk.)
1. Jews—Poland—Warsaw—Persecutions. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) —Poland—Warsaw. 3. Warsaw (Poland)—History— Uprising of 1943. 4. Warsaw (Poland)—Ethnic relations. I. Title.
DSI
35.
P
62
W
2728 1994
943.8'4 —dc20 93–46767
CIP

 

Maps by Dewey G. Hicks. Reprinted by permission of Dewey G. Hicks and the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

 

"Campo dei Fiori" from
The Collected Poems
by Czeslaw Milosz. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Ecco Press.

 

Note: Some of the photos contained in the print edition of this book have been excluded from the e-book edition due to permissions issues.

 

eISBN 978-0-15-603584-2
v2.0912

In memory of Irit

I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to colleagues and friends who encouraged me along the way as this work was carried out.

I wish to thank my friend Mr. Jeshajahu Weinberg, the Director of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, who initiated the project of writing this book, and Professor Michael Berenbaum, Director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute, who contributed many constructive suggestions as well as his editorial skills.

Mr. Marc Jaffe, the editor of this work for Houghton Mifflin, has demonstrated friendship and patience. His experience and advice were of substantial importance in the process of shaping the structure of the book.

My thanks to Mrs. Ethel Broido, who translated the manuscript with dedication and skill from Hebrew to English.

This book is one of the initial publications of the United States Holocaust Research Institute. (Founded in December 1993, the Institute is the scholarly division of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Its mission is to serve as an international resource for the development of research on the Holocaust and related issues, including those of contemporary significance.) Several of its staff members contributed to the publication of this book.

Betsy Chock graciously and selflessly assisted with the typing of the manuscript. Linda Harris and Bryan Lazar scanned chapters into the computer. Scott Miller assisted with some translation and fact checking. Genya Markon and Teresa Amiel of the museum's photo archives helped select the photographs and write the captions. Dewey Hicks and William Meinecke prepared the maps. Dr. David Luebke, former Director of Publications at the museum, assisted in preparing this work for publication. So too did Aleisa Fishman, who proofread the manuscript and handled other chores in preparation for publication. Janice Cook and Jeffrey Burridge helped in the editing of this work.

Lydia Perry and Deirdre McCarthy, who served as assistants to Professor Berenbaum, were gracious and able. Their assistance was invaluable. Ms. Perry typed sections of this manuscript and saw to it that other sections were ready for editing. Ms. McCarthy saw to it that the work was ready for publication.

1 am pleased that telling the story of resistance in the Warsaw ghetto was so central a concern to this institution.

 

ISRAEL GUTMAN
Jerusalem
December 1993

N
O ACT OF
Jewish resistance during the Holocaust fired the imagination quite as much as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943. It was an event of epic proportions, pitting a few poorly armed, starving Jews against the might of Nazi power. The ghetto Uprising was the first urban rebellion of consequence in any of the Nazi-occupied countries and was a significant point in Jewish history. The Uprising represents defiance and great sacrifice in a world characterized by destruction and death.

The Polish writer Kazimierz Bradys called Warsaw "the invincible city." "Warsaw," he wrote, "was the capital of World War II," for the city symbolized all that was both sublime and tragic during the war—and the ghetto was the heart of the Warsaw tragedy. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a historical event, but it also has become a symbol of Jewish resistance and determination, a moment in history that has transformed the self-perception of the Jewish people from passivity to active armed struggle. The Uprising has shaped Israel's national self-understanding. It is viewed as the first Jewish rebellion since the heroic days of the Bar Kochba revolt in 13 5 C.E. The Uprising has become a universal symbol of resistance and courage.

The commanders of the Uprising were young men in their twenties, Zionists, Communists, socialists—idealists with no battle experience, no military training. With but a few weapons and limited ammunition, they knew that they had no chance to succeed. Their choice was ultimate: not whether to live or to die, but what choice to make as to their death.

We begin this work at the end: the ghetto, which only two years earlier had become the home of 400,000 Jews, is empty. Bereft of its population, the ghetto is reduced to rubble. Buried beneath its streets are the material remains of Jewish culture and civilization. Some sixty miles away in the skies around Treblinka are the ashes of the Jews of Warsaw who were brought in the summer of 1942 by train to its gas chambers. Within hours of their arrival, their material possessions confiscated, their hair shaved, they were gassed and their bodies cremated, sent up in smoke.

To understand the full meaning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, we must sojourn among the Jews of Warsaw on the eve of World War II. Warsaw was a metropolis, the capital of the Polish Republic, and the largest center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. It was also the heart of Eastern European Jewish culture during a time of transition and intense creativity. Political movements were centered in Warsaw; Zionists and Bundists, Communists and socialists competed for the allegiance of the young. Jewish theater and film thrived in Warsaw, Jewish newspapers proliferated. Jewish-Polish relations were changing as Jews entered the mainstream of Polish society. Jewish religious life was intense and devout. The religious community was piously observant, the secularists ardently secular. The religious community was deeply divided among the Hasidim and their opponents (
mitnagdim
), Mizrachi (Zionist Orthodox Jews), and the fiercely anti-Zionist Agudath Israel. The tensions and diversity within pre-war Warsaw's Jewish community continued in the ghetto and shaped ghetto life.

