Abstract
After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Warsaw, without any chance of receiving outside aid, surrendered to the Nazis later that month. In 1939, the Polish Jewish community was the largest in Europe. Many Polish Jews who remembered the rather civil German occupation during World War I had no idea of the persecution that awaited them. The Nazis began to seize Warsaw Jews for forced labor, plunder Jewish shops, confiscate Jewish possessions, assault religious Jews, and relieve Jewish craftsmen, teachers, journalists, and other professionals of their jobs without compensation. In January 1940, Jews were forbidden to congregate for worship or to engage in the ritual slaughter of animals. The Warsaw Ghetto was officially created when a wall, sixteen kilometers long and three meters high, topped by broken glass and barbed wire, effectively sequestered the Jewish population; by that time, the first anti-Jewish decrees were being enforced. Jews were required to wear a blue Star of David armband, turn over radios, clearly mark their shops, and refrain from travel. The Germans permitted only vocational school training, and education was confined to the elementary schools but not beyond. Sports events for Jews were prohibited, and cultural activities were restricted; Jews, however, met clandestinely to partake in musical and theater events. Jews were also required to hand in a list of their assets; the Germans then confiscated all Jewish enterprises and businesses.
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Notes
Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 554.
Israel Gutman, “Warsaw,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 4, ed. Israel Gutman (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 1604.
There were a few random heroic acts of resistance during the first Aktion. Several Jews who tried to flee were shot immediately. Emmanuel Ringelblum’s diary records many acts of heroism, but each was met with severe reprisals by the Nazis. More notable in his efforts to save those scheduled for deportation was Nahum Remba, the secretary of the Jewish Council, who drove to the Umschlagplatz in emergency ambulances to rescue as many children as possible. Remba and his wife took their lives into their own hands but managed to save hundreds of Jewish children. For accounts of acts of resistance during the 1942 Aktion, see Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War (New York: Henry Holt, 1987), 391, 393.
Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982), 257.
Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Poles and Jews during World War Two (New York: Holocaust Library, 1986), 157.
For more information about Anielewicz, see Emmanuel Ringelblum, “‘Comrade Mordecai’: Mordecai Anielewicz—Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” in They Fought Back: The Story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe, ed. Yuri Suhl (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 85–91.
Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 2, rev. ed. (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 507.
For more information about Lubetkin, see Israel Gutman, “Lubetkin, Zivia,” in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 3, ed. Israel Gutman (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 914–915; and
Marie Syrkin, Blessed Is the Match: The Story of Jewish Resistance (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976), 192–194.
Gutman and Krakowski, Poles and Jews during World War Two, 160. Some accounts put the number of deported to be between six thousand and sixty-five hundred. For example, see Bauer, A History of the Holocaust, 261 ; Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, vol. 2, rev. ed., 510; and Nora Levin, The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933–1945 (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 344.
Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945, rev. ed. (Cranbury, N.J.: Thomas Yoseloff, 1968), 295.
For specific information with regard to the first encounters between von Sammern’s forces and the Jews on April 19, see Ber Mark, “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” in They Fought Back: The Story of the Jewish Resistance in Nazi Europe, ed. Yuri Suhl (New York: Schocken Books, 1975), 96–99.
For a detailed account of the fighting on April 20 in the brushmakers’ quarters, see Lucien Steinberg, Not as Lamb: The Jews against Hitler, trans. Marian Hunter (Hants, UK: Saxon House, 1974), 214–216; and
Kazimierz Iranek-Osmecki, He Who Saves One Life (New York: Crown Publishers, 1971), 99–100.
Morton Wishengrad, The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto, in Radio Drama in Action: Twenty-five Plays of a Changing World, ed. Erik Barnouw (New York and Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945), 33. All subsequent citations are from this edition and will be included within parentheses in the text.
See Gene A. Plunka, Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 217–225.
Lucy S. Dawidowicz, “The Curious Case of Marek Edelman,” Commentary 3 (March 1987): 66.
Timothy Garton Ash, “Introduction,” in Hanna Krall, Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation With Dr. Marek Edelman, The Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, trans. Joanna Stasinska and Lawrence Weschler (New York: Henry Holt, 1986), xi.
Jadwiga Kosicka, “Introduction: A Memory Play,” in Hanna Krall, To Steal a March on God (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996), xi.
Paul Backer, Review of Hanna Krall, To Steal a March on God, Slavic and East European Journal 41, no. 4 (1997): 712.
Hanna Krall, To Steal a March on God, trans. Jadwiga Kosicka (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996), 7. All subsequent citations are from this edition and will be included within parentheses in the text.
Hanna Krall, Shielding the Flame: An Lntimate Conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, The Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, trans. Joanna Stasinska and Lawrence Weschler (New York: Henry Holt, 1986), 77.
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© 2012 Gene A. Plunka
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Plunka, G.A. (2012). The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In: Staging Holocaust Resistance. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137000613_3
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