Warsaw Ghetto uprising: From resistance to independence
When I think of these brave men, women and children who, almost entirely unaided by the world, took up arms and fought for their lives, I think of how proud they would have been had they survived to see the State of Israel flourish.
LAST week, in addition to celebrating 70 years of Israel’s independence, we commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
One of the questions I constantly heard growing up and was actually asked in one of my first interviews in Poland over four years ago, was “Why didn’t the Jews put up more of a fight? Why did they go like sheep to the slaughter?”
After four years of literally living the subject, speaking with survivors, saviours and eyewitnesses, I can unequivocally say that the Jews fought back.
You see, fighting back isn’t always a physical fight. Fighting back isn’t always attempting to kill your enemy. Fighting back is fighting to stay alive. Fighting back is fighting to keep your traditions and morals alive and fighting for the hope of a better future.
We, as Jews, have always had and will always have a social responsibility. Most of those in the tens of thousands of ghettos all over Eastern Europe fought back by attempting to stay alive.
As a father, I can say with complete certainty, that my fight would have been to work as hard as possible to bring a few scraps of food to my family during those horrendous times.
If a father or mother wouldn’t have done all they could to bring home meagre pieces of food and if they resisted and would have been killed their family would have almost certainly starved to death.
We at From the Depths have uncovered remarkable documentation, that we are working on translating and publishing, which shows thousands of accounts of Jews “fighting back” from eyewitnesses.
For example, malnourished and downtrodden Jews getting off the trains in the Treblinka concentration camp, after being told this would be a better place, realised that instead this would be their final stop and they fought back taking, sadly, a futile last stand before they were murdered.
Cases of women refusing to be stripped naked, paraded and often raped by their German Nazi tormentors, attacking them and in some counts even killing the Nazis before they were murdered themselves.
But, perhaps the most harrowing of accounts we uncovered, comes from the Warsaw Ghetto and happened almost 75 years ago to this very day.
A group of Jewish boys blockaded themselves in a building inside the ghetto and were shooting at Nazis walking past. One of the ways Nazis would enter the buildings of the ghetto would be by using a human shield.
One of the survivors related that whilst blockaded in a building they heard a knock on the door, and a sweet old voice called out to them, in beautiful, poetic Yiddish, “My children, the time has come, I am knocking on this door asking for safe passage. Alas, behind me stands a group of Amalek, shoot me and then kill them, better I die by the bullet of Jewish heroes than by the bullet of evil.”
And the young men did just that. By giving his life, this old pious Jew saved those who were fighting back, allowing them to live another day.
When we remember the Holocaust, we must remember those who fought and we too, all these years later, must fight to keep their true memory alive.
This year is unique in the fact that due to Israel following the Hebrew calendar and Poland following the Gregorian calendar, the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the anniversary of 70 years of Israeli Independence coincide.
When I think of these brave men, women and children who, almost entirely unaided by the world, took up arms and fought for their lives, I think of how proud they would have been had they survived to see the State of Israel flourish.
I think of how proud they would be to know that today, what once befell us as a nation could simply never happen again, for at last we Jews are no longer bound by the grace or mercy of others.
We have at last a strong, powerful country, the best army in the world and more important than all we have a safe haven, a Jewish homeland with Jerusalem as our eternal capital.
I chose this year to be in Israel and as I stand on the beachfront in Tel Aviv with my Hebrew-speaking children and looked up at the sky with a heart full of pride to see the Israeli Air Force flying overhead, I think of our future in our tiny little country and I remember those who were unable to even dream of this reality.
May the memories of all those heroes be a blessing. May Israel be strong and safe. May we all pray for a day when we have peace and may all war be a thing of the past.
JONNY DANIELS is founder and executive director of From the Depths, www.fromthedepths.org.
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