Martyrs and Fighters: The Epic of the Warsaw Ghetto

By Philip Friedman

The heroic Warsaw Ghetto epic that inspired "The Wall" and "Mila 18."

Told by the survivors...

It's the story of the most desperate battle in history against the most bitter odds. The true story of the Warsaw Ghetto: they had almost no weapons: they could not possibly win.-Print ed.

“The systematic and thorough annihilation of Jewish communities, wherever found, was one of the main objectives of the ferocious doctrine of Nazism, bred on German soil. On September 1, 1939 the German army invaded Poland where the Jewish community had existed for many centuries and where three million Jews were living at the time of the invasion. Ruthless extermination of the Jews began at once and eventually reached dreadful proportions never before known in human history. To accomplish this mass annihilation more efficiently, the Nazi occupants established segregated areas, or ghettos, in many Polish cities, where the Jews were forced to live. The largest ghetto was in Warsaw, where half a million human beings were herded together in a very small area in which physical and moral conditions made life a trying experience.

Although they faced inevitable deportation to death camps and gas chambers, the spirit of these free human beings was not daunted. The Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw, though eventually reduced to one-tenth of their original strength by the Nazis, were determined not to surrender; they made up their minds to exact a heavy toll from their oppressors and murderers. The Jewish insurrection in the Polish capital was a bold challenge to the Nazi tyrants—a historic manifestation of faith in freedom and in the innate rights of man against slavery, oppression and degradation of the human spirit.”-Introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Apr 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805232391

Philip Friedman

Philip Friedman (1901-1960) was a Polish-Jewish historian and the author of several books on history and economics. Born Filip Friedman on April 27, 1901 in Lwów, he studied at the Jan Kazimierz University, the University of Vienna, and the Jewish Paedagogium under Salo Baron. He moved to Łódź in 1925 after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna. He taught at a leading Hebrew secondary school in Łódź, as well as at the People’s University of that city, at YIVO in Vilna (1935), and at the Taḥkemoni of Warsaw (1938-1939). He also continued his historical research. In autumn of 1939 he returned to Lwów, where he worked in the Science Academy of Ukraine. At the beginning of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Lwów, Friedman went into hiding outside the Lwów Ghetto. Friedman survived World War II, but lost his wife and daughter. After the war he taught Jewish History at the University of Łódź and served as the director of the Central Jewish Historical Committee, collecting testimonies and documentation on Nazi war crimes, including his own on the concentration camp at Auschwitz, which he later published. He published further historical works, including several monographs on various destroyed Jewish communities such as including Białystok and Chełmno, whilst simultaneously teaching Jewish history at the University of Łódź (1945-1946). He was a member of the Polish State Commission to Investigate German War Crimes in Auschwitz and Chełmno. After testifying at the Nuremberg trials, Friedman immigrated to the U.S. in 1948, and from 1951 until his death, he served as lecturer at Columbia University. From 1949, he also headed the Jewish Teachers Seminary and taught courses at the Herzliya Teachers Seminary in Israel and was the Research Director of the YIVO-Yad Vashem Joint Documentary Project, a bibliographical series on the Holocaust, from 1954-1960. Friedman died in New York City on February 7, 1960.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE — The German Polish War, September 1939

Our book starts with the first day of World War II. On September 1, 1939, Poland was suddenly attacked by German bombers. Warsaw was one of the first and main targets of this surprise attack. A stampede of panic seized the population of the capital, particularly its three hundred and fifty thousand Jews, who had more reason than the others to fear a Hitlerite invasion. On the other hand, a strong will to resist the brazen aggression was manifested by all parts of the population. In this spontaneous reaction and in the fight against the enemy the Jews took an equal share. However, their share in the sufferings, during the Nazi attack and after, was far from equal.

The first day...and the first Jewish victims.

...On September 1, at six o’clock in the morning, the inhabitants of Warsaw were awakened by a terrible cannonade.

The radio loudspeaker kept calling:

Hello, Warsaw! This is an air raid! Don’t think that these are only military exercises! The enemy is over our city!

