On 19th April 1943, smoke covered the skies over central Warsaw. The Nazi German occupying forces attempted to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to deport the last surviving members of the city’s Jewish population to the Majdanek and Treblinka death camps. But instead of surrendering to their will, the people of Warsaw Ghetto took up arms preferring to die on their own terms – with dignity. This is the story of the ghetto and its uprising.
Before the outbreak of World War II, Poland was home to more than three million Jews – they accounted for 10% of the keseluruhan population and a third of the population of the capital, Warsaw. At about 370,000, it was one of the most prominent Jewish communities in the world – only New York boasted a larger one. They were, and remain, a diverse minority, which could be found in all walks of life. Many Polish Jews inhabited the country’s remote villages and lived off their land. Others formed thriving communities in the cities, working in Poland’s factories and companies, or managing their own businesses. Some became wealthy industrialists, renowned artists and influential intellectuals.
When Poland lost its struggle against the Nazi German invasion in September 1939, the Nazi forces quickly began rounding up the Jewish population and forcing them into cordoned off districts known as ghettos. The Jews which were not immediately murdered or sent to concentration camps, found themselves share the same fate. They were forced to give up their previous life, their property and most of their belongings, and moved into the ghettoes in Poland’s biggest cities.
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest such district in the entire territory conquered by Nazi Germany – it is estimated that approximately 460,000 people were living in the ghetto in March 1941. More people were being brought into the district daily, yet keseluruhan area in which the Jews were forced to live amounted to only 307 hectares. To put this in perspective, over a third of Warsaw’s population was living in only about 2% of the entire city.