It’s been the subject of books, TV movies, and has become the stuff of legends. The fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto have gone down in history as the most identifiable group of Jews in the Holocaust (besides the Partisans) who didn’t go to their deaths quietly, but who rose up against Nazi tyranny and fought back.
Symbolism, of course, was all that the uprising created. There are next to no survivors from those who fought. It took years of starvation rations, slave labour, and ghetto “liquidations” before a handful got together the spirit to even launch a fight. And they knew at the time that they were signing their death warrants. But it didn’t matter, because they knew they were dead anyway.
But it would be wrong to assume that there is anything less heroic about those who did not participate… those who lived in other ghettos, or were rounded up and shipped to death camps… those whose small acts of heroism sometimes allowed them or their loved ones to survive – even if only for one more day.
The Jewish Virtual Library chronicles the amazing story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which has gone down in history as a symbol of resistance to tyranny despite insurmountable odds.