From all the factories sirens burst out in a wailing roar. This time they did not call us to work and toil, but announced that the time of ruin and annihilation had started. Along with the shouting of the radio and the wailing of the sirens was mixed the crying of the children who were torn from their beds to be rushed to the cellars.

The first air raid on Warsaw did not last long; it was mainly aimed at the airfield...

On the very first day of the war the first ten innocent victims fell—Jewish children in Otwock near Warsaw. The murderous bombs demolished the Children’s Home of the Jewish society Centos and killed ten little Jewish children and seriously injured their educator, the well-known Jewish poet, Kalman Liss...

(Weingarten, pp. 13-14)

Jews among the defenders of Warsaw...

...Among the defenders of Warsaw—among the regular soldiers, in the ranks of the volunteer workers’ battalions, and among the tens of thousands of civilian heroes, the Jewish masses of Warsaw found their place. On the eve of Rosh-Hashanah, which fell on the eighth day of the defense of Warsaw, the German air force decided on the greatest air raid on the city till then, and they deliberately chose the Jewish quarters for this onslaught. Hundreds of airplanes flew very low over the Jewish section of Warsaw, and bombed heavily Nalewki Street and Smocza, Dzika, Niska, Miła, Wołyńska, Krochmalna, Nowolipie, Mylna and other Jewish streets of Warsaw. Thousands of people were torn to pieces, hundreds of buildings were demolished and hundreds more set aflame. Jews filled a considerable number of the thousands of graves which were dug in the streets of Warsaw during the weeks of its defense.

(Zygelboim, pp. 111-112)

...and building barricades...

Friday, September 8, 1939

...All of us were building barricades, all of us were helping the soldiers. We took the last bit of our day’s food and, standing on the street corner, waited for the soldiers who came marching by to give it to them. They grew so near and dear to our hearts, they were our darlings. Had they not come to protect us against Hitler? The fate of our husbands and sons was linked to that of every soldier.

...The shrapnel is exploding over our heads, but it does not deter us from erecting our barricades. One of us falls dead, another is wounded, and our work stops for a few minutes. Death has crept into our midst. The first fallen are in our street, and the people pause a moment, stunned. But almost immediately they come back to their work to finish the barricades. This very night they must be ready.

The artist Abraham Wolfstat comes to see me, exhausted from his work. Everybody works and the work makes you so tired you cannot stand on your feet any longer. But the work means so much to everyone that they do it wholeheartedly.

Here you see a shriveled old woman dragging a plush-covered chair. This is her contribution to the barricade. Everyone wants to help her. I try to take the chair away from her, but she clings to it firmly. No...let me do it,...let me do it by myself...maybe my grandchild will be saved through it....And the old grandmother drags the chair with love and pride.

It is getting very dark. A few scattered flash-lights throw their sparse light upon our work. But the old woman keeps crawling over the stones in the darkness and puts her chair on the barricade. Her lips are muttering something inaudible, the sound is stifled by the shrapnel...

(Shoshana, pp. 25-26)

...and undergoing savage German bombing on Jewish Holidays.

Saturday, Yom-Kippur, September 23 (1939)

...The bombardment has halted for a while, and the people are catching their breath, thinking that there will be a pause now.

As it quiets down, the Jews prepare themselves for the prayers. Now they are standing in the court yard, dressed in their talesim [prayer shawls], and praying to God. Soon they are joined by the women. The lamentations are so loud and pitiable that it is heart-breaking. All those around, down to the smallest children who are not yet able to say their prayers, join in the common lamentations and supplications to God, imploring Him to protect us and to stop the bombardment.

But suddenly the shelling flares up with new violence, raging furiously and without respite. Now it is even hard to guess from which direction the gun fire is coming...

(ibid. pp. 46-47)

Refugees streaming into the city with bad tidings...

...and young men leaving the city on order of the military authorities, with evil forebodings.

...The Warsaw streets, especially in the Jewish section of the city, soon became crowded with tens of thousands of refugees from various larger and smaller towns. These refugees told their stories of the horrible bombardments and the inhuman bestialities of the Germans. They related ghastly facts: Jews beaten to death, shot in the middle of the square, drowned in the rivers; Jews who were forced to dig their own graves, and then to bury one another alive...

