The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in World War II

1141 Words3 Pages

“...No one believed they would be saved. We knew the struggle was doomed, but it showed the world there was resistance against the Nazis, that you could fight the Nazis...” -Marek Edelman.
At the height of World War II, the Nazis had taken over quite a few countries including: some of France (the Rhineland), Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland. By this time,
Adolf Hitler had forced many Jews into small areas of a city, called ghettos. There were ghettos in Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, and Warsaw. The ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, was the largest of all of the ghettos created. Over 400,000 Jews were packed into an area only about 1.3 miles across. Plans for this ghetto started after Germany conquered Poland in 1939 (Karesh). A few years later, Hitler deported most of the Jews in this ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp. The remaining Jews were furious, and held an uprising. Although the Jews were defeated, they were strong and showed the Nazis that they could hold their own.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was sometimes called the Second Warsaw Uprising. It was called this to distinguish it from the earlier Warsaw Uprising, where the Polish Home Army resisted the German occupiers (Axelrod, Kingston). The Jews were very afraid when they found out that they were being deported. One man, Adam Czerniakow (Jewish Council of Warsaw), convinced Nazis to delay deportation but felt so guilty, he committed suicide before anything was done about it (Karesh).
The Jews had found out about this deportation and were appalled. They obviously didn't want to be killed, so on July 28, 1942 the 500 remaining Jews formed The Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ZOB) and took control of the entire ghetto (Gutman). The ZOB...

... middle of paper ...

...y took a beating, mentally and physically. Although the Jews were defeated, they were strong and showed the Nazis that they could hold their own.

Works Cited

Karesh, Sara E., and Mitchell M. Hurvitz. Encyclopedia of Judaism. New York: Facts on File, 2006. 2 Apr. 2014.
Quinn, Edward. History in literature: A reader's guide to 20th century history and the literature it inspired. New York: Facts On File, 2004. 2 Apr. 2014.
Werth, Alexander. "What Happened at Warsaw?" Russia at war, 1941-1945. New York: Dutton, 1964.
Axelrod, Alan, and Jack A. Kingston. "Warsaw Rising." Encyclopedia of World War II. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
Arad, Yitzhak. Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. Facts on File. Web.
Gutman, Israel. Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Facts on Files. Web.

Show More
Related

  • The Ways the Nazis Tried to Eliminate all Jews in Europe

    832 Words  | 2 Pages

    Reinhard after Heydrich who had been tasked with implementing the final solution and who was assassinated by Czech partisans in May. 1942). The. Three extermination camps were established in Poland as a part ofbeaten Reinhard, these were called Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. On arrival at the camps, Jews were sent directly to gas chambers. Globocnik assistant, SS Major Hermann Hoeffel, was in charge of the organising the deportation to the Action Reinhard camps.

    Read More

  • The Horrors of Killing Centers During the Holocaust

    813 Words  | 2 Pages

    Shields, Jacqueline. "Concentration Camps: The Sonderkommando ." 2014. Jewish Virtual Library. 20 March 2014 .

    Read More

  • Adolf Hitler's Use Of Dehumanization Essay

    1895 Words  | 4 Pages

    At the start of Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror, no one would have been able to foresee what eventually led to the genocide of approximately six million Jews. However, steps can be traced to see how the Holocaust occurred. One of those steps would be the implementation of the ghetto system in Poland. This system allowed for Jews to be placed in overcrowded areas while Nazi officials figured out what to do with them permanently. The ghettos started out as a temporary solution that eventually became a dehumanizing method that allowed mass relocation into overcrowded areas where starvation and privation thrived. Also, Nazi officials allowed for corrupt Jewish governments that created an atmosphere of mistrust within its walls. Together, this allowed

    Read More

  • Jewish Resistance During WWII and the Holocaust

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nazis which proved to the world the Jews are not that easy to extinguish. The Jews had several ways of exhibiting resistance, but "Organized armed resistance was the most powerful form of Jewish opposition"(Jewish Resistance). Armed resistance is an important aspect to revolting not only because it reinflicts the pain lashed upon the Jews, but it also shows the Jews have the ability to fight back and gives the world the knowledge that Jews do not go down easily. However, resistance is not only an act of violence since the Jews demonstrated several non-violent forms of resistance while locked up or being transported. Jews would escape into the forest and figured that by escaping they resisted the Nazi Party and reduced their chances of achieving their goal of exterminating all Jews on the planet(Acts of Resitance). By escaping Jews gave themselves a chance to live and warn others of their fate which was an excellent form of non-violent resistance since, generally speaking, no Germans were hurt. Resistance can take many shapes and forms which is why all Jews resisted one way or another, simply living is resistance(Acts of Resistance). The other reason Jews struggled so desperately to survive was not to merely see the light of another day, but to see the Germans become enraged by their "resistance", living.

