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Foreword:

The day of April 19 will always remain as one of the most exalted dates in humanity. That day, the freedom–loving nations of the entire world, including the Jewish population, will remember with awed respect and holy trembling, as a memory of the heroes that died in the burning streets during the destruction of Jewish Warsaw during those tragic days of the months of April, May, and June 1943, in an inequitable a fight against those murderous, barbaric, and cruel blood enemies of humanity, in a superhuman battle for the honor of the tormented Jewish nation, for the independent, pained Poland, for a bright future for the Jews and for all, for “your and our freedom.”

The incomparable heroism of the ghetto fighters will, for many generations, serve as an example of exceptional bravery and courage, a road map for those who are still standing in a difficult battle against imperialism for national and social liberty, an example that, even in the most complex circumstances, will find a way for growth, for resistance, and for moral rule. The tragic and heroic struggle of the resistance movement in the Warsaw ghetto empowers and will continue to inspire people who are fighters for peace and those who are building a new Jewish socialist world – with continued efforts and achievements, for the difficult fight and ongoing work of achieving the dreams of the fallen resistance–fighters of the Warsaw ghetto.

Thanks to this heroic struggle of the Jewish resistance–fighters, the concept of the ghetto changed from a murderous death place that was so designated by the Hitlerist occupants as an area for a person's humiliation and unconscious murder to a place of conflict that aroused the world and pushed the anti–fascist youth forward and changed them into real heroic fighters, from whose deeds the later generations should learn and be educated. And while this was not only a picture of the strength of one Jewish individual – although even that has value – it was a model of a collective struggle of a whole Jewish

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community, where the meaning of this heroic chapter was even more courageous, even stronger, even more elevated for the honor of the heavily challenged Jewish people.

Two strong feelings motivated the conscientious Jewish revolutionary in the ghetto to an active resistance. It was, first of all, the desire to participate in the struggle against the Hitlerist tormentors, to lock themselves into the camp of a struggle for liberty, to throw off the hateful yoke; this desire arose in the minds of the anti–fascist Jews even before the swastika nation of murderers thought of the total destruction of the Jewish people; in other words, this very fact completely disclaims the theory of “a desperate act.” The way to join in with the people who were freedom fighters, however, had a tremendous blockage: the ghetto wall. Thus, the first mission of the resistance–yearning elements in the ghetto was to surmount this forceful interfering obstacle. On the other side of the ghetto wall there were also Polish anti–fascist elements who were making efforts to put moral cracks in the wall, and together with their idealistic Jewish friends, they did so. This breakthrough was made by the Polish “Spartacus”– activist Kazhik Dembjak (Vladislav Bucinski); this breakthrough was done by the Polish workers who grouped themselves around the first leftist circles, and who sent their Jewish friends tools for this work. On the other side, there already were bold connections who searched for and maintained contacts with the “Aryan side,” for example the student “Zoshe Zatorska”^[1] who during that first period was arrested and murdered by the Gestapo.

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The second feeling that pushed [ Jewish revolutionaries] toward dynamic activities was the craving to take revenge for the pain which the occupiers imposed on the Jews. Here, there was also a great barrier, not a concrete one, but a psychological one, because the terror of the Hitlerists was enormous, and the revenge–seeking Jew first had to find a lot of courage to conquer his fear which was often actually greater than the fear of death. Truthfully, after June 22, 1941, the terror diminished, as the legend of the invincibility of the German army burst. But the Hitlerist rule was still powerful, being the ruler of life and death, and using all means, always spreading around itself inhumane sadism and annihilation.

Both efforts eventually became one: to find a way for active fighting. The entire first period, until the beginning of 1942, was, for that element that was not educated on actual anti–fascist fighting traditions, filled with searching for another way, searching for an answer to the driving question: What to do?

That does not mean that until the year 1942, in the depths of the ghettos, there was no stirring and no indication of rebellion against the cruel realities.

The Polish Jews were actually, from September 1, 1939, in a war of life and death against Hitler's aggressors. With all his might, the regular Jewish citizen threw himself into the fight for Poland's independence and for his own security. In the September campaign, which was betrayed by those in the Sanatzia [Healthy Politics Party], but which demonstrated on the surface the patriotism and heroism of the ordinary Polish soldier and citizen, thousands of Jewish soldiers participated with their fullest commitment. In his notes, Ringelblum describes interesting collected reports about the loyalties until the end of the Jewish warriors. Masses of Jewish workers and working intelligentsia participated in the heroic defense of Warsaw. And in the first few weeks after Warsaw's fall, the first Jewish youth circles of “Spartacus” arose in the depths of the underground, who worked hand in hand wit h the Polish circles of this organization. At that time, a conspiratorial Jewish organization was created, of intellectuals and former military staff, which was known by the name “kotowtzes,” which is from the name of one of their organizers, the young Kot, who was of Jewish roots. This organization, which began its activities of collecting arms, quickly fell apart. It seemed that Kot, when arrested, put up resistance and killed a policeman. There were bloody repercussions, also with many members of the Jewish intelligentsia being killed as well. This organization disappeared at the first hit, because it had no roots among the people and also no clear political platform. The fate of “Spartacus” was different. Deeply anchored among the youth and armed ideologically, this organization managed

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to integrate itself later on into the Polish Workers' Party and then produced a gallery of active personalities who later became prominent in the resistance movement, in the partisan camps, and during the times of the resistance.

In the year 1940, there were already ghetto groups of almost all the revolutionary circles that existed in the Polish underground, and they were groups from “Friends of the Soviet Union,” circles from “Hammer and Sickle,” later on from the “Farmer Workers' Fighting Organization.” At the head of these groups, the old communist and leftist trade unions came forward, which contained significant numbers of workers, intellectuals, and youth. One group undertook a very serious project: to print an underground press for the ghetto prisoners. The proletariat instinct of the conspiratorial editors was a wonder. In the “Morgenfrei” [“Free Tomorrow”], in the “Morgen Freiheit” [“Tomorrow's Freedom”], and the proletariat “radio communications,” [reporters] filled in the situation, called for perseverance, to internationalism, to loyalty and belief in the Soviet Union, to fight against the Judenrat [Jewish Council] and the ghetto police, to create a unity among all anti–fascist entities, to prepare themselves for what was certain to come – to active resistance. These associations conducted activities among the workers, the first and greatest number of victims of hunger and sickness. These associations even conducted strikes in the ghetto – something that at those times was undertaken with the boldest steps, because the Jewish activists, the quiet and open partners with the German and Polish factory owners and store owners, and the Judenrat complained that a strike meant a harsh death of all Jews because a strike against Jewish businessmen meant – separation from the occupying powers. Nonetheless, the strikes took place – strikes of carpenters and needle trade workers, strikes of hospital staff; some even ended in victory. These economic fights were a schooling for the future resistance fighters.^[2]

As a school of notable attitude, of true social self–help and of self–protection, there were some house committees; at the head of each were proletariat and democratic elements. In the associations of the People's House Committees, the first open revolt took place against the Judenrat and against its methods of corruption, of neighborhood policing, and of carrying out the wishes of the occupiers.

How far the people were preoccupied with the revolts is evident in the street protests against the police during the abductions for forced labor, the hunger strikes in the middle of the city, the sabotage of the fur activity, the actual protests against the wealthy, who did not want to help the refugees and the evacuees, and other such people, including not only the apathetic but also the unwilling.

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These voices became stronger after June 22, 1941. The sabotage became bolder. Jewish tailors were working on uniforms for the German army with badly sewn pockets and buttons. The workers that were conscious [about the goings on] began working more and more poorly. This slogan goes from mouth to mouth: Instead of watches, let us produce bombs! Jews became cheered up, their vision became more optimistic, they no longer believed the news from the German radio about the victories of the military defense. They repeated the refrain that became popular in the entire ghetto:

“Jews, do not be afraid,
Poles, be happy,
Germans, pack your bags.”

The sad verses of the weeping beggars were expressed through new songs – songs of battle.

But, the capacity to amass all the strength into one united power was still missing, to turn around the tears and pain into a hateful force. The leftist groups were disbursed. The other circles that existed in the ghetto, the later circles of the leftist Zionist youth, were searching for a way to leave the framework of the educational and independent work and move towards resistance. The Bundist circles were still under the direction of the VVRN elements.^[3]

And once again: The most important potential power that, despite all the difficulties, saw the way out, the communist circles, were, as they say, disbanded.

“These groups,” said Boleslaw Bierut in his lecture at the Congress of the United Polish Workers' Party on December 18, 1948 –“were missing a united direction as well as a clear political program. But these groups united and demonstrated a new line of activity. The Polish Workers Party was created in January 1942 and defined its program on the foundations of Marxism–Leninism. The PPR was at the head of the national liberation fight of the Polish people against the German aggression.^[4]

Powerful energies arose in the Polish underground which pushed out the resistance movement, and who immediately in their first program declaration, formulated clear slogans:

1. for a more immediate fight against the captors
2. for a united national fighting front
3. for preparation for a national uprising
4. for an alliance with the liberating Soviet Union

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party, also clearly and uniformly formulated its position on the Jewish tragedy: to liquidate the impoverished, destitute ghettos, and after that–the equal rights for the Jews in the future nationalist and socialist liberated Poland.