Death, torture and rape accompany the enemy wherever he sets foot...The enemy is approaching the gates of Warsaw, murmur the refugees, scared to death...

On September 6th the Polish Government broadcast a new appeal to dig trenches. At the same time the broadcast implored all young men able to continue the fight for Poland to leave the city.

...In hundreds of thousands of Warsaw homes human hearts were throbbing painfully that night of September 6. The women, dread and turmoil in their eyes, implored their husbands to set out on a long and dangerous journey, to avoid meeting the German murderer face to face...

...During the whole night my telephone kept ringing. Friends wanted to know my decision, or they proposed to set out on the long trek on foot, since trains, fiacres and cars were no longer available...

...Again the telephone is ringing—friends let know that they are determined to meet in certain places, they all indicate streets and squares on the other side of the bridge...But hurry, hurry...

The streets are swarming with people, hurrying to leave. One sees only a few young women who have decided to accompany their husbands, fathers and brothers on their long and unknown road...

Thousands and thousands of people are all moving in one direction—to the bridge to Praga. The streets are overcast with the disturbing quiet of a stifled sobbing coming up from the depth of the crowd. You hear only the sounds of the heavy steps of the wanderers, who are plodding forward with utmost determination...

(Weingarten, pp. 19-26)

CHAPTER TWO — When Warsaw Surrendered

The Nazis take over and discrimination and Jew-baiting begin.

On Wednesday, September 27, the eve of the Feast of Tabernacles, the heroic defense of Warsaw came to an end, and the city bowed before the invader. With that surrender began a new chapter in the Book of Martyrs, a chapter concerned especially with the Jews.

Warsaw lay in ruins. Among the Jews it was impossible to find a single person who had not been bereaved of relatives or friends. The dead lay unburied in the cemeteries. Many were still concealed beneath the debris, and to this day, not all of the bodies have been recovered. One stumbled over the wounded and dying at every step and did what one could to remove them to hospitals, most of which had, however, been destroyed. The few which remained were without water or light, and lacked food and medical supplies.

The Nazis took over the city in sections. In a short while, German food trucks appeared, and bread and soup were distributed to the starving population. For this relief a high price was exacted, the municipality of Warsaw being obliged to pay a million zlotys. Actually, the soup was made with rice stolen from the stores of Jewish dealers. The Jews, however were rigorously excluded from these benefits. They were also kept away from the queues in front of bakeries and other provision stores. If, by chance, a hungry Jew managed to smuggle in unnoticed by the Nazi guards, he was promptly denounced by the Poles. Thereupon he would be savagely dragged from his place to the accompaniment of resounding blows on the head.

(A. Weiss, pp. 484-485)

In the grip of hunger.

Friday, September 29

...The people are starving to death, but everybody is afraid to leave the city to try to buy some food from the peasants in the country. For three weeks I have not set eyes on a piece of bread. The small quantities of reserves held in store for the fighting troops have been either distributed or pillaged. People who were starved and did not sense it during the bombardment, are now, due to the fine weather and to the fact of their survival, getting more optimistic and in consequence their appetites are growing stronger.

The worst thing, however, is the uncertainty about the fate of our husbands and children. Everyone who comes back tells his stories of the blasting and burning of the small towns. Everywhere there are victims lying on the roads. And each of us has some of his beloved ones wandering around aimlessly...

Tuesday, October 3

...Suddenly the door flew open and the actress Przepiórka and her father entered the room. They brought us some food. He unwraps a jug with steaming soup and a piece of brown rye bread. Good heavens, bread! It has been exactly four weeks since I last ate bread.

Indeed, I had forgotten that such a thing as bread ever existed. And here there is a piece of brown bread before me, genuine bread!...

(Shoshana, pp. 89-90, 101)

October 2-10, 1939

...Today I witnessed the following scene: schoolboys from the Konarski High School were beating up Jews in the streets. Some Gentiles intervened, and a crowd gathered. Such things now happen frequently; Poles protest against assaults by Gentiles, something unheard of in pre-war Poland...

