World War II: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Although their light weapons were no match for artillery and their ammunition was running low, the Jewish resistance fighters defended the corner gamely, changing positions through attics and rooftops and punishing the Germans with grenades. Finally, Stroop was reluctantly compelled to call in aircraft, under whose bomb strikes the fighters were at last forced to withdraw to Rabbi Maisels Street. Before retreating, the Jews set a German warehouse at 31 Nalewki Street on fire, in accordance with orders from the resistance leadership that all forced-labor factories and stores of valuables made in them for the Germans be destroyed.

The Germans, in turn, committed their first reprisal after they bombarded and then occupied the ghetto hospital. German, and to a greater degree Ukrainian, soldiers entered the burning wards and threw patients into the flames. In the maternity ward, they tore open the wombs of pregnant women with their bayonets and smashed the heads of newborn infants against the walls.

At 4 p.m., SS troops and German police advancing down Muranowska Street came under fire from a heavy machine gun emplaced atop Muranowska 7, while ZOB men and women moved about from rooftop to rooftop, dropping grenades on the Germans. At 8 p.m., two resistance banners (one in the red-white Polish colors, one in the blue-white Jewish colors) still waved defiantly from the roof of Muranowska 7, and smaller skirmishes were taking place elsewhere as Stroop ordered his men to break off contact and withdraw.

That night, both Stroop and Anielewicz reviewed the day’s fighting and adjusted their tactics for the next day. Inside the makeshift bunkers, Jews said a brief prayer for their dead, but death had become such an everyday occurrence in the ghetto as to be of secondary importance to a victory that the Germans could no longer take away. For the first time in three years, the Passover Seder, a feast commemorating the Jews’ deliverance from Egyptian bondage, was being celebrated in Warsaw by a people who, if only for the moment, were themselves free.

The next day, Hitler’s birthday, the Germans sent an intermediary from the Judenrat into the ghetto with an ultimatum: If the resistance fighters did not lay down their arms, the entire ghetto would be razed. It was flatly rejected.

While an artillery battery moved up to the ghetto wall, Stroop widened his area of operations, launching attacks on Swientojerska and Wolowa streets, also known as the brushmakers’ area, and the factory district (Leszno, Smocza and Nowolipie streets), as well as Muranowska Place, where German police took up where they had left off. Backed by two machine guns, the Jews in Muranowska 7 and 9 counterattacked, killing or wounding several Germans and driving off the rest. Half an hour later, four armored vehicles, armed with anti-aircraft guns, resumed the German assault. The resistance fighters disabled one Flakwagen with a grenade, but the others bombarded the buildings for 15 minutes, after which the Germans stormed the Jewish positions. Fierce hand-to-hand combat ensued, ending in the capture of 80 resistance fighters.

Among the German casualties was a senior SS officer. In reprisal, Stroop ordered several hundred Jewish prisoners–mostly unarmed noncombatants–shot on the spot.

At 3 p.m., Stroop personally led 300 SS troops in an assault on the brushmakers’ area, where Jewish defenders were commanded by Marek Edelman. Jews manning an observation post on the third floor of 3 Wolowa Street watched the Germans advance until they passed the gate to Wolowa 6–then, a button was pushed and a mine planted in the gate went off, killing 22 Germans. The rest of the Germans retreated, hurried along by a volley of Jewish bullets and grenades.

A second German assault was repulsed, but during the third attempt Jewish fire began to slacken–their ammunition was giving out. Stroop, unmindful of the bullets whizzing around him as he calmly directed his troops, kept up the pressure until evening, when he interrupted the action. During that brief respite, the ZOB leaders decided to pull back to nearby Franciszkanska Street.

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