No Polish party spoke in such a language about the resistance neither about the Jews nor about the PP”R [Polish People's Republic]. The entire right–wing Polish underground did not only have an anti–Soviet and anti–resistance orientation, but they were also demoralized and consumed by the gangrene of collaboration with the enemy. These pens were directed from the Wehrmacht spies to the gestapo, to the second unit of the leaders of the ZVV”Z (A”K),^[5] that was busy with the entire right–wing underground. It is no wonder that those same people who informed on the Polish anti–fascists and patriots also conducted a huge incitement against the Jews. The fascist–Polish “underground” press, for example, came out with a complaint against the Germans that they gave privilege to the Jews and did not exterminate them. The “civil” and “respectable” officers of the delegation, for each and every point, mentioned the “Jewish community,” that heaven forbid, they should forget about this. The VVR”N [Right of the PPS – [Polish Socialist Party], in its program for a future Poland, also did not forget to take a jab at the Jews, and so on: The “Jewish speculation [question]” will be liquidated. In this situation it was clear that the Jewish people were able to breathe easily when they heard the real humane voice of the Polish Workers' Party. Those groups in the ghetto who were the transmitters of this delegate's platform– in the customary manner of the “Zhagev” circle, that preached the Pilsudski culture – agreed to a unanimous contempt and were then completely isolated.

All those who were searching for an answer to the torturous question of “what to do,” and dreamed of acts, turned their eyes to the PPR, which actually very quickly showed the right way.

Among the first group of activists who, in January 1942, provided the initiative to create a Polish Workers' Party, and among whom were the first secretary generals of the party, Marceli Nowotko and Pavel Finder, there was also the former Spanish fighter Andrzej Shmidt (pseudonym of Pinye Kartin), who right at the beginning assumed the mission of going into the ghetto and organizing the Jews. Soon, the Central Committee of the PPR summoned from Bialystok the old, familiar communist activist Yosef Lewartowski (“Finkelstein,” “the former Yosef”) and hired him as the total authority of the Tz”K[TzumKampf (To the Fight)] in the ghetto. [T]he PPR administration sent two of its best people into the ghetto.

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From time to time, other activists of the PPR would also visit the ghetto. They were from the Warsaw committee of that party, such as Isolda Kowalska, and, from the neighboring Powonsk region committee, Henrik Kolicki, and others. Lewartowski maintained contact through correspondence with the party head Nowotka.

After cementing all the groups, and after creating a well–organized regional committee, Lewartowski, in collaboration with Shmuel Tzimmerman (Adam Meretik), Yakov Drajer (Cuba), Andrzej Shmidt, Dovid Woloska (Tadek), began to develop the plan for a combat unit.

With Lewartowski's and Shmidt's initiative, and with the initiative of the PPR, the anti–fascist bloc of the ghetto was created, whose goal it was to unite all the existing resistance elements, to undertake a broad educational task, in order to run a military training school. Joining the bloc, which was an expression of a uniform national anti–fascist battlefront under the direction of the PPR, the leftist elements of Hashomer Hatzair, Poalei Tziyon, and Dror stepped forward.

In March 1942, the representatives of the anti–fascist bloc began negotiations with the Bund, so that they would also join the united national battlefront. In the series in the Bund and in the Tzukunft [“Future” newspaper], there was a discussion among the leftist unified elements, with Dr. Lyon Feiner and others at the lead, but the direction of the party was in the hands of people who were tied to the rightists of PPS and represented in the ghetto the line of the London delegate, the line of the “psychological resistance” and of “stand with the gun at your feet.” Some Bundist activists wavered. Their reply to the statements of the anti–fascist bloc was: “Our heart is with you, but our minds are opposing you.” The mind still found itself wrapped in illusions and with the old anti–communist and anti–united front condemnations.

The meager group of the Polish socialists^[6] that was found in the ghetto and that demonstrated a significant sharpness in questions of tracing Jewish Gestapo agents,^[7] did not have a greater influence among the Jews.

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Also, a significant division developed between one section whose orientation was with the Bund and its older position, and another section which gravitated to the PPR, and generally to the anti–fascist bloc. At the head of the latter, the leftist socialists emerged: A. Teszner, Indzhyeh Yezhi Nojdink, and others. These leftist socialists often entered into conflict with the right wing, who tried to prevent the expenditures of the leftists.^[8] After the first dispersion and beatings of April 1942,^[9] the entire group fell apart. They had no support from any of the Jewish community; the united fronts of the “Polish Socialists” in the ghetto poured themselves into the PPR.

The bourgeois–Zionist elements, which the right–wing found itself in or around the Judenrat, also did not join the anti–fascist bloc, and the more democratic section of Menakhem Kirshenboim's style, was worried about the resistance thinking and embraced the self–help institutions. The Zionist youth, in its reports, published its own sounding board and powerlessness and it warmed itself on the hearth of the Hebrew culture society, “Tekuma,” which did not leave behind any lasting trace. The general and right–wing socialist Zionist press represented the orientation of the American and English great powers, and they and others were attracted to the illusion that the salvation would come from the capitalist West. The right–wing Poalei Zion activist Avrohom Ganzweikh^[a] conducted extensive undertakings; he organized – as was described by Ringelblum – espionage undertakings for the good of Hitler's Germany in the eastern Soviet regions.

In March 1942, the anti–fascist bloc in the Warsaw ghetto was already the only power which to boldly published and preached resistance and which came forward with a clear program –in support for the national front and fighting platform of the Polish Worker's Party and under its direction.

The anti–fascist bloc was the pioneer and the organizer of the resistance movement in the ghetto. Their fifth column, which directed a military training under the

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experienced direction of the veteran Spanish fighter, the PPR activist Andrzej Shmidt, was an example for the broader youth masses, of how to manage in the difficult, challenging days. The fighting formation of the anti–fascist bloc was ideologically and organizationally connected to the civil guards who took into their group all those who wanted truly to fight against the occupiers, and took the position of the United National Fighting Front and of the Bund with the liberating Soviet Union. The arms formation of the anti–fascist bloc found itself in the distinct action ring of the fighting of the Soviet Army, where there were many victims. Actual witnesses describe how great was the influence of Andrzej Shmidt, about whom legends were passed from mouth to mouth. In the group of resistance dreamers, and even in the broader ghetto circles, he was described as a special ambassador from heroic Moscow, as a legendary parachutist, who voluntarily fell into torturous Poland in order to help the doubly suffering Jews there. And he who was in direct contact with the talented commander and loyal anti–fascist, could not let go of the power and strength that came from this humble and quiet idealist.

Under the direct training of Andrzej Shmidt, one of his three assistants stood out – the unit commander Mordechai Anielwiecz.

Shmidt was the chief of the military band of the anti–fascist bloc while Josef Lewartowski was the organizer and head of the anti–fascist bloc and the resistance movement in general.

The members of the command of the bloc already well knew this long–time communist activist since the first days of his arrival in the ghetto, when he immediately threw himself into the task of establishing the United National Battle Front. They already had an opportunity to be amazed at his clear intelligence, his logical argumentation, his broad vision, his self–control, which in itself was a great advantage considering the surrounding hysterical atmosphere. Lewartowski possessed exceptional skill to gather around him the best people and to fill them with inspirational ideas. And he did not represent only himself, but also a significant organized power. He represented the party that was historically assigned to lead the Polish underground out of its plight of confusion, and push it towards significant activity of a powerful resistance. Lewartowski represented the idea of supporting the Soviet Union, the idea of a national united fighting front, the idea of resistance and uprising. It is therefore no wonder that those who met with him at that time were left with an everlasting impression of that person who, with his words and actions, completely turned the minds and hearts of all those in the ghetto who, with all their souls, wanted to hear a strong and convincing response to the important question: What can we do?

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In March 1942, Lewartowski's creation, the anti–fascist bloc, was substantial. And in April of that same year, Lewartowski – and along with him, the entire anti–fascist bloc – showed the key to getting out of the tragic situation that had suddenly arisen.

Since the end of 1941, the murderous [German] occupier proceeded with the systematic, total physical extermination of the Jewish people under dominated Poland. The time came that the enemy was no longer satisfied with the stages of the extermination process, that the chief of Hitler's Security Police, Reinhard Heydrich, discussed in the first part of his tragically famous “Schnellbrief” [“express letter” which gave orders on the treatment and ghettoization of the Jews] of September 21, 1939. These nation murderers took to carrying out the second part of Heydrich's plan – namely, to realize the “Endziel” [“final goal”]: the absolute physical eradication of the Jewish race.^[10]

The first steps that had to be taken for the destruction of the Jews brought only moderate results for the [German] murderers. The extermination steps were heavy taxes, Nirenberg laws, pogroms, robbery of all movable and even partially movable possessions, yellow patches, ghettoization, expulsions, forced labor, moral depression, starvation, germ attacks, [and] plagues. From about the end of 1939 until summer of 1942, through all these indirect means of murder, about 100,000 Jews died in the Warsaw ghetto; the Angel of Death left his greatest destruction among the workers, the intelligentsia, the refugees, and the exiles,^[11] and generally among the overall poor. But for the Hitlerist murderers this was insufficient. The Jewish masses – opposing the position of the Judenrat – mobilized their own energies in the fight against plagues of hunger and with superhuman efforts, in support of a line of social self–help institutions and house committees, in a significant measure preventing the eerie onslaught of death. Understandably, the occupier was not satisfied with such a small, according to him, rate of death. The German Security Police saw in this isolated ghetto a place of fire and constant unrest and revolt. Heydrich already wrote in his above–mentioned “Schnellbrief” that the Jews must be isolated because they were joining the movement of free shooters and bands (read: partisans).