(Ringelblum, Notes, p. 55)

Looting, official and private, begins.

...The usual procedure was for two, three, or more Nazis, often accompanied by a Polish informer, to burst into an apartment, brandishing revolvers and terrorizing everyone they could find. They would administer a few blows all round, then, drawing their revolvers, begin asking questions about hidden arms, money and valuables. Sometimes they would strip their victims naked, men and women alike. Then they would proceed to turn the place upside down, removing not only all cash and jewelry, but also household silver, clothes and food. It was characteristic that they did not even wait for the door to be unlocked but broke it down. The residents of the house had to drag into the street whatever the Nazis chose to remove, and if, in the process, they escaped with a few cuffs and blows, they could consider themselves lucky. Those people whose homes were commandeered as billets for the Nazis fared infinitely worse. They were peremptorily thrown out, and if ever they were later permitted to return, they invariably found either bare rooms or complete wreckage.

In the first three months of the occupation, the looting usually stopped short of the furniture. Later, however, the Nazis went systematically from house to house and laid hands on whatever they could find. Bedrooms, dining-rooms, even lavatories, were stripped. Jews were accosted on the street and forced to help pile up the spoils into waiting cars. Nor was the pillage confined to private dwellings. Shops, factories, warehouses and cultural institutions fared no better. A large proportion of Warsaw’s warehouses had been damaged by bombs or ruined in the subsequent fires. There were, however, quite a few which remained standing. These the Nazis began to strip bare.

(A. Weiss, p. 491)

September, 1939

...The Germans come to a Jewish family and rob it of virtually all its belongings. They take away pictures, rugs, furniture, shoes, etc. The mother begs them to leave the little bed for her child. The answer is that a Jewish child does not need a bed. German soldiers visit Dr. Brokman’s home, and steal. They express their surprise that there are so few shirts. He tells them that he is not a wealthy man. Yes, confirms the German, with honesty you cannot get rich, and he steals some more. A music teacher is paid a visit by two German soldiers who pick up the piano. They order her to play for them. The teacher starts to play Beethoven. The Germans get sentimental; every German has a feeling for music. One of them is even ready to leave the piano, but the other gets angry: These Jews even have a Bechstein piano! Aren’t they indeed vicious people? And the piano disappears from the apartment. The libraries of the Jewish doctors are being requisitioned. The physicians and scholars of the gentlemanly nation are not bashful about using Jewish books. A young German officer-physician appears in the home of Dr. Srebrny, the well-known old laryngologist and grabs his library. Dr. Srebrny had published many works, some in German. At the moment one of his works, written in German, is lying on his desk. The following conversation takes place between them: Is this your work? asks the German doctor. Yes, I wrote it at a time when science was still respected by the Germans. But now times have changed, says the German, didn’t you ever hear how the Roman soldier killed Archimedes? And now Dr. Srebrny gives the reply that should burn every German with the flame of shame: Yes, but the name of Archimedes is known to you, to me, and to others, while nobody knows the name of the Roman soldier.

...Jews are not allowed to have more than two-thousand zlotys in cash. During a search of the home of a Jewish lawyer it turned out that the searching officer and his victim had formerly been university colleagues. A conversation ensues and memories are refreshed. Soon they indulge in common reminiscences of past years of adolescence. Then suddenly the German asks: How much money do you have? The lawyer, still inhaling the balmy air of his past youth, tells the truth. He has a few thousands. To this his colleague replies: Then give me half of it.

(Hirszfeld, pp. 185-186)

The Judenrat is established.

Immediately after the Feast of Tabernacles, the Gestapo appointed a new community executive, or, as it was called, a Council of Elders of the Jewish Community in Warsaw. It consisted of twenty-four members and twenty-four delegates. All orders about the Jews of Warsaw were to be carried out by the Council and its members were held personally responsible, at the cost of their own lives and property, for any disorder.

