Many Jews in ghettos across Eastern Europe tried to organize resistance against the Germans and to arm themselves with smuggled and home-made weapons. Between l941 and l943, underground resistance movements formed in about 100 Jewish groups. The most famous attempt by Jews to resist the Germans in armed fighting occurred in the Warsaw ghetto.
In the summer of l942, about 300,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When reports of mass murder in the annihilation centers leaked back to the Warsaw ghetto, a surviving group of mostly young people formed an organization called the Z.O.B. (for the Polish name: Zydowska organizacja Bojowa - meaning, Jewish Fighting Organization). The ZOB, led by 23 year old Mordecai Anielewicz called for the Jewish people to resist going to the railroad cars.
Reports of massacres of Jews by mobile killing units and in extermination camps had already filtered into the ghetto. However the ZOB was not yet ready to stage a revolt. After deportations ended in September 1942, the ZOB expanded to incorporate members of underground political organizations and established contact with the Polish resistance forces who provided training, armaments and explosives. Mordecai Anielewicz was appointed commander.
In January l943, Warsaw ghetto fighters fired upon German troops as they tried to round up yet another group of ghetto inhabitants for deportation. Fighters used a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto. After a few days the troops retreated. This small victory inspired the ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance.
Armed Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, in April l943, was born out of desperation, determination and selfless courage. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was a turning point in Jewish history. Jews realized they had to fight. The importance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lies not in the fact that unarmed and untrained groups of youthful survivors organized a hopeless struggle against the mighty German war machine, but in the symbolic significance of the change in Jewish attitude.
This uprising is considered to be the first time Jews fought their own battles under their own banners, after Jewish Wars with the Romans, and after Massada, 135 AD. This change in national consciousness laid ground for the birth of the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish nation five years later.
Under the leadership of Mordecai Anielewicz, Warsaw Ghetto Jews staged the first urban uprising in occupied Europe. Seven hundred and fifty Jewish fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans for almost a month. Their arsenal consisted of nine rifles, 59 pistols and several hundred grenades, explosives and mines. But, on May 16, l943, the revolt ended. The Germans had slowly crushed the resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot, and the remainder deported to annihilation centers or concentration camps.
Just before his death Anielewicz wrote to his colleague, Yitzhak Zukerman: "…what really matters is that the dream of my life has come true. Jewish self-defense in the Warsaw ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and retaliation have become a reality. I have witnessed the magnificent heroic struggle of Jewish fighters.”
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Mordecai Anielewicz was born into a Jewish working-class family in a poor neighborhood of Wyszkow, Poland. For a short time he was a member of Betar. After completing his high school studies, he joined HaShomer HaZair and at the outbreak of WWII, was one of the leaders of the Warsaw branch. As a youngster, he stood up to bullying Poles, fighting back fiercely. As he grew older he excelled in leadership and organizing peer activities.
When the German army approached Warsaw, Anielewicz fled eastward in an attempt to reach Palestine, but was caught at the Rumanian border. He went to Vilna, where many members of Zionist youth movements found refuge and from there returned to Warsaw, with his girlfriend Mira Fukrer, in order to reestablish the movement in occupied Poland.
He was instrumental in establishing an urban kibbutz in a house in the Warsaw ghetto, organizing educational activities for small groups and in publishing an underground paper Neged HaZerem (Against the Stream).
He dedicated part of his time to learning Hebrew, reading and studying history, sociology and economics. By January 1940, Anielewicz had become a full-time underground activist.
After first hearing reports of the mass murder of Jews in the east, during June 1941, Anielewicz concentrated on the creation of a self-defense organization in the ghetto. From Western Poland, where he went to organize branches of the movement, he returned to the Warsaw ghetto after learning the horrors of the Nazi Aktion of July-September 1942.
Anielewicz had long advocated armed resistance against the Germans and upon the formation of the ZOB he was named its commander. He was the sole survivor of the HaShomer HaZair force that he led at the time of the Aktion on January 18, 1943. Thereafter, he prepared both the ZOB and the entire ghetto, now effectively under his control, for the final uprising in April 1943. He led the Warsaw Ghetto until May 8, 1943, when he fell, together with scores of comrades-in-arms, in the command bunker at 18 Mila Street, thus realizing his ideal to die as a fighting Jew in armed combat against the Nazis.
In the underground, Anielewicz used three aliases: Marian, Aniol (Polish for angel) and Malakhi (all variations on either his first name or family name.