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These circumstances were a thorn in the eyes of the Wehrmacht [German armed forces] administration which, already at the beginning of 1941, had begun to implement the Barbarossa Operation, a plan of sudden attack on the Soviet Union. It was very characteristic that at the eve of the attack, Field Marshall Keitel visited Warsaw and – as Ringelblum relates – on the basis of secure information, Keitel already at that time declared that the Jews had to be evacuated from Warsaw; Warsaw was really the most significant communication center for the direct German path – the eastern front. After the Jews, this directive had to fall on the Polish population. The well–informed underground Polish news bulletin “Informacia Bjezhonca” [“Current Information”], in mid–summer of 1942, reported from German sources, that the ghetto liquidation was the beginning of a great evacuation Aktzia of the Polish resistance elements and of Polish Warsaw in general. That's how it became clear that at that time, at the end of 1941 and at the first half of 1942, there came into the dark, criminal minds of the leaders of the Hitlerist security police and of the Hitlerist army, the concrete plan to physically totally liquidate the Jewish population, and after that, 80,000,000 Slavs.

The Jews, and a large part of the Slavic residents of the temporary occupied Soviet regions were evacuated generally immediately, right after the invasion of Keitel, Hot, Manstein, Guderian, and other armies and personae of Nazi marshalls and generals. A tremendous river of blood was spilled across the settlements of Kiev, Kharkow, Krym, Homel, Vitebsk, and Slonim. Here, the bloody incision was made almost to the end. Partial evacuations took place in Lvov, Bialystok, Vilna, Minsk, and other settlements, where the extermination was divided into several stages – meanwhile, the slave labor of the isolated Jews whittled them down to their very bones, so that these last exhausted ones in perpetual unrest and pain would quickly and easily be exterminated through all sorts of horrible means of death.

That's how the bloody wave from the east approached, at the beginning of 1942, the borders of the general region [gubernie – province].

In March, in the same month that the anti–fascist bloc was established in the Warsaw ghetto underground, the first shocking news reached the Warsaw Jews that on the 17th of March the Jews from Lublin were evacuated to Bielziec; 30,000 Lublin Jews, aside from that, were murdered on the spot in Lublin itself, behind the city.

From Lublin, the deadly expulsion and wave of evacuation poured across the entire district.

The first Job–like reports [of “suffering,” as in the Book of Job] were brought by the Polish people who were still connected to the ghetto. Some tragic information was brought by the fearless Jewish

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liaison officers of the organizations of the anti–fascist bloc, the Frumkes, the Khantches [names of anarchists], and others.

New, strange, gruesome words appeared on the pale lips of the residents in the Warsaw ghetto: “Aktzia,” “expulsion,” “extermination commando.”

And at the same time, a second bloody river ran through Warsaw – from the west side. Since November 1941, the death factory in Chelmno was seething, behind Kolo, in the so–called “guarded land,” that was separated by the occupiers from the Polish imprisoned land. They said that 40,000 Jews and gypsies were choked to death there in the horrifying “dushegubka” [“gas truck,” mobile gas chamber].

For the first time, Warsaw Jews heard about mass killings by gas.

The ordinary ghetto Jew, confused, asked: “From where will help come?”

But along with the pressing reports about the death of hundreds of thousands of people, there were also other rumors – greetings, that filled [the ghetto Jew] with strength and showed a difficult and frightening, but worthwhile way out.

The greetings arrived from the western White Russia regions, from those places where the Jewish population, within about two years, breathed the free–person's air of the Soviet atmosphere – the greetings went from Novogrodek, from Nieswezh, from Lekhewycz to Warsaw – the greetings were about the active resistance and the self–defense of the local brave Jews, about fights with the German police, about the masses fleeing into the forests where partisan camps were formed.

The word “Nowogrodek” became a [code word for a] fighting solution in the Warsaw ghetto. “Nowogrodek” was simply: resistance.

Soon, another piece of news came from an occupied location, which described an encouraging example of how such a resistance could be organized.

In April 1942, through secret means, a youth delegation from Vilna arrived in the Warsaw ghetto. A German sergeant, an anti–fascist, Anton Schmidt, helped them get into Warsaw, and later, for the sin of helping the Jews, he was murdered by the Nazi thugs.

The youth organization brought two types of news. One sad piece of news [was] about the tragedy in Ponar, about the horrifying killings of thousands of Jewish people. And a second piece of news [was] about the establishment of the united partisan organization of the Vilna ghetto, under the direction of the communist Itzik Vitenberg. The PPA was a forum of a broad national fighting front and an organizational section of the General Lithuanian Soviet Resistance Movement, which existed in the Vilna underground.

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The activists of the anti–fascist bloc called a meeting in April 1942, of the so–called socially active in the ghetto, [and] invited not only the anti–fascists, but everyone, including the representatives of the religious Jews. At that meeting, you had to listen to a report from Vilna, and then work out a plan for coordinated resistance tactics.

The report of this meeting was documented by one of the participants, Mordechai Tenenboim, Tamorov. One year later, in April 1943, when he was in the Bialystok ghetto underground, he transcribed it in detail, and since some of his writings were saved, we were able to reconstruct a picture of what transpired at the meeting. This is a picture that, in some sense, supplies a response to the question: Why was there no massive resistance by the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto at the onset of the liquidation Aktzia?

The heads of the groups that were not represented in the anti–fascist bloc decidedly expressed themselves against that which was not the resistance thought. Even though the motivation of the religious spokespeople, from the General Zionists Organization and from the right–wing directors who represented the Bund at that time, was diverse, their position remained as one: One is forbidden from provoking the enemy; you don't have to lure the wolf out of the forest; you have to wait and do nothing.

Rav Nisenboim of the Mizrachi founded his opposition to this initiative of the anti–fascist bloc and to the Vilna call of the “religious arguments”: He said, “The Jewish religion does not permit suicide, and going into active confrontation against the enemy – is considered suicide.”

Menakhem Kirshenboim of the General Zionist Organization was careful not to play with fire: After everything, he said, the Hitlerist Angel of Death in the Soviet regions is distracted by some celebration; in Warsaw, however, in the heart of Europe, the Nazis will not permit such things.

Mauritzi Ozhekh^[b] from the “Bund” stated that there should be a call to “psychological resistance”; his opposition to the concept of active confrontation was enveloped in figures of speech because he counselled to wait until the Polish proletariat would arise.

Only Finkelstajn (Lewartowski) expressed the position of quickly organizing a resistance. His call for this – as expressed through Tamorov's words – touched the feelings and invited the left–wing elements of the Zionist youth that revolted against the surrender position of the “well–known” Zionist leader.

The Vilna delegation left broken from the meeting. The illusions, not understanding the situation, the fear

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deep inside the residents and right–wing socialist activists.

The anti–fascist knowledgeable unit of the ghetto underground understood that Ozhekh's interpretation of this, that “you have to wait until the Polish proletariat will rise up,” was essentially a false reaction. The anti–fascist patriotic sector of the Polish underground already gave itself a strong push from that moment on, when the PPR [Polish People's Republic] came to life. This was able to be observed not only by the diligent Jewish and Polish observer of political life in the country, but the occupiers were also able to sense this very quickly.

Before us lies an interesting German document: the secret monthly reports of the Warsaw provincial office of the “government” of the General Government of Warsaw, about the political situation in the Warsaw district. When we compare the tone and content of the reports (signed by Governor Fisher's representative Dr. Humel) for the last months of the year 1941, and the reports of the first months of 1942, we cannot dismiss the impression of how deep was the change that infused the Polish underground. In the first reports, Dr. Humel's tone was calm, he was satisfied that the Polish underground was occupied with “psychological resistance.” The police staff in the regions was living a comfortable and secure life. But already in the reports of January and February of 1942, the district representative was becoming unsettled, and within the next few months, he would become even more anxious. Another power arose – it says in the report for the first half of the year 1942 – in the Polish underground, that was situating itself in the Soviet Union. The Polish resistance movement – Dr. Humel continued to assert – began to cross over from propaganda to attacks on the Germans. The situation for the police staff became dangerous. Partisans appeared, and fighting began.

Also, the Polish reaction, at the beginning of 1942, was to pass judgment on the deep and big news that was brought into the life of the country with the rising dynamic energy of the PPR. In the archives of the delegation that was found in Warsaw, there is a characteristic document, a report of the anti–communist section of the delegated propaganda unit. This report alerted [the people] that a great danger had arisen (for the reaction – B.M.), that once again “Zhidokomuna” [“Judeo–Bolshevism”, an anti–Semitic and anti–communist pejorative title], and once again they were going to stir up the Poles to “unaccountable measures,” to resistance.

