Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established by the German authorities in the Muranów neighborhood of the Polish capital between October and November 16, 1940; within the new General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. There were over 400,000 Jews imprisoned there, at an area of 3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room, barely subsisting on meager food rations. From the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942 at least 254,000 Ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer. The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings which had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of rampant hunger and hunger-related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the Ghetto.
Adam Czerniaków
Adam Czerniaków was a Polish-Jewish engineer and senator; head of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council (Judenrat) during World War II. He committed suicide on 23 July 1942 by swallowing a cyanide pill, a day after the commencement of mass extermination of Jews known as the Grossaktion Warsaw.
Białystok Ghetto uprising
The Białystok Ghetto uprising was an insurrection in the Jewish Białystok Ghetto against the Nazi German occupation authorities during World War II. The uprising was launched on the night of August 16, 1943 and was the second-largest ghetto uprising organized in Nazi-occupied Poland after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April–May 1943. It was led by the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation, a branch of the Warsaw Anti-Fascist Bloc.
Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg
Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He served in World War I; and postwar in the Freikorps Oberland and the Steirischer Heimatschutz. He served as SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw area in German occupied Poland from 1941 until 1943 during World War II.
Nazi ghettos
Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the regime of Nazi Germany set up ghettos across occupied Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities furthering their exploitation. In German documents, and signage at ghetto entrances, the Nazis usually referred to them as Jüdischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden, both of which translate as the Jewish Quarter. There were several distinct types including open ghettos, closed ghettos, work, transit, and destruction ghettos, as defined by the Holocaust historians. In a number of cases, they were the place of Jewish underground resistance against the German occupation, known collectively as the ghetto uprisings.
Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe
Jewish resistance under the Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans.The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
Holocaust trains
Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn national railway system under the strict supervision of the German Nazis and their allies, for the purpose of forcible deportation of the Jews, as well as other victims of the Holocaust, to the German Nazi concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.
Calel Perechodnik
Calel (Calek) Perechodnik was a Polish Jew who joined the Jewish Ghetto Police in the Otwock Ghetto during the Nazi German occupation of Poland. His wartime diaries were published posthumously as Am I a Murderer? in 1995 by the Karta Centre of Warsaw.
Grossaktion Warsaw
The Grossaktion or Gross-Aktion Warsaw was a Nazi German operation of the deporation and mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto beginning 22 July 1942. During the Grossaktion Jews were terrorized in daily round-ups, marched through the ghetto, and assembled at the Umschlagplatz station square for the so-called "resettlement to the East" (Umsiedlung). From there, they were sent aboard overcrowded Holocaust trains to the extermination camp in Treblinka.
Maurycy Orzech
Maurycy Orzech was a Polish-Jewish economist, journalist, politician and a leader of the Jewish Bund in interwar Poland. He was one of the commanders of the Bund during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Artur Gold
Artur (Arthur) Gold was a Polish Jewish violinist and dance-music composer during the Interbellum. He closely collaborated with his brother Henryk Gold and with Jerzy Petersburski with whom he arranged music for his famous ensembles; they were among the most popular composers in interwar Poland and many of their hits were sung throughout the whole country. Gold ran an orchestra in the "Qui Pro Quo" theater (1922) and in the Warsaw "Adria" night club (1931–1939).
Józef Szeryński
Józef Andrzej Szeryński was a Jewish police-colonel in interwar Poland, inspector for the Lublin district and later – during the Second World War – a commander of the Jewish Ghetto Police in Warsaw with recommendation from Adam Czerniaków. Szeryński was arrested by the Gestapo on May 1, 1942 for smuggling furs out of the Warsaw Ghetto for personal gain. He was released on the condition of leading the deportation action to Treblinka extermination camp in July 1942. The very next month Jewish underground attempted to assassinate him, unsuccessfully. He remained at the helm of the Ghetto Police until the end of the Grossaktion Warschau which claimed the lives of over 254,000 Ghetto inmates, men, women and children. He committed suicide right after the next wave of deportations in January 1943.
Berek Lajcher
Berek Lajcher was a Jewish physician and social activist from Wyszków before the Holocaust in Poland, remembered for his leadership in the prisoner uprising at Treblinka extermination camp. More than 800,000 Jews, as well as unknown numbers of Romani people, were murdered at Treblinka in the course of Operation Reinhard in World War II.
Kalman Taigman
Kalman Taigman also Teigman Hebrew: קלמן טייגמן was an Israeli citizen born in Warsaw, Poland, who testified at the 1961 Eichmann Trial held in Jerusalem as one of the remaining few Jewish inmates of the Sonderkommando who escaped from the Treblinka extermination camp during the prisoner uprising of 1943.
Siedlce Ghetto
The Siedlce Ghetto, was a World War II Jewish ghetto set up by Nazi Germany in the city of Siedlce in occupied Poland, 92 kilometres (57 mi) east of Warsaw. The ghetto was closed from the outside in early October 1941. Some 12,000 Polish Jews were imprisoned there for the purpose of persecution and exploitation. Conditions were appalling; epidemics of typhus and scarlet fever raged. Beginning 22 August 1942 during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust in occupied Poland, around 10,000 Jews were rounded up – men, women and children – gathered at the Umschlagplatz, and deported to Treblinka extermination camp aboard Holocaust trains. Thousands of Jews were brought in from the ghettos in other cities and towns. In total, at least 17,000 Jews were annihilated in the process of ghetto liquidation. Hundreds of Jews were shot on the spot during the house-to-house searches, along with staff and patients of the Jewish hospital.
Frumka Płotnicka
Frumka Płotnicka was a Polish Jewish resistance fighter during World War II; activist of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and member of the Labour Zionist organization Dror. She was one of the organizers of self-defence in the Warsaw Ghetto, and participant in the military preparations for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Following the liquidation of the Ghetto, Płotnicka relocated to the Dąbrowa Basin in southern Poland. On the advice of Mordechai Anielewicz, Płotnicka organized a local chapter of ŻOB in Będzin with the active participation of Józef and Bolesław Kożuch as well as Cwi (Tzvi) Brandes, and soon thereafter witnessed the murderous liquidation of both Sosnowiec and Będzin Ghettos by the German authorities.
Umschlagplatz Monument
The Umschlagplatz Monument - a monument located in Warsaw at Stawki Street, in the former loading yard, where from 1942 to 1943 Germans transported over 300 thousand Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camp in Treblinka and other camps in the Lublin district.
Warsaw Ghetto boy
The Warsaw Ghetto boy appears in the most well-known photograph taken during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, holding his hands over his head while SS-Rottenführer Josef Blösche points a submachine gun in his direction. The boy and his family hid in a bunker during the final liquidation of the ghetto, but they were caught and forced out by German troops. After the photograph was taken, all of the Jews in the photograph were marched to the Umschlagplatz and deported to Majdanek extermination camp or Treblinka. The exact location and the photographer are not known, and Blösche is the only person in the photograph who can be identified with certainty. The image is one of the most iconic photographs of the Holocaust, and the boy came to represent children in the Holocaust, as well as all Jewish victims.
Captured Hehalutz fighters photograph
A well-known photograph depicts three Jewish women who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, took shelter in a bunker with a weapons cache, and were forced out by SS soldiers. One of the women, Bluma Wyszogrodzka (center), was shot. The other two, Małka Zdrojewicz (right) and Rachela Wyszogrodzka (left) were marched to the Umschlagplatz and deported to Majdanek concentration camp, where Wyszogrodzka was murdered. Jürgen Stroop, the SS officer who commanded the suppression of the uprising, admired the bravery of female combatants and included the photograph in one of the copies of his official report. The photograph has become symbolic of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust.