Eyewitness Accounts From the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

On this day in 1943 (that year the eve of the great Jewish feast of Passover), a group of Jews locked up in the Nazis’ hellish Warsaw Ghetto began a last desperate, heroic rebellion against their murderous captors.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was not successful in a material sense — nearly all of its soldiers died either in the uprising (13,000) or the gas chambers (57,000). But the Germans found it a difficult task to conquer the Jewish freedom fighters, ill-equipped as they were, and the heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto still continues to inspire people today, especially as Jews once again face hatred, terrorism, and persecution in many countries.

One of the eyewitnesses to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was teenager Mary Berg, one of the few who survived the Warsaw Ghetto and later moved to the United States. Mary was actually the daughter of an American citizen, according to Jewish Virtual Library, which notes that there were a number of Americans imprisoned with Polish family and friends in the ghetto. 

Mary recounted the horrors of life in the ghetto: “Komitetowa Street is a living graveyard of children devoured by scurvy. The inhabitants of this street live in long cellar-caves into which no ray of the sun ever reaches. Through the small dirty windowpanes one can see emaciated faces and disheveled heads. These are the older people, who have not even the strength to rise from their cots. With dying eyes they gaze at the thousands of shoes that pass by in the street. Sometimes a bony hand stretches out from one of these little windows, begging for a piece of bread.” It was such conditions, coupled with frequent killings and the knowledge that everyone in the ghetto would probably eventually die with or without fighting, that helped inspire the uprising.

One World provides excerpts from Berg’s diary about the uprising. No matter what weapons — if any — they had, the Jews fearlessly took on the Nazis. Men, women, and children alike fought from every building in the besieged streets:

From every window and roof, from every ruined wall, the Nazis were met with a hail of bullets from automatic rifles. The signal for the fight was given by a group of young people who pelted the approaching German tanks with hand grenades. The Nazis returned after lunch with field artillery, and opened a barrage on Nowolipie, Bonifraterska, and Franciszkanska Streets. Then the pitched battle began…

The Jewish women took an active part in the fighting, hurling heavy stones and pouring boiling water on the attacking Germans. Such an embittered and unequal battle is unprecedented in history.

But the Nazis were determined to use any means to suppress the rebellion and kill the Jews. Mary recalled how the bombarded ghetto turned into a fiery hell. She believed the Nazis fought harder to conquer the ghetto than they had to conquer the whole city of Warsaw:

The streets of the ghetto were an inferno. Shrapnel burst in the air, and the hail of bullets was so dense that anyone who put his head out of a window was hit. The Germans used more firing power during the Battle of the Ghetto than during the siege of Warsaw. Nalewki, Nowolipie, Franciszkanska, Karmelicka, Smocza, Mila, Nizka, and Gesia Streets and Muranowski Square were completely destroyed. Not a single house remained in those streets. Even the bare walls of the burned houses were later blown up with dynamite. For many nights, the fire of the ghetto could be seen for miles around Warsaw. “When we left the Pawiak,” one of the newly arrived internees told us from a window of the Hotel Providence, “we saw an enormous mountain of fire and the houses on Dzielna Street shook from the explosions.” 

Shut up in her room, Mary stared at the intricate red wallpaper design and seemed to see streams of blood and flames, the blood of her people burning in the ghetto. She wondered whether “Uncle Abie, Romek, and the others” had survived. Unfortunately, their fate seems lost to history.

Even the Germans were amazed at the heroic resistance put up by the defenders of the ghetto. They could not understand where these starved, exhausted people drew so much courage and strength from in their fight for the last citadel of Polish Jewry…

The Battle of the Ghetto lasted for five weeks. Its starved, exhausted defenders fought heroically against the powerful Nazi war machine. They did not wear uniforms, they had no ranks, they received no medals for their superhuman exploits. Their only distinction was death in the flames. All of them are Unknown Soldiers, heroes who have no equals.

The Warsaw Ghetto fighters perished, but their memory lives on, and always will among those who honor liberty lovers and who combat antisemitism.

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