In the more knowledgeable ghetto circles, they already knew of the new phenomena in the Polish underground. The left–wing ghetto press writes about this, as do the two ghetto chroniclers Avrohom Levin and Shmuel Vinter. A series of notes by Ringelblum attests to this as well. Not only was each resistance act of the Poles eagerly caught up by the Jews whose orientation was anti–fascist

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bloc, Levin expresses the great joy about the ghetto prohibitions of the news about the killing of the mass murderer Heydrich. So, Ozhekh's position was not accepted, as well as the position of the right–wing Zionist leaders, the position which was an echo from London. Therefore, the activities of the anti–fascist bloc, the work of the PPR, had extensive resonance and appreciation.

The anti–fascist bloc made efforts to establish its own organization – “Der Ruf” [“The Call”]. The anti–fascist bloc put out a notice to the Jewish population. The anti–fascist bloc positioned itself in opposition to the false illusions; against the too gentle Rumkowski and Zionist bourgeoisie theories, saying that the ghetto is good for the Jews, because there, the … Jewish nationalist type … could grow; against their traitorous attitude that Hitler–Germany would win, and, therefore, the Jews must see that they accommodate themselves in their difficult situations, in the context of the Third Reich. Der Ruf also fought against the Western powers which were promoted in the Zionist and Bundist press. The anti–fascist bloc represented an uncompromising attitude towards the Soviet Union. Der Ruf discussed a fight for a new, socialist governed Poland. It tried to create a broad nationalist fighting front. The anti–fascists were not dejected because of the results of the meeting in April and also not because of the March negotiations with the Bund. Unity in the fight was the rule of the hour. It was characteristic that one of the press releases of the PPR in the ghetto at that time carried the often used name “Unity.”

And most important: The anti–fascist bloc, giving itself a clear and bold evaluation of the situation and of that which was awaiting the Jews, made feverish preparations for an active resistance, for self–protection.

From all the sources, it was expressed that the months of March, April, and May, were a period of uprising for the anti–fascist bloc. Along with that, there were mass, secret meetings where there were open discussions about active resistance. There were also hints that there already had been attempted murders of Hitler guards.

Now the enemy received the word. The first bloody blows hit – the tragic night of the 17^th, [and] on the 18^th of April.

The ghetto, already for a long time was used to horrifying terror. But now there came a purposeful blow, that hit the majority of the anti–fascist cadres…^[12] Where did the fact come from that the Gestapo knew whom to drag out at night from their homes and to put each person down with one bullet to the neck, no one knew. Maybe the beginnings had been drawn from the mass arrests of February in the groups of the “Polish socialists,” or there was the hand of a provocateur, as some recently uncovered material suggests, or this was the work of Jewish agents of the Hitlerist

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security police – or differently, but after the murder of 52 anti–fascist activists, progressive culture workers, founders of the conspiratorial printings, and people who supported the movement with money, a wave of bloody repressions began, as well as political murders that lasted until the great liquidation in June 1942.

This suppressive Aktzia was not a local Warsaw phenomenon. It was carried like a tidal wave across a series of cities and ghettos. It tore off pieces of life from both the Jewish and general Polish resistance movement. In light of the latest political trials over NSZ [National Armed Forces, Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, Polish right–wing underground military organization] and “Staret” people, it became clear that the hand of the Polish informer also stretched into these mass arrests.

A shudder fell upon the ghetto. But the anti–fascists did not stop because of these repressive acts. They increased their activities. Disregarding the fact that the president of the Judenrat summoned an activist from the underground ghetto archive, who was connected to the bloc, and warned him that the illegal press should be closed down, the anti–fascists increased the underground's existing noise. On May 15, the bloc released a strong call with a statement to present a tough resistance, and oddly, on that same day, May 15, was the first feat of the organization of the National Guard [“Volksgvardia”] “Gvarzhisto,” where they carried out the famous order of the chief commander of the patriotic anti–fascist fighters group to the partisans, that they should march out into the field. A large number of the Gvarzhisto was led into the ghetto where, as the eye witnesses reported, they made a significant impression. It was, therefore, not a simple thing that the two dates were the same. Along with the beginning of the coordinated partisan activities in the country, the ghetto resistors' readiness to murder also rose. Both phenomena were closely tied together.

An unusual contest began between the Gestapo and the anti–fascist bloc: The Gestapo carried out its nightmares – the anti–fascists prepared the first partisan groups and summoned all to attention, to set up the lines and to [set up] resistance.

On May 30, there was a fresh, painful blow. Along with the mass arrests among the PPR activists and Warsaw in general, there was the tragic arrest of the PPR activists in the ghetto: of Andjei Schmidt, Adam Meretik, and Dovid Wlosko. Schmidt put up a resistance in the street, and in a beaten–up condition, he was taken to Pawiak [prison]. The three self–sacrificing fighters who belonged to the most active of the anti–fascist bloc were killed by the bloodthirsty enemies.

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This blow was felt very hard by the PPR and the anti–fascist activists. But in the place of those killed, new teams stepped forward. The agitation continued – and the repressions became bolder and bloodier. The hangmen lurked at the door and on the rooftop. They gathered at the entrance of the ghetto, they disguised themselves as Jews, they shot now without a set time or place [randomly]. The ghetto chronicles of May and June are filled with information about unceasing murders. Soon, an answer comes from the depths of the suffering masses. From an unfamiliar hand, from a people's revenge seeker, a policeman was killed at the ghetto gate. The enemy responded with a mass murder of over 100 Jewish workers on Babicz, behind Warsaw, “for disobeying the authorities.” From this time [as a result of this], came the notice of the Hitlerist ghetto commissioner Auerswald, who threatened, with far reaching repressive acts, the Jews who positioned themselves against the police orders, or conducted riots. The situation becomes more strained.

But the bloody terror meanwhile does its own job. It terrorized many people, also many of those who were close to the anti–fascist bloc. Fear of a bullet that could come at any minute from anywhere, threw a great fear onto some people, and this was felt during the first tragic summer months when the catastrophe of the first liquidation happened in the ghetto.

This catastrophe struck the wide ghetto masses without warning, even though the anti–fascists always warned and spread alarms to everyone. But the anti–fascists, unfortunately, were not the only factors in the ghetto. The criminal politics of the Judenrat also operated there, as well as the reactionary Zionists and right–wing Bundist leaders who sabotaged the united and national battlefront. Even in the last minutes, the Judenrat, at the time of the liquidation, preached on Grzybowska Street to the gathered unfortunate crowd, that this was really nothing; it was just that everyone was being taken to work. This disoriented the lying tactics of the occupants who turned their evil methods of false promises of divide and conquer among the so–called privileged workers and the Jews without working proof. It also armed psychologically the position of those regions, about which Mordechai Tenenboim recounts in his above– mentioned report.

When the killing commandos began to make trouble, along with their Jewish police assistants under the leadership of the traitors Jakub Laikin, Yusef Szerinski, and Szmerling, the activists of PPR and from the anti–fascist bloc made superhuman efforts to gather up energy and respond appropriately to the wild destruction. To a quickly assembled social ghetto–action, Lewartowski stepped forward with a fiery call: Let us go storm the walls of the ghetto! Thousands will die, hundreds will break through! – This call was popular in the anti–fascist circles – attesting to this fact was

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the fact that the teacher Yisroel Lichtenshtein, one of those who buried in the ground the first boxes of Ringelblum's archives, and in his last letter, which he left behind there, came to the same conclusion. He bitterly criticized those social activists who preferred to cram themselves into bunkers and leave the masses to the judgment of fate. They should have, he wrote, stormed the ghetto walls. Many would have died but we would have inundated the Aryan streets, and maybe even the Polish proletariat would have joined us.

We also find an echo of Lewartowski's call in Yehoshua Perle's chronicle “KhurbanVarsa” [“The Destruction of Warsaw”]. He also speaks with bitterness about why no one went out with axes and sticks to the ghetto walls and beyond.

Shmuel Vinter said the same thing. But all this, the sharp self–criticism, came later.

And meanwhile, in the flames of the extermination Aktzia, Lewartowski himself stood socially active, along with some other anti–fascist activists, with Khaim Ankerman, Yosef Kaplan, and others. The majority of bourgeois businessmen who were outside the anti–fascist bloc, were confused and panic– stricken, deaf to the call of the PPR which showed the only way out.

With pain in his heart, Lewartowski left the meeting – said the eyewitness who saw him in the last days of his life. But he did not resign from continuing the fight.

Unfortunately, it was not fated for Lewartowski and others who were present at that meeting, to see with their own eyes the fruit of their work that had many sacrifices. Soon, Yosef Lewartowski died during his post. He was murdered by the Nazi beasts. Also, the anti–fascist Yosef Kaplan, one of Lewartowski's greatest followers in the anti–fascist bloc, fell into hands of the enemy, and died in the Pawiak prison along with another anti–fascist Shmuel Breslow.

At the same time, brotherly help came from the friends on the “Aryan” side. But before we tell about this, let us pause for a while and discuss the connection, that went on behind the ghetto walls, of the Polish underground to the tragedy and to the murder of the nation.

