“80 years of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: We are the custodians of this memory”, by Piotr Gliński*

In April 1943, on the eve of the Jewish holiday Pesach, the Germans occupying the Polish capital surrounded the Jewish quarter they had created, the Warsaw ghettopreparing for his final settlement. On April 19, German police and auxiliary SS forces entered the ghetto to complete the extermination. The inhabitants of the ghetto hid in bunkers and all kinds of hiding places. Jewish insurgents attacked the Germans using firearms, Molotov cocktails, and hand grenades. Two German vehicles were set on fire with gasoline bottles. At first, the surprised Germans were unable to break the fierce resistance of the defenders.

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Faced with strong resistance and initial failures, the Germans began systematically burning the buildings, turning the streets of the ghetto into a fire trap. As fighting raged in the ghetto, units of the Polish Underground Army went into action against the Germans. Three sections of the National Army tried unsuccessfully to breach the ghetto walls with explosives. The Jews condemned to extermination defended themselves until the beginning of May. The last symbolic act of the uprising was the demolition by the Germans of the Great Synagogue located on Tłomackie Street in Warsaw.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the first uprising in a big city and also the largest armed rebellion by the Jewish population during the German occupation. On the afternoon of April 19, 1943, at the headquarters of the Jewish Military Union on Muranowski Square, in a symbolic gesture, the militants placed the red-and-white flag of Poland and the blue-and-white flag of the ŻZW on the roof of the building. This image of the two flags, the red-and-white Polish and the blue-and-white Zionist, waving together on the roof of the building over the ghetto up in arms has become a symbol of the inextricably intertwined destinies of Poles and Jews. Several months later, in August 1944, the Warsaw Uprising, the battle for a free Poland, broke out, the largest armed rebellion for freedom in the history of World War II.

Numerous references to armed rebellions by insurgents can be found in Polish history, literature, art and, in a general way, the culture of Poland. The uprisings instilled hope, lifted spirits and warmed hearts, but most of the time they were brutally suppressed by the invaders and occupiers. Being tragic, often unavoidable, they built a community identity and usually led to victory years later. They left a strong mark on Polish society and on Polish history. For this reason they have often become a recurring theme in literature, painting and cinema. And although artists have portrayed them in different ways, on very few occasions have they criticized the idea of ​​the uprising itself, and have championed the fight for freedom, elevating it to cultural pedestals.

Warsaw, the capital of Poland, became during World War II the city of the two uprisings in which Jews and Poles clashed with German criminals. Ultimately, the city ended up in ruins, destroyed and burned. This shows how strong the Polish imperative for freedom is.

Piotr Gliński is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and National Heritage in Poland.

It is worth asking, why in Warsaw? It is worth remembering at this point that in 1939, on the threshold of the German invasion of Poland, almost 370,000 Jews lived in Warsaw. They represented about 30% of the total population of the city. After the outbreak of World War II, nearly 100,000 more Jews arrived in the Polish capital over the next year, systematically displaced by the Germans from lands incorporated into the German Reich and from occupied Polish territories. In the spring of 1940, the Germans broke ground on an isolated Jewish quarter. The final closure of the Warsaw ghetto took place in November 1940. Behind the walls, on an area of ​​307 hectares, lived approximately 400,000 Jews. In April 1941, displaced persons poured into the ghetto. The population confined behind the walls of the ghetto amounted to 450,000 people. I do not quote these figures casually. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest ghetto created by the Germans during World War II in Europe. In July 1942 the mass deportation of Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp began. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews were murdered at that time. Around 100,000 people died in the ghetto due to starvation and disease caused by the inhumane conditions imposed by the Germans.

We say “Jews”, but you have to remember that these were citizens of Poland, the multinational and multicultural Second Republic. Therefore, it is our duty as a community to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the largest Jewish uprising during World War II and the first uprising in a city in occupied Europe, and to preserve in memory the courage of those who opposed the German occupiers. These days, more than 150 events are held in Poland on the occasion of the official commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. These events are organized or financed by the Polish government, among other things, as part of the program to support activities for the preservation of the heritage and memory of Polish Jews carried out by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Since the United Right (Zjednoczona Prawica) has been in government, we have more than tripled the funding of institutions whose activities include the preservation of the memory, culture and heritage of the multicultural Polish nation, including the heritage of the Jewish minority on Polish territory, as well as the commemoration of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Germans in the territory of occupied Poland.

Among the institutions subsidized by the Polish government are the state museums of the former German death camps: the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Oświęcim; the Majdanek Museum (with the sections: Museum and Center for the Memory of Bełżec and Sobibór); the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo; the Treblinka Museum; the Gross-Rosen Museum in Rogoźnica; the Museum – Center for the Memory of the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow. As well as the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Who Saved Jews During World War II in Markowa, the Museum for the Memory of the Inhabitants of the Land in Oświęcim, the POLIN Museum of History of Polish Jews, and the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. These are both institutions that have been operating for decades, often with inadequate funding in the past, and institutions created in recent years, for the sake of memory: the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, the Museum of the Poles Who Saved the Jews during the Second World War of the Ulma Family in Markowa, and the Museum for the Memory of the Inhabitants of the Land of Oświęcim.

Warsaw is today a city full of life. Poland is a country full of life. We remember the past and, based on historical experience, we want to build a better future. However, we do not forget those who died or were killed. Passed down from generation to generation, the memory must remain forever. And today, we are its custodians.

Text published jointly with the Polish monthly magazine “Wszystko co najważniejsze” as part of a historical project with the Institute of National Memory and the Polish National Foundation.

* Piotr Gliński is Professor of Humanities, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and Minister of Culture and National Heritage of that country. President of the Polish Sociological Association for the period 2005 – 2011. Associated with the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. During the period 1997-2005, he directed the Department of Civil Society.

Source: Elcomercio