The first task imposed upon the newly appointed Council was to conduct a census of Warsaw’s Jewish population. Of course, strictly speaking, a census was no longer possible. People were scattered, parted from their families, vanished or dead. Still, we decided to do our best. Although there were approximately 360,000 persons to register, the Nazis set a deadline a few days ahead. But we finished in time, and the Gestapo expressed itself as satisfied...

(A. Weiss, p. 486)

Adam Cherniakov, a member of the old Kehilla [Jewish Community], was appointed president of the Judenrat and undertook the task of preparing for the Germans a list of twenty-four members. Before the war, Cherniakov, an engineer, had been a little-known leader in the Artisans’ Union. Politically he considered himself a Zionist, although he had never played an important role in Jewish life. He spoke Polish exclusively, which in the Jewish community was a mark of assimilationist tendencies...

Under the chairmanship of Cherniakov, the Judenrat undertook such new duties as the registration of Jewish citizens, issuance of birth certificates and of business licenses and permits, collection of payments for ration cards, the registration of workers, and so forth. From the registrants, Jews were drafted for forced, unpaid labor for various periods.

...One-third of its budget was spent on the forced labor battalions: providing food on the job, caring for the families left behind, salaries of office personnel, and so forth.{1}

...In spite of the wishes of its members, the Judenrat was forced to become an instrument of anti-Jewish policy of the authorities. The blows of the Nazis were struck at the Jews through the Judenrat, which acted as the involuntary agent of the occupation in the Jewish community.

(Goldstein, pp. 35-36)

The first attempt to create a Ghetto.

Three weeks after the Germans had appointed the Council of Elders of the Jewish Community in Warsaw, the members of the Council were summoned to an urgent conference.

It was the eve of the Sabbath. The air was drenched with an atmosphere of extreme nervousness, of terror and fear of death. At noon several Gestapo men visited the chairman of the Community Council and told him to call a special conference of the Council for four o’clock in the afternoon...

...At a quarter past four the door of the conference room suddenly flew open, and a gang of Gestapo men, armed with rifles, revolvers and clubs, rushed into the room. There were eight of them. They posted themselves in a half-circle around us, and stared at us silently, with their angry, wicked faces...

...Finally one of them shouted harshly, as though we were recruits in the barracks:

Are all present here?

The chairman handed him a piece of paper on which the names of the members were marked. He started calling the names. It happened that the name of the old scholar and historian, Dr. Meir Bałaban, was at the top of this list. The old man answered in a low voice; yes. The Gestapo agent shouted angrily: You have to say: here! and the old man had to repeat in a loud voice: here! And each of us, when his name was called, had to say: here as if we were recruits in a barracks, or criminals...

...Finally the officer said in a commanding voice:

You Jews, listen to me carefully. For certain reasons the command has decided to issue the following order: all Jews in all of Warsaw must leave their apartments by Tuesday morning and move to the streets which are designated as the ghetto for the Jews. And he produced a map of Warsaw on which the few streets that were designated as a ghetto for the Jews were circled with a red pencil...

...It was decided that we should go home to sleep on the bad news, and gather again on the next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, to discuss the situation...

...The representative of the workers, Shmuel Zygelboim, urged that the Community Council refuse to carry out the order...

It was a tragic session. Many wept. A proposal was made to send a delegation to the highest German authority in the city, the German commandant, who at that time was General Neurath...

...The delegation returned and presented its report at the session the next morning. It turned out that outside the Gestapo none of the higher German authorities had known a thing about the whole affair...

...As soon as we had finished listening to the report of the delegation, a messenger from the Gestapo arrived with an order for the chairman of the Council to report to the Gestapo at four o’clock in the afternoon. We were keenly aware that he would have a painful experience and did not want to let him go alone. So we urged Dr. Szoszkes to accompany the chairman. Both gentlemen later told us about the horrible experience they went through...

...Although there were no newspapers and no radio, the news of the menace of the Ghetto spread like lightning among the Jewish population and stirred up a terrible commotion among them. Thousands of people gathered in front of the Community Council building...