When you leaf through the pages of the press of the right–wing parties of underground Poland for the summer months of the year 1942, you cannot free yourself from the painful impression, that we are involved with a unanimous oath of silence about the murder of a nation that took place in neighboring, almost the heart of, Warsaw. At best, some of the delegate newspapers permitted brief, concise, dry information. According to these newspapers, it seemed – the outraged newspapers of the PPR later wrote – that behind the ghetto walls

[Col. 931]

some sort of operation would take place and not one person would remain alive. The conspiracy of silence of the Polish reactionaries in the country was in harmony with a similar criminal indifference towards the mass murder of the Polish Jews, of the official circles of the Western superpowers. Because of that, there was good reason that an unknown Polish underground chronicler claimed very bitterly: “In the Vatican, G–d's representative is silent, they are silent in London, in Washington, the defenders of the good things, the government of the Polish republic is silent… This silence is terrifying and astonishing!” And like that, Shmuel Vinter had a basis to write, in February 1943, sitting in a bunker on the unfamiliar grave of his own family, his own people, the following angry words: “If the democracies^[13] would really want to help Stalin be victorious, they would be able to do this with less effort! Hitler would be lying on the floor! Unfortunately, the democracies do not want to allow Stalin's victory. It is not for nothing that the democracies are happy that Hitler murdered the Polish Jews; not only because now they are free of the Jews, but also because the power of the Red Army was also destroyed … Churchill is sleeping peacefully with the English bourgeoisie, may their names be erased!”

The Polish Workers' Party, and all the patriotic, democratic elements, understood that the faster the promise of America and England would come to pass, about opening a second front in Europe, the more quickly there would be an end to the pain for the Jews and for all the burdened nations. At least it would greatly decrease the number of victims. It was not a coincidence that precisely on August 15, 1942, when innocent Jewish blood was spilled, flowing down the ghetto streets, the PPR journal “Tribuna Khlopska” [“The Farmers' Tribune”] sharply addressed the question of opening the second front. But the official circles of the Western world remained deaf and mute. In the same way, the leaders of the ZWZ [Związek Walki Zbrojnej; Union for Armed Resistance] (A”K) [Armia Krajowa; Home Army] also remained deaf to the demands and messages of the Jewish liaison officers on the “Aryan” side, who asked for one thing: some weapons in order to give a serious response to the nation of murderers. The warehouses of the ZWZ (A”K) were already filled with weapons at that time. Also, today, in light of the important witness reports of former officers and those attached to the ZWZ (A”K) it is clear that this military formation of the Senatzia [Polish Fascist government] clique stored large amounts of ammunition in the actual ghetto. At the same time, when the anti–fascist youth in the ghetto was tormented with the tragic knowledge that they did not have anything with which to face the murderers; at the same time, when the Warsaw committee of the PPR on the Aryan side gave away one of their two revolvers (they did not have any more because all of the ammunition was

[Col. 932]

in the Kielc and Lublin forests, where the partisan movement began), to the Jewish ghetto fighters – at the same time, huge arsenals remained useless in Warsaw in general, and in the actual ghetto, the arsenals of ZWZ (A”K). Not one gun from this arsenal was fired, not even a demonstrative shot was made from their side.

Yes, one group of the delegation circles took to expressing one word, and protested against the criminal silence. But, oh, what a protest this was! The Catholic organization “Front Odrozhenija Polski” (“The Front for Poland's Rebirth”), with a Vatican orientation, published a letter in which the authors wrote that they did not want to be pilots [forerunners], although … the Jews are such and such, that, sadly they could not place themselves in resistance to the murders and have not power to save anyone, but their hearts are filled with pity, although … the zhides [derogatory term for “Jews”] are throwing false accusations onto the Polish people, and so on. In true inquisitor–like, Jesuit hypocrisy, these Vatican knights wrapped their protest [in this way] in order to appease their own dark knowledge. They declined to give any help.

In light of all this, the position of the PPR grew to a higher level of humanitarianism, as the only one in the Polish parties who not only found strong words of protest and solidarity, but actually brought real help.

The press and radio bulletins of the PPR of that time were filled with descriptions of the events in the ghetto, filled with alarm calls. The organizations of the Polish Workers' Party alerted the Jews to self–protection, and the Poles to help. This we read in the “Trybuna Wolnosci” [“The Freedom Press”], “Gvarzhisto” [“National Guard”], “Trybuna Khlopska” [“People's Tribune”], “Radio Buleten” [“Radio Bulletins”], and so on. The PPR press explained that the Jews who put up a resistance to the occupier, fought for their lives and at the same time for the Polish nation. In a deep, piercing article in the Trybuna Wolnosci, of August 1942, an analysis is done of the phenomenon that in the time of the first liquidation, there was no mass resistance in the ghetto. The PPR states that the criminal anti–Semitic politics of the Polish reaction isolated the Jews, forcing them to unite. In the PPR press we sense the same position, which was held by Lewertowski: “The self–protection must take on a mass character. Individuals will die in the fight, but thousands will be saved” (“Radio Buleten,” an organ of the Warsaw committee of the PPR, volume 34, p. 27–30, July 1942).

The situation in the ghetto remained on the daily agenda of the meetings of the Central Committee and of the Warsaw Committee of the party. Certainly, if the PPR would have been stronger at that time, the events would have partially taken on a different character. But the party was not long in existence, when soon from the beginning they were bitterly and strongly contested by

[Col. 933]

the delegation circles who did not stop because of the informers to the Gestapo; and the PPR did not yet own any ammunition, nonetheless, the party – other than the publications in the press and the formation of a concrete fighting program – conducted a series of important assistance activities.

In the actual heat of the liquidation Aktzia, the messenger of the Warsaw PPR committee, Henrik Kotlicki, took a gun into the ghetto, hidden in his sleeve. With this gun, the fighter Yisroel Kanal^[14] shot the traitor on August 25, the head of the ghetto police, Yusef Szerinski. The death sentence for the traitor Szerinski and other traitors and collaborators was the decision done with the consent of the fighters of the anti–fascist bloc, defining these criminals and servants of the enemy as guilty. The Jewish fighters understood that first they had to cleanse the atmosphere in the ghetto and remove the repulsive “our own” traitors and kidnappers, about whom very angry words were written by the chroniclers of the destroyed Jewish community in Warsaw.

Kanal did not get it all. The arm of the first Jewish gunman in the ghetto was not yet strong or steady enough. Szerinski received a terrible wound. But the first shot into the heart of a traitor turned into a signal for active resistance.^[15]

The fighters become emboldened. They began setting fire to the storage houses of the enemies' operations in the ghetto. Jews began to argue. The chroniclers describe events of ripping guns away from Ukrainian fascists, of masses fleeing from the captured groups. The streets Wolnicka, Panske, Twarde, Nalewka, and even the umschlagplatz [deportation points] become centers of essential and individual resistance. The familiar report of November 15, 1942, discusses 4,517 incidents of Germans shooting Jews on the spot during the month of August, and about 2,648 such incidents from the 6th to the 12th of September. Among these thousands of murdered, there were certainly – other than the elderly and sick – many who died as a result of active resistance.

The second type of help from the PPR was to organize a mass departure to the partisans. In that action, the face of Noite Teitelboim already at that time was shining as he was the link between the ghetto and the forest.

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And the third means of critical help were the alarm radio broadcasts that were from the deep, Polish anti–fascist underground in Warsaw that had gone east, to the partisan base in White Russia and from there to Moscow. A wealthy, Polish partisan commissioner, who saw these emergency communications, recounted this mission. The archival materials from the headquarters of the Soviet partisan movement confirm this. And here, the deep distinction between the reactions of the capitalistic West and the socialist East, became apparent. In response to Warsaw's calls of alarm, the Soviet air force in the eastern regions of the district, in August 1942, attacked the railways that ran east from Warsaw, among others – to Treblinka. The above mentioned monthly reports from the Warsaw district office for August and September 1942, said there were 15 air raid sirens and air raids of the Soviet air force on the eastern regions of the district. One strong air attack was in the region of the ghetto, the tragically familiar command site on Eisengass number 103, which was the center of Jewish torture, and the places neighboring the umschlagplatz [deportation point] and the ghetto gates. As the eyewitnesses relate, the air raid created a panic for the fascist guards and joy for the Jews who used this as an opportunity to flee. Because of this air raid, writes the tragically murdered memoirist of the Warsaw ghetto Nami Weinkranc–Szac,^[16] that it was only now that the Jews reassured themselves that they were not forgotten. And she concludes with these words: “A blessed air raid!”

The newspaper of the “Polish Socialists” “Robotnik” [“The Worker”] writes about the powerful impact the air raid made on the Polish population:

On the night of the 1^st, into September 2, Soviet airplanes once again appeared over Warsaw, and particularly over the ghetto. As the German sources relate, as a result of Soviet retaliatory bombing, 239 Germans were killed and 511 were wounded.

At least this is how the barbaric enemy was paid back for the gruesome elimination of the Jewish community in Warsaw.

