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Warsaw Ghetto

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The Warsaw Ghetto (Template:Langx, officially {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, Template:Gloss; Template:Langx) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the German authorities within the new General Government territory of occupied Poland. At its height, as many as 460,000 Jews were imprisoned there,<ref name="USHMM encyclopedia" /> in an area of Template:Convert, with an average of 9.2 persons per room,<ref name=Bains/><ref name=Gutman1/> barely subsisting on meager food rations.<ref name=Gutman1/> Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942, at least 254,000 ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer.<ref name=Gutman1/> The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the prisoners of the ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas,<ref name="Shapiro"/> combined with 92,000 victims of starvation and related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the ghetto.<ref name="USHMM2"/><ref name="YadVashem1"/><ref name="Urynowicz"/><ref name="statistics"/>

BackgroundEdit

Before World War II, the majority of Polish Jews lived in the merchant districts of Muranów, Powązki, and Stara Praga.<ref name=Gawryszewski/> Over 90% of Catholics lived further away from the commercial center.<ref name=Gawryszewski/> The Jewish community was the most prominent there, constituting over 88% of the inhabitants of Muranów; with the total of about 32.7% of the population of the left-bank and 14.9% of the right-bank Warsaw, or 332,938 people in total according to 1931 census.<ref name=Gawryszewski/> Many Jews left the city during the Great Depression.<ref name=Gawryszewski/> Antisemitic legislation, boycotts of Jewish businesses, and the nationalist "endecja" post-Piłsudski Polish government plans put pressure on Jews in the city.<ref name="Melzer"/> In 1938 the Jewish population of the Polish capital was estimated at 270,000 people.<ref name=Gessner/>

The Siege of Warsaw continued until September 29, 1939. On September 10 alone, the Luftwaffe conducted 17 bombing raids on the city;<ref name=Wardzyńska/> three days later, 50 German planes attacked the city center, targeting specifically Wola and Żoliborz. In total, some 30,000 people were killed,<ref name=Wardzyńska/> and 10 percent of the city was destroyed.<ref name=Philpott/> Along with the advancing Wehrmacht, the Einsatzgruppe EG IV and the Einsatzkommandos rolled into town. On November 7, 1939, the Reichsführer-SS reorganized them into local Security Service (SD). The commander of EG IV, Josef Meisinger (the "Butcher of Warsaw"), was appointed chief of police for the newly formed Warsaw District.<ref name=Wardzyńska/>

Establishment of the ghettoEdit

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-001-0285-05A, Warschau, beschädigtes Gebäude.jpg
Karmelicka Street 11 from Nowolipia September/October 1939

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File:Aerial photograph of the destroyed Warsaw Ghetto.jpg
Aerial photograph of the northern Warsaw Ghetto area after its destruction, probably 1944

By the end of the September campaign the number of Jews in and around the capital increased dramatically with thousands of refugees escaping the Polish-German front.<ref name="Berg"/> In less than a year, the number of refugees in Warsaw exceeded 90,000.<ref name=Bielawski/> On October 12, 1939, the General Government was established by Adolf Hitler in the occupied area of central Poland.<ref name=Grzesik/> The Nazi-appointed Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Warsaw, a committee of 24 people headed by Adam Czerniaków, was responsible for carrying out German orders.<ref name=Bielawski/> On October 26, the Jews were mobilized as forced laborers to clear bomb damage and perform other hard labor. One month later, on November 20, the bank accounts of Polish Jews and any deposits exceeding 2,000 zł were blocked.<ref name=Grzesik/> On November 23, all Jewish establishments were ordered to display a Jewish star on doors and windows. Beginning December 1, all Jews older than ten were compelled to wear a white armband, and on December 11, they were forbidden from using public transit.<ref name=Grzesik/> On January 26, 1940, the Jews were banned from holding communal prayers due to "the risk of spreading epidemics."<ref name="Trunk"/> Food stamps were introduced by the German authorities, and measures were stepped up to liquidate all Jewish communities in the vicinity of Warsaw intensified. The Jewish population of the capital reached 359,827 before the end of the year.<ref name=Bielawski/>

File:Warsaw Jews 1940 - 50994.jpg
Roundup of Jewish men for forced labor by the Order Police battalions, Krakowskie Przedmieście, March 1940

