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In the relation of a Jewish fighter reprinted today in most newspapers covering remembrance, 70 years ago, 19 april 1943, at 6 am, 850 soldiers from Waffen SS led by 20 officers entered ghetto to hasten Nazi Endlösung - this time, however, two Jewish resistance groups that were preparing strongpoints and trying to acquire arms in preparation for final confrontation, noted unusual strength of the German unit and decided to open fire. SS-men, shocked with tenacity of the first attack, decided to attack Untermenschen frontally, only to increase their own losses severalfold, and to finally be repulsed without any successes at 10 am. Renewed attack, supported by several tanks and armoured vehicles, was again repulsed with heavy losses, including ex-French tank burned by Molotov cocktails. 8 hours after fighting started, at 16:00, last German soldier was pushed out making Ghetto one of the first areas in Poland liberated from Nazi rule.Thus began the long month of fighting - Germans, unable to break Jewish fighters, despite continuous shelling of the Ghetto with artillery, Luftwaffe bombs, support of pro-Nazi Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian troops (in total, 4.500 men versus nine hundred badly armed fighters) decided to adopt total war - complete destruction of the Ghetto, one building after another, with flamethrowers, explosives, poison gas and cannon shelling, leaving burned wasteland of most complete urban destruction in WWII. Out of 70.000 Jews still in Ghetto, less than hundred managed to escape due to actions of left-leaning Polish Resistance units (Right-wing ones couldn't care less) harassing German siege and in a few cases actually managing to break inside, leading survivors out by canals. Fighting symbolically ended 16 V, with destruction of (now empty) Great Synagogue, one of the largest in the world.
One thing of note that struck me in the memoirs was that no one in leadership considered the fighting "uprising" - in their words, uprisings typically have goals, means, and (however slim) chances of victory. They would term it 'Ghetto resistance' - no one there had doubts they would be all dead in the end, what mattered was choice of it and saving remains of human dignity. Despite all the efforts of the occupant to completely erase them from human memory, example of this fight would later lead to a whole wave of armed acts, including uprisings in Nazi death camps (some ended with fighters managing to escape) and other uprisings against Germans in Central Europe.
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Now, the only authentic thing remaining from Ghetto itself is pair of wall fragments (defaced with bricks under plaque 'borrowed' for Washington museum) and a metal marker with monuments illustrating the extent of the Ghetto, both of which will be visited by delegations in the coming month.