We are closing the first period of the events of September in the Warsaw ghetto, the period of the rich activities of the anti–fascist bloc. This does not mean that after September the bloc and its spirit actually died out. What happened later was a continuation of the anti–fascist bloc and a result of the labor of their workers and activists. Since the national fighting front of the ghetto greatly expanded after October 1942, and

[Col. 935]

a new organizational forum arises from this extended front, that carries the name – Jewish Fighters Organization, we will call the next period by its last name, even though the Jewish Fighters Organization was still a child, a continuation, and an extension of the first organization of the ghetto fighters – of the anti–fascist bloc, that was organizationally connected to the National Guard and rose up and was organized by the Polish Workers' Party.

After the first major liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, the Jewish underground did a thorough internal assessment. The betrayal by the Judenrat [Jewish Council] remained evident for to everyone to see, [it was] totally revealed. The majority of the last remaining 60-70 thousand ghetto dwellers now saw a way out of this situation: active and passive resistance.

The development of events on the eastern front and in the country bore out this one, correct assessment.

On the eastern front, Hitler's blitzkrieg [“lightning” assault] destroyed everything with one bang. Thanks to the ingenious, strategic plans of Joseph Stalin, plans that were based on socialist strategic knowledge, Hitler's planned blitzkrieg evolved into a long-lasting war where [German] fortune was overturned. While the power and reserves of Hitler's Germany began to ebb, the strength of the Soviet army began to grow, as it surpassed its offensive in broad measures and took to bloodying its opposition, chasing it back and destroying its soldiers, successfully applying the famous tactic of Bagration [“catch in the bag,” based on Operation Bagration, or the Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation, named after General Pyotr Bagration] and the so-called “hammer and sickle.” ^[17]

Now the grand Stalingrad saga began.

The events on the eastern front provided wings to the resistance movement and the burdened countries of Europe. A new soul entered into the French, Belgian, Italian, Greek, etc., undergrounds. A strong uprising was also noticed within the resistance elements of occupied Poland.

The daily journal, which was run by the Governor General Frank, and in which the conferences of the governors and police chiefs from the districts were written up

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more grim from week to week. The monthly reports from the Warsaw district office became even more unsettling and worrisome.

The underground Polish press became, on the contrary, more hopeful. There was already a strong partisan movement from the National Guard in the Lublin, Krakow, Kielc, and Warsaw areas. Fiery passion for fighting was also ignited in the areas of the so-called Warta-land. The National Guard partisan movement coordinated its activities with the lively military detachments from fugitive Soviet war prisoners who lit the flames of the partisan fight. The first regulated slaughter took place. Polish and Soviet partisans captured entire towns, beat up strong gendarme posts, and threw a panicking fear into the uninvited Nazi bosses. Jews from the towns of the Lublin and Warsaw areas fled into the forests, Jewish war prisoners ran, former soldiers from the Polish army [fled], from the Lublin camp, and set up Jewish partisan camps, an organized unit of the National Guard. The PPR press [Polish Workers' Party] noted the first slaughters of victories. A resistance movement rose in the Krakow ghetto. In the Treblinka death camp, the first strong unit of Jews rose to an unequal fight.

At the center of this rising movement was Warsaw.

After a series of smaller acts, the Warsaw National Guard staged a huge diversionary action across the train lines behind Warsaw, on the nights of the 7^th and 8^th of October. For a long period of time, the routes that were used by trains, taking military, ammunition, and food to the eastern front, were blocked.

The enemy answered with hangings, where 50 PPR members were hanged, among them a lineup of old activists from the SDKP”L [Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania] and KP”P [Communist Party of Poland].

The National Guard responded to this terrorist act with bombings, which ripped up several locations where the Hitlerist elite from Warsaw used to meet.

The occupier thought that he would be successful in frightening off the resistors with a huge donation of a million zlotys for the civilian Polish population.

The fearless National Guard responded to this with an original reply. With lightning speed and power, they confiscated a million zlotys from the Communal Bank on November 30.^[18]

The impact of this action was tremendous - both for the Polish population and in the ghetto (the chronicler Avrohom Levin expressed this).

In this general atmosphere of the growing active resistance movement, the Jewish combat organization came to life.

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The Jewish combat organization was not an absolutely new entity in the ghetto. As was already explained in the previous chapter, it was a continuation and extension of the anti-fascist bloc. The surviving activists of the bloc, after the great slaughter and destruction from July 22 to October 3, communicated with each other and maintained a mutual connection during the days of death, and combined efforts led to the discharge of Yisroel Kanal and to the other resistance acts. They created the Jewish combat organization in the second half of October. So we have to drop the tendency of certain writers and witnesses who want to break the chain that stretches from the anti-fascist bloc to the Jewish combat organization (and from there to the uprising).

This unrealistic notion that arose in the post-war years is in direct contradiction to the facts. Almost all witnesses relate that in the actual intensity of the defensive acts, those contacts who had been removed were now reinstated, as they dragged people from the umschlagplatz [roundup point] and then [later] at night set up the blood-drenched rooms [for Jews rescued from street attacks]. In these very challenging times, the ones who were exceptional for their superhuman work and organizational activity were the PPR members Efraim (Edvard) Fondominski, Michal Rozenfeld, Ignac Feil, Ruzhke Rozenfeld, Soroh Shagel, Binyomin Leibgot, and many other activists. The place of the deceased Lewertowski was taken over by Fondominski, who was elected as secretary of the ghetto committee of the PPR. In Schmidt's place, there was Michal Rozenfeld. The idea of uniting all the resistance energies received more blood and flesh. In the line-ups of the “Bund” and “Zukunft” [“Future”], there was a deeper shift in the direction of approaching the activity program of the anti-fascist bloc. Direction of this went into the hands of the unified front and resistance elements. There was a similar evolution of the left-wing Zionist youth. This is how, in the second half of October, the Jewish combat organization came to be – the extended forum of the anti-fascist national battle front. It's hard to know the exact date of the formal creation of the Jewish combat organization. According to certain witnesses, the date was October 20. Almost all of the witnesses noticed, however, that it was back in September when they designed and created the Jewish combat organization.

The Jewish combat organization was no ordinary mechanical union. It was actually based on the ideological platform of the anti-fascist bloc. It was an anti-fascist combat organization. It held itself as a unit of the anti-fascist, patriotic camp of the Polish underground. The anti-fascist character of the Jewish combat organization could, among other things, illustrate its relationship to the Zionist revisionist armed groups that began, since October 1942, to establish itself in the ghetto. After long negotiations, these groups were not permitted to be part of the Jewish combat organizations because there were serious suspicions about their contacts with the extreme right-wing, openly anti-Semitic and wildly anti-Soviet Polish organizations.^[19]

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The Zionist revisionist press in the ghetto reported and preached – during those times of Hitler's expulsions – the slogans of leaving Europe immediately instead of fighting.

In terms of the position of the Jewish combat organization in relation to the independence of Poland, the call of “ZOB” [Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Jewish Combat Organization] was characteristic enough of this. This call, which was directed to the masses, ended with these words: “The fight is for your and our freedom, for your and our human, social, and nationalist worthiness and honor… Long live the munition and blood brotherhood of combating Poland. Long live freedom!” These short, fiery words expressed the ideological platform of the Jewish combat organization. Let us draw attention to the words “your and our human, social, and nationalist worthiness and honor.” As we see, the Jewish combat organization understood the harmonious connection between the social and national fight for freedom. And let's remember again that in this way its program promulgated only one party for underground Poland – the Polish Workers' Party.

The Jewish combat organization for a while was part of the National Guard. Therefore, witnesses say the important fact [was] that the staff of the ZOB coordinated their uprising plan with the direction of the National Guard. This fact was a resistance organization of the Jews in the ghetto, a number of whom came forward to fight for life and death of the Jewish people, for social and national freedom, for the independence of Poland, for the freedom of humanity.

All this came to be expressed in the factual publication of the united Jewish combat organization – in the “Wiadomosci” [“News”] of the last beginnings of the resistance period. The “Wiadomosci” were reported in Polish. There were likely other periodicals also put out by ZOB. Traces of these kinds of periodicals in Yiddish were found in the second section of the Ringelblum archives. On the other hand, the “Wiadomosci” [publications] were found in the freshly dug out archives in a larger number. In these “Wiadomosci,” their expression of the Jewish combat organization is expressed in the Soviet Union, its inner link with the anti-fascist

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patriotic Polish underground, the awareness of the fight for national and social liberty, and the strong determination to go on the only route, the route of active resistance.

This does not at all mean that in the lines of Jewish combat organizations there existed an ideological contradiction within the individual groups. The PPR organization [“Polish Workers' Party”] organization always ran an independent party activity. For example, it was said in the memoirs of a survivor that during the time of the resistance itself, there were heated discussions in the bunkers of headquarters of the ZOB on Mila 18, about Yiddish-Hebrew. Alexander, the PPR representative, defended Yiddish. On other occasions, there were discussions of the future shape of independent Poland, the Jewish problem, the relationship with the German nation after their victory. And another witness related that the leftists stood on the point that there had to be a difference between the Hitlerists and those supporting Hitlerist elements, no matter how large they may be, and the ordinary German person.

But all these things that were shared did not mask the main goal: the unity in the fight. [That was] the order of the hour. That means – [unity of] the goal, [unity of] the resistance, these which had to and were able to unite. In the offices for the direction of the Jewish combat organizations – one witness stated – there was a strong connection between the Communist Rosenfeld, the left wing guard Anielowic, and the left wing socialist Bloom and Burlinski. The above mentioned, and in particular Rosenfeld, were more decisive, sharper, and - the witness says -, and these things were noteworthy.