    Read More

  • Resistance During The Holocaust

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    Illegal organisations, Jewish militias and underground political groups also formed, planning and executing attacks and resisting the Nazi rule in occupied Europe. The biggest, most coordinated act of armed resistance took place in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland in 1943. Planned by a group called the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Z.O.B), which was Polish for Jewish fighting organisation, the ZOB refused to board railroad cars which they knew would take them to Treblinka, the killing centre where over 300,000 Jews from Warsaw had already been exterminated. However Jews prayed and held ceremonies in secret, hiding in cellars, attics, and basements, as others watched to make sure no Germans saw.

    Read More

  • Totalitarian Government: Hitler and Stalin

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...

    Read More

  • Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Classic House, 2008. Print.

    Read More

  • Auschwitz: Should It Have Been Bombed?

    1589 Words  | 4 Pages

    Bombing Auschwitz: US 15Th Air Force And The Military Aspects Of A Possible Attack." War In History 6.2 (1999): 205. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Jan. 2014.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Warsaw Ghetto

    1336 Words  | 3 Pages

    In particular, the Germans began ghettos like this one, in order to gather and contain Jews until the “Final Solution” could be further implemented. In particular, after the Germans invaded Poland, they knew that it would be necessary to get rid of the Polish Jews, knowing that with 30% Jews, Warsaw had the 2nd greatest Jewish population. An area was needed to contain the Jews as the concentration camps would take time to build and had limited human capacity. As a result, they chose to create a closed ghetto, as it was easier for the Nazis to block off a part of a city than to build more housing for the Jews. The Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population. In essence, the Warsaw ghetto was a step from capturing and identifying the Jewish to deporting them to another location. So how exactly was the ghetto

    Read More

  • Life In The Ghetto Dbq

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    Though the Germans destroyed the organized military resistance just three days after the beginning of the uprising, individuals and small groups hid or fought the Germans for almost a month. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place from April 19, 1943 through May 16, 1943. On May 16, 1943 German SS Officer Stroop ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue on Tlomackie Street to symbolize the German victory. The Jewish people of the Ghetto (including the resistance fighters), suffered about 13,000 deaths, and 56,885 deportations. The Germans only suffered 17 deaths and 93 injuries. Although the Jewish people lost in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, it was the largest symbol of hope seen by the Jews throughout the Holocaust. One of the successes of the resistance was that it inspired other uprisings in different Ghettos where people had the same mission, to end the tyranny and oppression they were facing. Another success was that the resistance made some people question the power of the Nazis. Although the Nazis suffered few casualties, people wondered how the Jews could possibly steal weapons from them, and how the Jews kept the fighting going on for so

    Read More

  • The Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

    1444 Words  | 3 Pages

    He declared the Ghetto as an area of the city in which the Jewish population was required to relocate to. There were high walls that surrounded it which segregated any activity between the Jews and the rest of the people who lived in Warsaw. Thus, approximately 350,000 individuals were designated to reside in one area which only took up approximately one square mile of the entire city. Quality of life was poor, morale was low, and people who were living there were left with minimal choices to make on their own; their independence had been completely stripped away from them. Nazi officials systematically manipulated the ghetto by increasing population numbers, decreasing food supply, and deflating the labor market, making almost 60% of the Jewish population unemployed. These events caused exhaustion, panic, fear, and, anger of the Jews who were forced to live in such poor conditions. Two years after the Ghetto was up and running, in the summer of 1942, the Jewish Fighting Organization, or Z.O.B., formed to devise a plan to rebel against the Nazi party, an unheard of movement of any Jew during the

    Read More

  • Ghettos Description in Night by Elie Wiesel

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    Forces pushed the Jewish population by the thousands into segregated areas of a city. These areas, known as ghettos, were small. The large ghetto in Sighet that Elie Wiesel describes in Night consisted of only four streets and originally housed around ten thousand Jews. The families that were required to relocate were only allowed to bring what they could carry, leaving the majority of their belongings and life behind. Forced into the designated districted, “fifteen to twenty-four people occupied a single room” (Fischthal). Living conditions were overcrowded and food was scarce. In the Dąbrowa Górnicza ghetto, lining up for bread rations was the morning routine, but “for Jews and dogs there is no bread available” (qtd. in Fischthal). Cut off from the rest of civilization, Jews relied on the Nazis f...

    Read More

  • Movie Review of "Schindler's List"

    885 Words  | 2 Pages

    In September of 1939 German soldiers defeated Poland in only two weeks. Jews were ordered to register all family members and to move to major cities. More than 10,000 Jews from the country arrived in Krakow daily. They were moved from their homes to the "Ghetto", a walled sixteen square block area, which they were only allowed to leave to go to work.

    Read More

  • The Warsaw Uprising

    2127 Words  | 5 Pages

    ... I 1944 [Over Warsaw - Warsaw Thermopylae 1939 and 1944], Warsaw: Fundacja Wystawa Warszawa Walczy 1939-1945, 2000.

    Read More

  • Escape from Sobibor

    1815 Words  | 4 Pages

    It was the unity of action and the unity of mind that was the ultimate triumph in defying the Germans. It wasn’t each prisoner fighting for his own memory. It was each prisoner fighting for the memories of all prisoners.

    Read More

More about The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in World War II

Open Document