Many people heard about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943; however, it was not the first such struggle as the Jewish combatants put up armed resistance against Germans even earlier – in January 1943.<\/b><\/p>\n
Having conquered Poland (together with the Soviet Union), the Germans began persecuting the inhabitants.\u00a0The blade of their terror was aimed at the Jews.\u00a0One form of their persecution was the creation of many ghettos – closed neighborhoods in the entire territory of occupied Poland.\u00a0The largest ghetto in Europe was located in Warsaw.<\/p>\n
The German occupiers established the Warsaw ghetto in 1940 where 400,000 crowded\u00a0Jews lived in dire conditions of constant hunger, plague, German terror and death.\u00a0In July 1942, the Germans began the deportation of Jews from the ghetto to the death camp in Treblinka, where almost 270,000 people died.<\/p>\n
Himmler was furious that the Jews were still alive<\/b><\/p>\n
After the deportation, there were 60-70 thousand people left.\u00a0The closed district was deserted and its area was being reduced.\u00a0It became clear to the Jewish fighters that Germans were planning further displacements and, finally, a complete liquidation of the ghetto.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of January 1943, the personal inspection of the Reichsf\u00fchrer-SS and the head of the German police, Heinrich Himmler, showed that 45,000 Jews still lived in the ghetto with 8 thousand staying there illegally.\u00a0It made him furious as he couldn’t bear the fact that so many Jews were still alive.\u00a0As a result, another deportation from the ghetto was\u00a0planned.<\/p>\n
Jewish combatants surprised the German army<\/b><\/p>\n
On January 18, 1943, German SS and police squads were concentrated in the ghetto.\u00a0Initially, the Germans wanted to deport people without documents and who were unable to work.\u00a0It turned out that it was impossible because the inhabitants of the ghetto hid and did not respond to the summons, which was also a form of resistance.<\/p>\n
The situation surprised members of the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Union.\u00a0However, they remembered the earlier deportation when there was no armed resistance.\u00a0Therefore, despite the lack of preparation, they used weapons against the Germans.\u00a0The beginning of the military action was led by Mordechaj Anielewicz.\u00a0The Germans were completely surprised and lost control of the situation –\u00a0they shouted: “The Jews are shooting at us!”.<\/p>\n
On January 20, however, the German army took control of the situation.\u00a0They lost about a dozen soldiers.\u00a0Several hundred Jewish fighters and about 1,200 civilians died and\u00a05 thousand\u00a0people were deported from the ghetto.\u00a0The deportations ceased on January 21.<\/p>\n
The Home Army on Jewish Resistance: Heroic Stance<\/b><\/p>\n
The resistance of Jews against the Germans in the Warsaw ghetto was noticed by Poles and the Polish underground resistance.\u00a0The Home Army – the largest underground organization fighting against the Germans in Europe described it in its “Information Bulletin”: “The heroic stance of those who did not lose their sense of honor\u00a0in the saddest moments of Jewish history awakens respect and left a dignified mark in the history of Polish Jews.”<\/p>\n
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Many people heard about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943; however, it was not the first such struggle as the Jewish combatants put up armed resistance against Germans even…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n