The Jewish combat organization dedicated itself not only to the question of attracting and educating new cadres for combat, and not only to the difficult concept of becoming armed, of [attracting and educating] contacts, but also occupied itself with covering the ghetto masses with outspread security for those neglected, orphaned children, and for culture problems. In this manner, for example, the Jewish combat organization fought against the art program, [using their opposition] as a method of delay. In the conditions of the ghetto, after the tremendous bloodshed of the summer-autumn of 1942, art, like a pastime, became not only tricky and destructive, but also criminal and traitorous. Also, the culture activist Shmuel Winter brought the opposition to art as a delay method very boldly to expression in his daily notes. The Jewish combat organization appeared as a dynamic national power concerned with the soul of the people, for the purity and social character of its culture and art.

At the head of the Jewish combat organization there were two bodies: a political one and a military one. A coordinating commission was created, which occupied itself with the political unity issues. The PPR was represented here by its active friend [comrade] Efraim Fondaminski. Yochanan Morgenstern managed the finances.

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The ruling military body was the staff of the ZOB, in which the PPR was represented by Mikhal Rozenfeld. As commander of the staff, it was Mordechai Anielewicz who was elected after the arrest of Schmidt, one of the commanders who was educated during the period of the anti-fascist bloc.

The emergence and the activities of the Jewish combat organization revolutionized the atmosphere in the ghetto.

A feverish preparation of slaughter units began. Day and night, the youth was trained for combat. Deep in the ghetto underground, primitive arms were produced and weapons that were smuggled in were stocked up.

On the other side of the wall, the ZOB had devoted friends – the PPR, the National Guard, a group of leftist socialists and democrats (these were organized in the “Council to Aid Jews,” or because of the conspiracy, this was called “Zegota”). After the first revolver, which the Warsaw committee of the PPR sent into the ghetto in the tragic month of August, the PPR quickly sent in a larger transport of grenades, and, from that time on, this activity continued through various methods. The names of the loyal weapon suppliers, of the Polish patriots, the Kowalskis, Buczinskis, Sawickis, from the German anti-fascist Walter, who during that time, with great self-sacrifice, provided weapons to the fighters, will always be remembered with gratitude by those who hold great and dear the memory of the Jewish combat organization. In the same way, special mention must be made of those in the Jewish combat organization, who occupied themselves specifically with this task, those who, in the ghetto, produced primitive grenades and incendiary bottles, about whom SS General Stroop spoke about with tremendous hatred – the unforgettable Jewish fighters Moshe Jogadzhinski, Mikhal Klepfish, Yitzchok Sukenik, and many others.

But all this was paltry, tragically insufficient. And because of that, the leaders of the movement could not reject the primitive weapons, from axes, machetes, rods, and so on. In the ZOB documents of that time, there is first a discussion of these weapons. Tragically, it was actually like that. Those who owned the richest arsenals, the ZVVZ (A'Z) [Home Army], in October, when certain Jewish liaison officers, through chance contacts, requested aid in the form of weapons, they were coldly and definitively denied.

But regardless of that, regardless of the tremendously poor bank of arms, the Jewish combat organization made a daring decision: for the bearers to put forth all their armed strength on the first attack.

Let us correct one other mistake that spread naturally and extensively; the first open and armed foray of the Jewish combat organization, the battle of January 1943, was not represented by the office

[Col. 941]

of the ZOB as a form of self-protection. As it is extrapolated from new documents, about which there will soon be a discussion, the Jewish combat organization prepared the first foray, but the enemy, so-called, snatched up the initiative.

Let us discuss this more precisely.

The battle events in the Warsaw ghetto in January 1943 emerged into the general, hard striking wave of active resistance which made a determined advance in January 1943, into the country and into Warsaw in particular.

This rising active resistance had two provokers: from one side, the news from the eastern front stimulated the fighting; from the other side, the enormous, powerful terror of the occupier, particularly the events in the Zamoscz region, where the Germans had begun to evacuate the local Polish peasant population, using similar methods as during the time of the expulsion from the ghettoes. At the same time, the Polish residents in Warsaw were captured by being snatched up in the streets and by mass arrests.

The PPR and the National Guard called up the Zamoscz peasants to resistance and self defense. Certain groups of the so-called peasants' battalion tore themselves away from the ZVVZ (A'Z) [Home Army], and came to the defense of the endangered hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. They did not want to hear the silencing call of the right wing songs of the peasants' party's Stanislaw Mikolajczik, who demanded, on London radio, that the peasant masses in the country not to react to the terror of the occupier, and “not to allow yourselves to be provoked!”

The delegation [in London] rejected the call of the command of the PPR to step up to the national battlefront against the bloody occupier. The delegation responded with scorn and denunciation. Its messages to the Blue Police [police in German-occupied Poland] and to the Gestapo, was that the various “starten” [lines] disburse patriotic elements and in that way assist the occupier.

The Senator press used a warning tone: “Whoever sows a wind will reap a storm” (“Pravda”; publication of the Sanatzia elements, April 1943).

And the NDK [Polish nationalist] press demanded removal of the resistance traditions of the Polish people: The month of January of 1943 will absolutely not remember January of 1853” (“Warsawski Dzennik Narodowi,” January 9, 1943).

The PPR took upon itself the entire yoke of organizing the resistance movement. The chief of the party, Boleslaw Bjerut, placed himself at the head of the most important and most burning work – to build the national front in combat with the Hitlerist occupiers. January 1943 was a time in the history of Hitler's occupation of Poland that was not only wild terror, but also a month of uprising active resistance. From all corners of the country, there came encouraging voices

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in the Warsaw area, in the Lublin area, in the Garwolin area, [in the] Lukow area, [in the] Biale-Podlosk area, [in] Nowy Targer,[in] Poznan, [in] Kielc; there were outbreaks of smaller and greater battles.

As always, Warsaw was in the front line, with the heroic Warinski unit of the National Guard at the head. The reports from the Warsaw district office to the “occupying” government in Krakow were now not simply upsetting; they took on an outcry of a wounded fascist animal that is receiving harsher and stronger beatings The acts of sabotage and the activities of the activist groups of the Polish resistance movement strengthened significantly, particularly with increased attacks on the Germans: an officer of the Luftwaffe [German air force] was shot, a soldier in Mokotow was stabbed; an instructor of the government train was killed in his own home; a translator from the secret service was killed; a member - Brik- of the central office of propaganda was shot; there was an assault on two officials from the Warsaw district – Zimmerman and Wendel; three German soldiers were shot. All this demonstrated that the terror acts were increasing. And we read further in the report: “The attack on the office of the office for the sick; the throwing of explosive material into the workers office in Warsaw; the barrage of explosive machines onto the main railroad station and into all German movie houses.” And all this happened in Warsaw within about a month, approximately the first three weeks of January. The author of this report, Fisher's right hand, Dr. Humel, made the following orders: “It is already very clear that this is the work of those Polish activists, who are mainly supported by the Soviet Union… because of these events in the Zamosc region, an underground movement is convincing the population that the same thing will happen with the Poles as with the Jews.” The occupying organizations in Warsaw became terrified by the resistance acts, and when Dr. Humel ended the report, he put out this plea: “Because of this, we ask that the following evacuations be executed (from the Zamosc region - B.M.) until the conquerors will end the war. Also, the gangs in Warsaw have to be discussed with the government offices; the security situation (for the Germans – B. M.) is exceptionally armed so that the oncoming political development has to be observed with the highest concern.”

The brave position of the patriots, as we see, somewhat diminished the terrifying wave of terror of the occupier.

As the bravest resistance acts of the National Guard in Warsaw you have to count the act that took place on January 17, at six in the evening, when, all at once, as if on command, in a series of movie houses “only for Germans,” and in the officer's restaurant, grenades exploded, and tens of Hitlerists paid with their evil lives. That was, as they say, January 17. The following day, the 18^th, a mass shooting

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was heard in the ghetto. It took on the name of the Jewish combat organization. But before we move on to the first armed sortie done by the Jewish combat organization, we have to return to the first days of January for a moment. Already at the beginning of 1943, assessing the danger of a greater resistance movement in Poland, on January 11, Himmler sent an order to sharpen the combat against the “bandits,” but first to exterminate the proletariat elements within the Polish nation. At the same time, the final decision of the Reichsfuhrer [commander] of the SS was to completely liquidate the Warsaw ghetto, which was an area of resistance agitation. The final destruction of the Warsaw ghetto was, as we see, a result of two things: from the general politics to the center, at the root were the Jews; and [the second thing was] the growing resistance. Regardless of the efforts of the military management to retain some Jewish skilled workers for a while, the German security officials actually increased the dangers to existence of the ghetto in terms of the safety of the occupant. And in order to speed up the liquidation process, Himmler himself came into the Warsaw ghetto on January 9. After his visit, the final death decree fell.