...In the course of the day the panic among the crowds of Jews gathered in the streets reached such a point that it was feared they would demolish the whole building. Then the representative of the workers, Zygelboim, undertook a hazardous step. He offered to address the crowds, along with Dr. Szoszkes, and to try to calm them down. After Dr. Szoszkes had informed the crowd about the situation, the representative of the workers stood up in the middle of the street and harangued the more than ten thousand Jews gathered there with words of comfort and hope. He appealed to their sense of dignity, called on them to stay in their homes until they were driven out by force, and pleaded that nobody go into the ghetto voluntarily...

Soon afterwards a new conference of the Community Council was called, one held in a tragic atmosphere...The representative of the workers made a statement which stirred the deepest emotions...

...The evil of a ghetto in Warsaw, at least in the form mentioned, was stalled off for the moment. But in fact, a few months later, a ghetto for the Jews in Warsaw was born, even without a special ghetto order...

(Zygelboim, pp. 131-135)

The first Nazi blackmail affair

...Then occurred the affair of Number 9, Nalewki Street. A convict who had been released at the beginning of the hostilities lived there. On a Thursday evening toward the end of November, this robber had decided to do a job with two of his cronies. Interrupted by two Polish policemen, the burglars took to their heels and sought refuge in the courtyard of number nine. The police followed, and presently shots rang out. One of the policemen slumped to the ground, fatally shot, while the desperados made good their escape.

Immediately, the Gestapo imposed a fine of three million zlotys on the Jewish Community, payable the following Saturday night...The next day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, a car drew up at the door of Number 9, Nalewki Street, and all the men and boys in the house were taken away. No distinction was made between permanent residents and casual visitors. Fifty-three persons were removed, including young boys twelve and thirteen years old.

...Eight days later news was received that all fifty-three had been shot on the day of their arrest, the pretext being that they had not assisted the police in apprehending the burglars. This was also the explanation subsequently published in the Nowy Kurjer Warszawski (New Warsaw Courier).

(A. Weiss, pp. 485-487)

"But why?"

...The fine imposed on the Jewish Community Council was paid promptly, but all of us had fallen prey to anxiety lest these tax requirements be repeated, as had happened in other Jewish cities.

Every day the wives and children of the fifty-three arrested Jews from Nalewki Street would appear in the Community Council to inquire about their husbands, fathers and brothers. All Jewish men who had by chance been in that house at the time when the murder occurred had been arrested. For instance, among those arrested was a rabbi from a little Jewish town who, together with his wife, had come to visit a doctor and had been staying with a relative at Nalewki Street...

For ten days the representatives of the Community Council did not get any answer to their inquiries about the fate of the fifty-three arrested Jews. The Gestapo replied that they knew nothing about it, since the Jews were in the hands of the Polish police. The Polish police, on the other hand, denied this and also claimed to know nothing about the arrested Jews.

It was only on the tenth day that the chairman of the Community Council was informed by the Gestapo that he should go to the German chief of the Polish police from whom he might get the answer about the fifty-three Jews. When the chairman came to the German chief of police the latter calmly declared that the fifty-three Jews had been shot on the second day after their arrest because of their arrogant behaviour during the investigation.

Again a painful conference was held and the chairman disclosed the sad news. In the waiting room the wives of the men who had already been shot were sitting, anxious to learn when their husbands would be freed...At the conference it was decided to tell the wretched women the whole truth. Some members of the Council were wringing their hands. How can we do it? Who would dare to tell them? From where draw the strength to witness such a scene?

The chairman asked five women to come in. At the same time he warned those members of the Council who did not feel strong enough to be present at such a spectacle to leave the room. At the time only a few members were present, and all of them left but one, who posted himself in a corner close to the window. In the large hall there remained only the two persons, the man at the window and the chairman, who was now staring down gloomily...

Then the women entered. They sat down in the chairs indicated. For a while an oppressive silence prevailed. Then the chairman began:

Be courageous, my sisters, and be prepared for the worst, and he suddenly started weeping.

The women were sitting with wide opened eyes, as if they could not grasp the meaning