Torn clothes, shards of porcelain, a rusty baby carriage, ceramic utensils, but also valuable jewelry are some of the unusual “finds” brought to light by excavations at the old Warsaw Children’s Hospital in the summer of 2022. In that area, the German occupiers they had created in 1940 the Jewish ghetto, the largest of its kind in occupied Europe, cutting off the Jewish quarter with a wall and barbed wire from the rest of the city.

From Warsaw started the “death trains” that transported over 300,000 ghetto Jews to concentration camps and gas chambers. Examining today’s finds, historian Albert Stankowski attributes particular symbolic importance to a charred lock, inside which there is still a key. “Doors and keys symbolize the coziness of home,” she says. “These people never returned to their homes. They were buried in the ruins or taken to concentration camps.”

Soon all these findings will be housed in the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, which is expected to open its doors in 2025. Most of them come from the “bunker”, the underground shelter of the “Jewish Battle Organization” (JGB), which played a decisive role role in the 1943 uprising along with the “Jewish Military League” (JZB) and other resistance organizations. Their motto was clear: Better to die in the struggle than in the crematoria of Auschwitz.

By the spring of 1943, only 50,000 people remained in the ghetto, as more than 300,000 had already been transferred to the Treblinka concentration camp, northeast of Warsaw. According to SS plans the ghetto was to be leveled by the end of the year. The uprising began on April 19, the Jewish Pesach (religious holiday, to which our Easter corresponds), when an SS unit entered the ghetto and was fired upon. A mere 1,000 Jewish fighters supported by Polish partisans could not last long against the far more powerful Nazi war machine. And yet, they managed to put up resistance for many weeks against the German troops under the command of SS officer Jürgen Stroup.

The Germans set fire to the houses of the ghetto. Most of the inhabitants died in the struggle against the invaders or were executed. Many of the last survivors of the ghetto were taken to the Treblinka and Majdanek concentration camps. When, on May 7, the underground shelter of the Jewish resistance fighters and their leader, Mordechai Anielevich, was discovered on Mila Street, they preferred to commit suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Germans.

The historian Stankowski speaks of an action of the highest symbolism that recalls a corresponding incident of self-sacrifice in AD 72. at the siege of Masada, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, in order that the Jewish Zealots might not fall into the hands of the Roman conquerors.

On May 16, 1943, the Nazis set fire to the Synagogue while Jürgen Stroop was sending a message to his superiors: “The Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists.” Few survived. One of them was Marek Edelman, who by passing through sewer pipes escaped the German siege, drove away in a truck and continued the resistance action.

A total of 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland before World War II. They constituted 10% of the population, in Warsaw they had even reached 30%. Three million Jews, Polish citizens, perished in the Holocaust. Others left Poland after the war as persecution of the Jewish community persisted.

Marek Edelman remained in Warsaw, studied medicine and became an active member of the anti-communist opposition. As one of the last survivors of the ghetto he tried to keep the historical memory alive. It wasn’t always easy. The communist regime often treated Jews with skepticism bordering on anti-Semitism. And when, in 1970, German Chancellor Willy Brandt, during his historic visit to Warsaw, knelt in front of the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto, Polish newspapers silenced the kneeling.

Today there are very few survivors left. As 50-year-old Albert Stankowski says, “People of my generation could ask their grandfather to find out what happened. My children no longer have this opportunity…”

Warsaw Ghetto

Source: DW