Were+there+any+after+effects+of+the+uprising?


 * After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising **



The inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto fought the Nazis from April 19 through May 16, 1943, the longest-lasting ghetto revolt of World War Two. It is arguable that the Jews did not really lose the uprising. For one, they knew that they would not hurt the Germans enough for them to be critically wounded in the war since the Nazis had much more sophisticated and advanced soldiers and weapons. The Jews knew this, but they also knew that if they did not take action, they would be taken from the ghetto to be killed in gas chambers or starve to death at the concentration camps. They knew they would not make a drastic difference in the war as a whole, so they put up a fight and showed the rest of the world that they would not give in easily. The Jews held out incredibly for nearly a whole month with weapons that they had smuggled or made with the materials they could find. They encouraged Jews in other ghettos and concentration camps to defy their oppressors. When the fighting was finally over, SS General Jurgen Stroop ordered the destruction of the Great Synagogue on Tlomacki Street on May 16, 1943. This was sign of his happiness that the battle was victorious for the Germans. However, it was also a sign of his anger and a way for him to taunt the Jews by destroying something that the Jews held so dear. Stroop also created 75 pages of pictures of the Warsaw ghetto and the uprising and what the ghetto looked like after the uprising was over. This he sent to Heinrich Himmler and Hitler as proof of his success. It was originally titled, “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!” but it is now referred to as the Stroop Report. Stroop cataloged in his report that he had captured 56,065 Jews and destroyed 631 bunkers. He estimated that his units killed up to 7,000 Jews during the uprising itself. Prisoners that were found in bunkers and houses were often times shot by SS soldiers. Stroop deported approximately another 7,000 Warsaw Jews to the Treblinka killing center, where almost all were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival. The Germans deported almost all of the remaining Jews, approximately 42,000 of them, to the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp. The operation of sending these people to all of these different concentration camps in November of 1943 was known as “Operation Harvest Festival” (//Unternehmen Erntefest//). (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Jews from the Auschwitz concentration camp were sent to the Warsaw ghetto to dispose of the bodies and to clear out all of the rubble. The ghetto was going to be made into a city park. From when the Jewish leaders of the secret underground resistance organizations got together to discuss the unconditional plan to take all of the Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto, the choices were all grim. Either wait for the Nazis to deport all of the ghetto’s inhabitants to concentration camps, or to fight and stand up against a force that could easily crush them. Both choices were unpleasant, but the Jews decided to fight back and give other ghettos and Jews hope. They tried to show that even though they had nothing to begin with in the harsh conditions, they were able to organize an uprising and hold out for a surprisingly long time. The courage that they displayed is an example of what people can do in the future when they are being oppressed.

Mordechai Anielewicz wrote this to a unit commander before he committed suicide in the Mila 18 bunker before the surrender of the Jews: “What’s most important: the dream of my life has become a reality. I have lived to see Jewish resistance in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.”(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)



For more information about what happened after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, click on the following links:

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