Just before World War II, Warsaw's Jewish population was 375,000, almost 30 percent of the city's total. One could not think of Warsaw without considering its Jews, who were to be found in every part of the city, though it was its northern part that contained the traditional Jewish neighborhoods. Jewish Warsaw was a city of contrasts. Offices of Jewish political parties and of many welfare, educational, and religious institutions were headquartered in Warsaw. Most of the Jewish periodicals, published in a variety of languages, were located in Warsaw. There were Jewish publishing houses, theater groups, and sports clubs. Warsaw was the home of writers and poets, including S. Anski (author of
The Dybbuk),
Y. L. Peretz, and the Singers—Isaac Bashevis and Israel Joshua. The Warsaw that was flourishing with Jewish culture stood in stark contrast to the depressed status and abject poverty of the Jewish masses who constituted so visible a part of the city.

The Nazi invasion of Poland on September i, 1939, transformed and divided the city. By September 8 the Nazis stood at the gates of Warsaw. The Poles decided to resist as long as possible, thus the city was bombarded from the air; twenty days later it fell. More than one quarter of its buildings were destroyed or damaged. Casualties were high: fifty thousand dead or wounded. The German entry into Warsaw ended an era; the diversity, intensity, and distinctness of the pre-war city were gone. Three and a half years later, Jewish Warsaw stood in ruins, its ghetto reduced to rubble.

After occupation, the Nazis followed a familiar pattern established in Germany: Jews were first identified, and by December they were required to wear the Jewish star. Jewish property was confiscated and the remaining Jewish shops were marked. From local shops to art collections, from factories to private libraries, the Nazis followed a disciplined procedure of confiscation. All radios were taken. Collective responsibility and punishment were imposed: the deed of one endangered all. Jews were isolated from their former neighbors and concentrated into restricted living quarters. Forced labor was required, and the Jewish Council members were charged with the task of gathering the needed workers. The poor substituted for more affluent conscripts in response to ever increasing German demands. Class divisions deepened. They were soon to narrow: both the rich and the poor grew increasingly poorer. By the summer of 1940, more than 100,000 workers, more than 2.5 percent of the Jewish population, were conscripted by the Nazis. They faced long hours, no pay, and sadistic masters.

The Jewish Council was formed with the remnants of previous leadership. Adam Czerniakow, an engineer who had previously served on the Jewish Community Council, was appointed its head. The behavior of the Judenrat in Warsaw during the Holocaust has always been a matter of considerable controversy. The debate intensified with the charges made by Hannah Arendt in
Eichmann in Jerusalem
that had the Jews been leaderless and without formal institutions, the task of killing them would have been considerably more difficult. Arendt charged that Jewish leaders, wittingly or unwittingly, became tools of the Nazis. In the past three decades the ardor of this debate has not diminished. Czerniakow struggled to serve two masters—the Nazis, who viewed the Judenrat as an indispensable instrument of their policies, and the Jews, whose ever growing needs he desperately tried to meet.

On November 16, 1940, the ghetto was sealed. Over the next years, the population of the Warsaw ghetto would vary from 380,000 to 440,000 Jews. Death was pervasive throughout the ghetto. In 1941, 43,000 inhabitants died inside the ghetto, more than one in ten of its residents. Every day, ghetto residents struggled for survival. Jewish Self-Help manned the soup kitchens and provided fuel and coal, meager resources in the struggle for survival in the cold Polish winter. The formal structure of the ghetto as prescribed by the Germans and the Judenrat coexisted alongside the informal structure of the ghetto as it emerged in real life. The Judenrat developed into a multilayered government with a series of departments, which often functioned as fiefdoms for their directors. Those who worked for the Judenrat were seemingly protected. Tensions developed between those with "protection and connections," and those without. Religious tensions were rampant between the devout and the secular, and between Jews and Catholics of Jewish origin who were defined as Jews by the Nuremberg race laws. (Daily services were held for "converted Jews" at the ghetto's Roman Catholic Church, which in the end was the only building left standing in the ghetto.) The informal structure was more creative, but no less developed.

A political underground published a vital clandestine press; youth movements and cultural life continued; political movements pushed their partisan agendas; education, religion, and culture endured in this hostile environment. Often ghetto institutions had a double life, one legal and open, the other clandestine and secret. Youth movements and urban training communes were camouflaged as soup kitchens. Cells of the Jewish underground were disguised as agricultural workers' groups.