Minutes later, a reinforced German platoon counterattacked and killed all of the ZOB squad save for its leader. Surrounded, Anielewicz made a desperate break, wrenched a rifle from a German’s hand, smashed in his skull with the rifle butt, shot two more Germans, and escaped to a camouflaged bunker under a hail of bullets–miraculously unscathed.

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After those two clashes, the ZOB abandoned direct confrontation. Ambushes and hit-and-run forays continued to harry the Germans in nearly every district until January 20, when Sammern-Frankenegg ordered his men out of the ghetto.

In three days, the Germans removed 5,000 Jews from the ghetto–far short of the one-day quota of 8,000–at the cost of 20 soldiers killed and 50 wounded. Deportations were temporarily suspended. The Jewish resistance fighters had won an astounding victory, and although the ZOB was not blind to its weaknesses in tactics and communication that had been revealed in the fight, it had won the time to incorporate the lessons learned into the next inevitable confrontation.

As another result of the Jews’ success, all but the most anti-Semitic members of the Polish AK began to regard them with a new respect and began smuggling more weapons into the ghetto. Between January and April 1943, the ZOB, divided into 22 groups, built an intricate network of underground cellars and tunnels that were linked with command posts and led to streets on the outside.

Meanwhile, the Germans were hardly taking the emergence of resistance in the ghetto sitting down. On February 16, Himmler ordered the SS Polizeiführer of the General Government in Poland, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, to prepare an all-out campaign to destroy the Warsaw ghetto. The action was to commence on April 19, 1943, the day before Adolf Hitler’s birthday, and Himmler expected it to be successfully concluded within three days so that he could present the Führer with ‘a Warsaw clean of Jews.’

Himmler’s plan ran into an unexpected degree of vacillation on the part of two of the officers assigned to carry it out–Sammern-Frankenegg and SS Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik. In consequence, he put a new general of police in charge of carrying out his orders: SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop. A veteran of World War I, Stroop had more recently been involved in operations against Soviet partisans in the Ukraine and was familiar with the latest techniques in counterguerrilla warfare.

The Germans took their time preparing to carry out Himmler’s task–a sizable force had to be raised and trained in urban warfare at a time when troops were needed on all fronts. By April 16, when Himmler arrived in Warsaw for a series of secret conferences, the forces at his disposal were comprised of the following: 2,000 officers and men of the Waffen SS; three Wehrmacht divisions, providing sappers and artillery support; two battalions of German police (234 officers and men); 360 Polish police; about 35 security police; and a 337-man battalion of fascist auxiliaries, called ‘Askaris’ by the Germans in contemptuous reference to the black troops who had helped defend Imperial Germany’s African colonies before and during World War I. In total, it was expected that 2,842 Germans would be committed to cleaning out the ghetto, while another 7,000 SS troops and policemen patrolled the surrounding non-Jewish districts.

Inside the ghetto, the resistance fighters awaited the onslaught. About 600 armed fighters, male and female, made up the ZOB, while the more conservative, strictly male ZZW and other groups combined to provide another 400.

As the most organized of the resistance groups, the ZOB had a specialized plan of defense and was armed with smuggled or captured rifles, pistols and grenades, along with locally produced bombs and Molotov cocktails. The ZZW was somewhat better equipped and had more ammunition.

Sunday, April 18, marked the first night of the Jewish Passover holiday. At 6 o’clock that evening, a cordon of Polish policemen surrounded the ghetto. About an hour later, the leaders of the ZOB and ZZW were informed of the enemy’s preparations and met in the high-command bunker at Mila 18 for a final conference. Weapons were distributed, along with food and cyanide poison (the latter to be taken if faced with the prospect of capture).

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