But January 1943 was already not like July 1942. The situation on the eastern front had changed, the Polish underground had a different appearance, and a change had also taken place in the ghetto. “The Jewish population is waking up from its lethargy.” This is how the voice of the committee of the PPR, “Glas Warsawi” (“Warsaw's Voice”), characterized the changing sounds in the Warsaw ghetto on January 1, 1943. The Jewish combat organization, being well informed about what was going on in the Polish districts of the city, and understanding the goal of Himmler's offensive visit, decided not to wait until the enemy would attack, but to go out and attack first. The first sortie was set for January 22, in memory of the half-year since the beginning of the huge liquidation exercise of the Warsaw ghetto (July 22). In connection with that, at the same time, the Jewish combat organization put out a call to the people. The call began with these words: “January 22, 1943, will mark six months since the beginning of the evacuation in Warsaw.” This statement was found in the second part of the underground ghetto archives. The statement (it was written in Yiddish) unmasked the tactics of the occupier and the traitorous role of the Jewish police and other collaborative elements. In the statement, it says the following: “Jewish people, the hour is approaching. You must be ready to put up a resistance!” The expression, “the hour is approaching,” can be translated several ways: The final hour of the complete liquidation is approaching; and – The moment of our armed attack is coming.

[Col. 944]

According to our interpretation, we have to understand both meanings. One connects to the other.

In any case, it is clear that this appeal was written (and was surely distributed or posted) before the events of January 19. That means, for the new raid of the SS on the ghetto. In the same period before January 18, we have to mention another appeal made by the Jewish fighters – written in Polish – which begins with these words: “Prepare yourselves for action! Beware! We are rising to fight!” We do not know for certain whether the same hand wrote both appeals. On the contrary, the difference in style between the two documents raises the hypothesis that the authors come from two different circles. The first appeal is noted by its concreteness; the authors certainly belonged to the proletariat core of the Jewish combat organization. The second document is written in a different style, in a more fiery and pathetic style. But as was already mentioned, the Jewish resistance movement was comprised of many various elements, and the writers did not have to always be the same. In any case, we have to determine that both documents belong to the same period of before January 18, that both documents awaken to active fighting, and that is the way that the ghetto fighters prepared themselves for the determined attack.

But the enemy undercut the initiative. Himmler's order was pressing, and it also did not stop the stormy events on the Aryan streets on January 17, from pushing the SS and chief of police of the Warsaw district, Dr. Ferdinand Sammern-Frankenegg to speed up the Aktzia against the raging ghetto, and to leave the following morning, January 18, so there would be no fighting on both sides – except for inside the ghetto walls.

But Himmler's and Sammern's plans regarding the ghetto met up head on against the persistent resistance of the Jewish fighters, with already nothing to be done, in July 1942.

The enemy rolled into the ghetto, as stated in the Polish underground press, 1,000 men armed to the teeth: 200 German police and SS, and 800 of the fascist formations of reserves of all types; and aside from that, reinforcements from the Polish police. This Aktzia, which Sammern enacted on his own, was assisted by an “honored guest,” the chief of the Treblinka death camp, SS Commander Theodor van Eupen Malmedy, an aristocrat, a Hitlerist writer, and a hangman all in one person; he likely came to get his “merchandise” for Treblinka.

The Jewish combat organization was able to put forward 50 groups against the invading armed powers – that's how many the “Zhob” [Jewish combat organization] had, as was stated by a solidly informative eye witness. We say was able, but unfortunately, the staff of the Jewish combat organization – it seems – prepared itself

[Col. 945]

for the 22^nd, and at that moment when the enemy attacked, the Jewish resistance powers were not coordinated, so they were not properly prepared for a battle.

Nonetheless, the resistance was strong enough, and the enemy did not expect such determination.

The staff of the Jewish combat organization quickly sent out a flier (found in the second part of the Ringelblum archives): “Take an axe in your hand, take a bar, a knife, barricade your house … fight!” This was the leitmotif of this short, quickly composed outcry.

The ghetto masses no longer belonged to the enemy, the Junderat, and the store owners; the ghetto masses now only belonged to the Jewish combat organizations. The majority of the masses hid in holes. Only certain individuals remained open. Almost everyone became a passive resistor.

The workers at the carpentry company “East German Construction Company” on Genshe Street, gave the signal for active resistance. The young fighter Margalit Landau threw the first grenade.

The second slaughter locked into Zamenhof Street. Mordechai Anielewicz directed the fighters' group. He personally served as an example of courage, tossing two grenades into the SS and shooting a third with his gun. Sadly, the powers were not strong. The Jews' munitions were weak. They comprised of 5 guns, 5 grenades, bottle grenades, bars, and sticks. The flower of the combat organization fell in unequal measurement. Nonetheless, the Germans became afraid. Their shouts of “the Jews are shooting!” filled their own troops with panic. Many captured Jews took advantage of this and fled.

The third slaughter happened on Mila and Niske, where the Jewish fighters barricaded themselves in a house. When Hitler's people, using their overload of people and ammunition, invaded the house, the Jews poured gasoline onto the steps and then ignited them. The Jewish combat groups now fought until their final bullet. In a hero's death, one of the most courageous fighters fell, Eliyahu Ruzhanski.

More fighting happened in a line of cellars and bunkers on the streets Zamenhof, Mila, Muranowska, Franciszkaner. The fighters here, who were very poorly armed, successfully used the 13^th partisan tactic. This is what it contained: You let in the fascist kidnappers, one group of fighters remains behind, and the enemy is killed with two shots. In this area, there was one of the Jewish combat group who was exceptional, Zacharia Ortstajn. After wiping out the enemy, the partisans

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let's call them that, retreated onto rooftops and into holes, and took on new positions.

Original footnotes

1. A daughter of the old stockpile maker – who died in the Bialystok ghetto. Return
2. Those involved in the strikes, as told over by an eye witness, were Yoel Borenstajn, Yankel Glozman, Yosel Stoljer, and others. Return
3. VVRN – Right of the PPS –[Polish Socialist Party] that fought the Soviet Union and the resistance idea, just as all the other parties of the London delegation. Return
4. Boleslaw Bierut: “Podstawyideologiczne [Fundamental Ideology] PZPR [Polish United Workers' Party]” Warsaw 1951, pages 33–34. Return
5. ZVZ – Military formation of the London oriented elements, anti–Soviet and anti–Semitic; later changed its name to A”K (Armia Krajowa) [Home Army]. Return
6. “Polsczi Sotzialiszczi” – a break off from the PPS. The “Polish socialists” were opponents of the Pilsudski supporters and opponents of the London politics. But they strongly supported a series of other basic programs and only at the beginning of 1943 did they take the position of participating in the partisan movement. Later they experienced a division of the right wing, that was conducting diverse work against the PPR and in the United Front that was connected to the KRN (National Land Council), whose head was Bolislav Bjerut. Return
7. In the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute there is a list of Jewish Gestapo agents, of the Jewish police, and other collaborators, that was compiled by the administration of the Polish Socialists in the ghetto. Return
8. This is because of an article that criticized the German Social Democracy that the ghetto supplement of “Barikada Wolnoszcz” (the Freedom Barricade) was terminated; this was an organ of the “Polish Socialists.” Return
9. See further for this. Return
10. The final death sentence over the Jewish nation was stated at the conference that was assembled through the initiative of Hermann Goering. The conference of the representatives of various central offices of the Third Reich – those who were interested in the “final solution of the Jewish problem” – took place on January 10, 1942, in Berlin, in the Reich's security head office. The implementation of the entire extermination Aktzia was entrusted to Heydrich. Return
11. Refugees –people, who themselves have fled from their homelands; exiles – people who were evacuated by the occupiers, from their cities and towns. Return
12. Two died at that time. The left–wing socialist activist Andrzej Inzhy Neuding, the underground culture activist magistrate Menachem Linder, later – the chairman Sklor, and so on. Return
13. The footnotes are Vinter's. Under the “democracies” Vinter means the United States and Great Britain. Return
14. Kanal was a policeman before that. He left his past, and joined up with the group of fighters. Since he was a policeman before that, and knew how to get to Szerinski, he was chosen by the anti–fascist activists as the one to carry out attempted assassinations. Return
15. The Jewish fighters reported in an open notice and warning, about carrying out the death sentence of Szerinski (this is what Avrohom Levin wrote in his notes). Return
16. After the liberation, she was killed by a NSZ [“Narodowe Siły Zbrojne”;National Armed Forces band. A Soviet officer saved her memoirs. Return
17. The tactic of “sickle and hammer” was to surround the enemy with a sickle and then to give him a destructive smash, as if with a hammer. Return
18. In this brave activity the Jewish fighter Nota Tajtelboim (“Wanda”) also participates. Return
19. In the “Jewish Historical Institute” there is a certain testimony of a respected --- activist, to whom the representatives of the revisionist groups reported at that time and testified to the close relationship between Jabotinsky-Bek. Return

Translator's footnotes

1. In the year 1930, Avrohom Ganzweikh published a brochure under the name of “Unzer Entfer” [“Our Answer”] (for the declaration against the Chalutzim decree), published by the “Jewish Socialist Workers' Party”Poalei Zion United with the Zionist Socialists in Zaglembie – Upper Silesia. Return
2. One of the reactionary leaders of the “Bund,” an enemy of the Soviet Union and of the communists. Return

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