Museum

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Brief

On 19 April 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against the Germans attempting to murder the remaining inhabitants. With few weapons and little chance for survival, fighters hoped to avenge their loved ones, kill their tormentors and die with dignity. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest and most heroic act of armed resistance taken up by the Jews during World War II and the first urban insurgency against German occupation.

The Warsaw Ghetto

German occupation authorities created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, and sealed it off in November of that year, citing a typhus epidemic among the Jews. A neighbourhood that housed around 250,000 people before the war suddenly had to fit over 400,000 Jews. Germans established a strict racial hierarchy for food rationing, placing Germans at the top and Jews at the bottom. As a result, thousands of people died of starvation and disease in the Ghetto. 

The Destruction of Warsaw Jewry

On 22 July 1942, German Nazis ordered the ”deportation” of most Jews and Roma from the Ghetto. Officials informed people they were being sent to labour camps in the “east”, but in fact they were transported by train to the Treblinka death camp. Most often, the German death machine murdered its victims within hours of their departure from Warsaw. According to German sources, over merely 46 days they managed to murder 253,742 Jews. Other sources place the number closer to 300,000.

The Aftermath

In the autumn of 1942, the only Jews that remained were those deemed to be essential for war industries housed in the Ghetto or those in hiding. Officially there 34,969 Jews registered in the Ghetto by December 1942, but historians estimate the number was closer to 60,000. They were mostly young and strong, with no surviving family members. Many people fell into deep depression, despondent about their hopeless future. Others prepared to fight the next time Germans would attempt to clear the Ghetto.

Jewish Underground Resistance

Despite the hardships and pressures of the Ghetto, political life continued on throughout the war years. A coalition of competing political parties formed the Jewish Combat Organisation (ŻOB) on 28 July 1942, during the liquidation of the Ghetto. Mordechai Anielewicz of the left-wing youth organization Ha-shomer Ha-tsair became the leader, and Marek Edelman (from the Jewish Labour Bund) and Yitzhak Cukierman (from Dror) were amongst its most renowned commanders. Revisionist Zionists Leon Rodal and Paweł Frenkel, refused to join ŻOB and formed their own unit called the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW), in early 1943. When the Germans initiated what they thought would be the final liquidation of the Ghetto on 18 January 1943, Nazi soldiers met armed resistance from ŻOB insurgents and retreated. After this brief victory, people began frantically constructing bunkers, underground passages and hideouts to survive whatever would come next.

The outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

A dedicated Nazi unit, led by SS-Gruppenführer Jürgen Stroop, entered the Ghetto for what they believed would be a swift clearing on 19 April 1943, the eve of Passover. Instead they were beaten back by around 500 ŻOB fighters and another 250 insurgents from ŻZW. There were also unaffiliated fighters, using the opportunity to take shots at their oppressors. 

In the centre of the Ghetto, at Muranowski Square, the more heavily armed ŻZW held off the main German assault for three days, fighting valiantly. Jewish and Polish flags, flying high off a tall tenement house at Muranowski Square, became a symbol of the Uprising.

Since the Nazis could not defeat their enemies in regular combat, they switched tactics and began systematically burning buildings down. When they discovered hideouts or bunkers, they would toss smoke grenades or explosives inside to force people out. Those captured were transported to Treblinka to be murdered.

The several hundred armed insurgents were only a fraction of the Warsaw Ghetto’s population in April 1943. Tens of thousands of ‘civilians’ refused to obey German orders and remained hidden in bunkers, carrying on a battle for survival.

Life in bunkers and hideouts was extremely difficult. Despite months of preparation, Jews struggled for air, fresh water and food. Fires from burning buildings brought high temperatures and smoke. People hiding in bunkers did not go outside during the day, and often had no contact with the outside world for the duration of the Uprising.

Our 2023 temporary exhibition is dedicated to these civilians fighting for survival.

The End of the Uprising

Only a few dozen insurgents managed to flee the burning ghetto through the sewers or underground tunnels. Many of the survivors were later killed as a result of denunciations, but some, such as Marek Edelman, fought a year later in the Warsaw Uprising. Only a handful of ŻOB fighters survived until the end of the war, and none of the fighters from ŻZW survived.

On 16 May, Stroop declared the mission complete. To mark their victory, Germans blew up the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street. Stroop titled his report, “The Jewish district in Warsaw is no more.”

In the aftermath of the Uprising, Germans razed the few remaining buildings of the former Ghetto. And yet there were people, both civilians and fighters, still hiding inside the Ghetto—in burnt out houses and in bunkers. Some so-called 'rubblers' hid in the ruins of the Ghetto until the end of 1943.

Read more about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Virtual Shtetl portal >>