80 Years on – have we learned from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?
JVL Introduction
From 19th April until 16th May 1943, heroic Jewish people who had endured years of horror in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against their Nazi oppressors. The 80th anniversary is, rightly, being commemorated and the courage of the fighters acknowledged.
But have the right lessons been forgotten? David Rosenberg notes ” since the political map of Europe in 2023 shows a marked shift towards the xenophobic, ethno-nationalist right, the platform (for this year’s commemoration) will most likely include several political figures who stoke racism and division within their own European nations.
They will pay their hypocritical respect to the Jewish freedom fighters of 1943, then return home to enact policies that discriminate against minorities and refugees.”
David Rosenberg is active in JVL’s Antiracist Network Alliance and is in Poland with others from the Jewish Socialist Group in Warsaw for what seems a more appropriate commemoration than the official one and which will commemorate the quiet resistance as well as the armed one.
This article was originally published by The Morning Star on Wed 19 Apr 2023. Read the original here.
A darkening Europe marks the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Eighty years since Jewish rebels made their heroic last stand against the Nazis, DAVID ROSENBERG looks at events and the fight over the meaning of their legacy
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My father came from Torun , about 100 miles from Warsaw . . When the Nazis first invaded , everyone left their homes , and headed for the borders , only to be overtaken by the Nazis and told to return back home . From then, my father spoke of the cattle trucks rolling into Torun station, full of innocent people. All exhausted, overheated and overcrowded. He spoke of his feeling unable to do anything, as the trucks were all guarded by men with machine guns. At 14, he too was taken. He, and another boy managed to escape and they got to France. They had lived 3 years through that nightmare. My father had nightmares, depression and mood swings right up until he died. When people state that they are holocaust survivors, they are not. They are still struggling with their memories and thoughts. I never met any of my family, but for my part, I do not want another human being to have to suffer the same as so many did. I used to have a book on the Warsaw rising. Ukrainian prisoners who were caught had a “U2 painted on their backs , and were put to build defences, as the two sides fought.
My paternal grandmother & aunt died in the Warsaw ghetto from typhus. My paternal grandfather died in prison for protesting against Nazi orders forbidding Jewish lawyers to practise. I spent today listening to oral histories of ghetto survivors – all of whom were children or young adolescents at the time . It’s a day for remembering & commemorating. The daffodil symbol adopted by Polin originated from Marek Edelman’s practice of bringing daffodils to the Monument of the Heroes of the Ghetto (a social realist monstrosity…) on the anniversary of the the Uprising. What an irony – PIS officials wearing an emblem originating in socialist Bundist politics…
Cześć i chwała bohaterom Getta!