Passover is a time to speak about liberation struggles and freedom against tyranny. Throughout the world the Jewish people and all partisans of democracy commemorate the Uprising with a solemn renewal of abiding faith and hope in humanity’s everlasting struggle for freedom and dignity. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is like a great flame which for all time shall light the path for all people of good will in their unending struggle to achieve solidarity, equality, freedom, and peace.
This Passover, we pledge ourselves to the ever-continuing cause of freedom that was inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It’s a story to acknowledge our sacred duty to recall our bondage of centuries past to strengthen our resolve to assist all people seeking to be free.
Before the fascist occupation, the history of Jewry was rich in Poland, dating back 1000 years. In Warsaw, Poland, the Jews comprised one third of the city population. In fact, the Jews made up the largest minority group. Whereas pre-WWII Warsaw was comprised of nearly 400,000 Jews, today in all of Poland, there are only a few thousand who remained. The Jewish population in the 1930s not only suffered under Nazi Germans but also faced fascist violence in the streets, faced poverty, and faced boycotting of Jewish business. Many of the Polish population sympathized and welcomed the Nazi invasion.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19th 1943. The heroic resistance to the Nazis was fought as a last effort after knowledge leaked that Jews being deported by Nazis and their collaborators, the Judenräte (Jewish Councils) and Jewish ghetto police, were being sent to Treblinka Concentration camp where they were being liquidated. The uprising lasted for three weeks and was led by the left-wing United Jewish Combat Organization which was led by Jewish Communists, Socialists, Left Zionists, and the Jewish Labor Bund against their fascist occupiers, tormentors, and murderers. Though only several hundred strong, the United Jewish Combat Organization partisans fought so bravely and fiercely the Nazis were forced to retreat on several occasions. The Nazis then cowardly resorted to the systematic burning of the ghetto block by block resulting in 13,000 inhabitant deaths. The uprising officially ended on May 16th 1943 after the Nazis completely destroyed the Great Synagogue of Warsaw.
Proudly featured in the Muranow neighborhood of Warsaw, Poland is the Monument to Ghetto Heroes standing at 36 feet tall. The monument stands in the same square as the Polin Museum which commemorates the Jewish Poles in the Warsaw Ghetto and in front of a Soviet Poland era apartment complex painting a picture rich with history and liberation. The statue depicts the defiant Jewish Partisans in the midst of their heroic uprising against the brutish Nazi occupiers that began on April 19th 1943. The monument was built by Nathan Rapoport under the direction of the Polish Communist government. The monument was built with the materials procured by Nazi architect Albert Speer who planned on the building of a monument celebrating the 3rd Reich. After the Red Army liberated Poland from the Nazis in 1945, the materials that were going to be used to build a Nazi monument were seized and used in the construction of the Monument to Ghetto Heroes completed in 1948, which served as further humiliation of Nazi Germany’s defeat.
Retrieved from the United Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order: Jewish Peoples Schule Presents: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – A Passover Story – United Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order %