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The GHETTO was an urban section serving as compulsory residential quarter for Jews, generally surrounded by a wall shutting it off from the rest of the city. Except for one or more gates, the ghetto remained bolted at night. The origin of this term has been the subject of much speculation. It was probably first used to describe a quarter of Venice situated near a foundry (getto or ghetto) which in l516 was enclosed by walls and gates and declared to be the only part of the city to be open to Jewish settlement.
Subsequently, the term was extended to all Jewish quarters of the same type. Other theories are that the word derives from the Hebrew get, indicating divorce or separation; from the Greek neighbor; from the German geheckter or fenced place; or from the Italian borghetto (a small section of the town). In any case, the institution antedates the word. The term has come to indicate not only the legally established, coercive ghetto, but also the voluntary gathering of Jews in a secluded quarter, a process known in the Diaspora before compulsion was exercised. By analogy, the word is currently used to describe similar homogeneous quarters of non-Jewish groups, such as immigrant quarters in American cities.
Jewish reaction to establishment of ghettos: The Jews, who were unaware of the Nazi intentions, resigned themselves to the establishment of ghettos. They hoped that living together in mutual cooperation under self-rule would make it easier for them to overcome the period of repression until their country would be liberated from the Nazi yoke.
The Warsaw Ghetto confined the local population as well as deportees from other countries. Soon after its establishment in October 1940, the ghetto contained 200,000 more than the area normally encompassed. The ghetto was surrounded by a high wall. Its inmates were provided with little food, and deprived of hygienic conditions. The mortality rate was so high that daily burials had to be made in mass graves. Nevertheless, the Jews organized a semblance of communal life in which mutual assistance and education of the children were dominant features, indicating refusal to become demoralized.
Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto: In July, 1942, the Germans began a systematic liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. In order to prevent resistance and rebellion, the Nazis resorted to subterfuge to keep the victims ignorant of their ultimate fate. No one knew the fate of the 6,000 to 10,000 Jews daily deported from Warsaw. By autumn l942, only 40,000 Jews remained in the ghetto, and for a time deportations ceased. On January 19, 1943, deportations resumed, and Warsaw Jews actively opposed the Germans for the first time. The Nazis revenged this act that was to prelude a greater uprising a few months later.
Resistance and revolt in the Ghetto: From the start, some Jews kept contact with underground forces outside of the ghetto. At great risk they smuggled in arms and ammunition they kept hidden, to be used when resistance plans were completed. Such acts of rebellion had been postponed because of the unwillingness of many Jewish community leaders to believe reports about the Germans. Eventually, however, a Jewish combat organization was organized: the remaining Jews chose to die fighting.
On April, 1943, the first night of Passover, a detachment of Nazis arrived in the ghetto. They were met with pistol shots and hand grenades. Thus began a struggle of Maccabean courage. Massive German forces had been brought into the former Warsaw Ghetto to fight the Jewish rebels. Every house became a fortress, with flags of Zion and of Poland; every street became a battlefield. Most of the ghetto was soon set on fire, to flush out the Jewish fighters. On the forty-second day of fighting, only one house remained standing. The few surviving Jews contested every floor until none was left to fight. The ZOB command bunker, staffed by Mordecai Anielewicz and other leaders of the resistance fell on May 8. Warsaw - the Nazis triumphantly announced - was at last ‘free of Jews’ - Judenrein.
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Many major thoroughfares in Israel carry the name: Mordecai Anielewicz.
Kibbutz Yad Mordecai is named after him, and is the site of a memorial in his honor.
At Givat Haviva:
Moreshet Mordecai Anielewicz Memorial - A Youth Movement Campus was conceived at the educational institute, Givat Haviva, in the late 1980s, in memory of Mordecai Anielewicz, under the direction of the late Haikah Grossman. This center focuses on the unique phenomenon of Jewish and Zionist Youth Movements and their special role in the history of the Jewish people in modern times and in the rebirth of Israel and reclamation of the land.
Moreshet Archives in memory of Mordecai Anielewicz has gained international renown. Thousands of testimonies and primary source materials are preserved. A depository of unique materials, obtained in recent years from Eastern European archives, includes rare SS and Gestapo documents.
Moreshet Center for Holocaust Studies in memory of Mordecai Anielewicz emphasizes the contribution of Jewish youth movements during the Holocaust, who fought against the Nazis and worked underground to save as many Jews as possible from the death camps. Special emphasis is directed to educating youth (Arab and Jews, students and teachers, as well as overseas visitors) to take personal and social responsibility for their own generation and for the national and social environment in which they live, and to make personal choices concerning their role in society.
Moreshet Mordecai Anielewicz
Memorial Study Center for Teaching the Holocaust,
Givat Haviva, M.P. Menashe 37850, Israel
Tel: 972 04 6309275
Fax: 972 04 6309305
