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(Monday, April 19, 1943, 8:00 a.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST), on the eve of Passover; during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, part of The Holocaust and World War II) — Tens of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile battle today against Nazi forces when the Germans tried to resume deportations to the Treblinka concentration camp.
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The Germans planned to complete the deportation action within three days but were ambushed by Jewish insurgents firing and tossing Molotov cocktails and hand grenades from alleyways, sewers, and windows.
The Germans suffered 59 casualties and their advance bogged down. Two of their combat vehicles (an armed conversion of a French-made Lorraine 37L light armored vehicle and an armored car) were set on fire by the insurgents’ petrol bombs.
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After the Grossaktion Warsaw of the summer of 1942, in which more than a quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto.
The left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) and right-wing Jewish Military Union (ZZW) formed and began to train.
A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred Polish resistance groups to support the Jews in earnest.
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The uprising that started today was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. The Jews knew they couldn’t win and that their survival was unlikely.
Marek Edelman, the only surviving ZOB commander, said their inspiration to fight was “not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths.”
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the uprising was “one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people.”
