Warsaw ghetto uprising put down
On this day in 1943 Waffen SS attacks Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.Shortly after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 nearly 400000 Polish Jews were confined to a 3.5-square-mile area that normally housed about 250000.The ghetto was sealed off with a 10-foot-high wall.Anyone caught leaving was shot on sight.
As if this werent bad enough the Nazis strictly controlled the amount of food that was brought into the ghetto forcing Jews to live on a bowl of soup a day.By July 1942 about 80000 Jews had died.On July 22 1942 Heinrich Himmler ordered that Jews be resettled to extermination camps such as Treblinka.Two months later more than 300000 Jews had been sent to the gas chambers.
Less than two years after the internment in the ghetto only 60000 Jews remained.But those who survived formed a Jewish Fighting Organization called ZOB which managed to smuggle in weapons from anti-Nazi Poles.Armed they were able to resist further deportations by attacking Germans from rooftops cellars and attics.
A severe winter and a shortage of trains also prevented the SS from deporting more Jews to death camps.But spring brought Nazi retaliation.On April 19 1943 Passover Himmler sent more than 2000 Waffen SS soldiers to combat the Jewish resistance.German tanks howitzers machine guns and flamethrowers were met with Jewish pistols rifles homemade grenades and Molotov cocktails.
The Jews were able to fend off the German assault for 28 days.Finally SS General Jurgen Stroop set the entire ghetto block now reduced to an area 1000 yards by 300 yards on fire and blew up the synagogue.By May 56065 Jews were dead.
It is estimated that the Germans lost 300 with 1000 wounded.