On the orders of Warsaw District Governor Ludwig Fischer, the ghetto wall construction started on April 1, 1940, circling the area of Warsaw inhabited predominantly by Jews. The work was supervised by the Warsaw Judenrat.<ref name=Fuks/> The Nazi authorities expelled 113,000 ethnic Poles from the neighbourhood, and ordered the relocation of 138,000 Warsaw Jews from the suburbs into the city center.<ref name=Bergman/> On October 16, 1940, the creation of the ghetto was announced by the German governor-general, Hans Frank.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The initial population of the ghetto was 450,000 confined to an area of Template:Convert.<ref name=Bielawski/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Before the Holocaust began the number of Jews imprisoned there was between 375,000<ref name=Levin/> and 400,000 (about 30% of the general population of the capital).<ref name="USHMM1"/> The area of the ghetto constituted only about 2.4% of the overall metropolitan area.<ref name="warsaw-life"/>

File:Warsaw Ghetto footbridge 05.jpg
Warsaw Ghetto wall and footbridge over Chłodna Street in 1942
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-270-0298-10, Polen, Ghetto Warschau, Drahtzaun.jpg
Corner of Żelazna 70 and Chłodna 23 (looking east). This section of Żelazna street connected the "large ghetto" and "small ghetto" areas of German-occupied Warsaw.

The Germans closed the Warsaw Ghetto to the outside world on November 15, 1940.<ref name="Berg"/> The wall around it was Template:Convert high and topped with barbed wire. Escapees were shot on sight. German policemen from Battalion 61 used to hold victory parties on the days when a large number of prisoners were shot at the ghetto fence.Template:Sfnp The borders of the ghetto changed and its overall area was gradually reduced, as the captive population was decreased by outbreaks of infectious diseases, mass hunger, and regular executions.<ref name=Bergman/>

The ghetto was divided in two along Chłodna Street Template:Ill, which was excluded from it, due to its local importance at that time (as one of Warsaw's east–west thoroughfares).<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> The area south-east of Chłodna was known as the "Small Ghetto", while the area north of it became known as the "Large Ghetto". The two zones were connected at an intersection of Chłodna with Żelazna Street, where a special gate was built. In January 1942, the gate was removed and a wooden footbridge was built over it,<ref name=Kajczyk/> which became one of the postwar symbols of the Holocaust in occupied Poland.<ref name=JDC>John D Clare (2014), The Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–43. Modern World History Topics.</ref>

Ghetto administrationEdit

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-270-0298-11, Polen, Ghetto Warschau, Drahtzaun.jpg
Jewish Ghetto Police guarding the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto, June 1942

The first commissioner of the Warsaw Ghetto, appointed by Fischer, was SA-Standartenführer Waldemar Schön, who also supervised the initial Jewish relocations in 1940.<ref name="Gutman2"/> He was an attritionist best known for orchestrating an "artificial famine" (künstliche Hungersnot) in January 1941. Schön had eliminated virtually all food supplies to the ghetto causing an uproar among the SS upper echelon.<ref name="Browning2"/> He was relieved of his duties by Frank himself in March 1941 and replaced by Kommissar Heinz Auerswald, a "productionist" who served until November 1942.<ref name=YadVashem2/> Like in all Nazi ghettos across occupied Poland, the Germans ascribed the internal administration to a Judenrat Council of the Jews, led by an "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" (the Eldest).<ref name="Dawidowicz"/> In Warsaw, this role was relegated to Adam Czerniaków, who chose a policy of collaboration with the Nazis in the hope of saving lives. Adam Czerniaków confided his harrowing experience in nine diaries.Template:Sfnp In July 1942, when the Germans ordered him to increase the contingent of people to be deported, he took his own life.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Czerniaków's collaboration with the German occupation policies was a paradigm for attitude of the majority of European Jews vis à vis Nazism. Although his personality as president of the Warsaw Judenrat may not become as infamous as Chaim Rumkowski, Ältester of the Łódź Ghetto; the SS policies he had followed were systematically anti-Jewish.

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The Council of Elders was supported internally by the Jewish Ghetto Police (Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst),<ref name=Bielawski/> formed at the end of September 1940 with 3,000 men, instrumental in enforcing law and order as well as carrying out German ad hoc regulations, especially after 1941, when the number of refugees and expellees in Warsaw reached 150,000 or nearly one third of the entire Jewish population of the capital.<ref name="Trunk"/>

Catholics and Poles in the ghettoEdit

In January 1940 there were 1,540 Catholics and 221 individuals of other Christian faiths imprisoned in the ghetto, including Jewish converts. It is estimated that at the time of closure of the ghetto there were around 2,000 Christians, and number possibly rose eventually to over 5,000. Many of these people considered themselves Polish, but due to Nazi racial criteria they were classified by German authorities as Jewish.<ref name="ReferenceA">Karol Madaj – Duszpasterstwo Żydów-katolików w getcie warszawskim Biuletyn IPN nr 98 (3) / 2009 page 23–39</ref><ref>Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto: An Epitaph for the Unremembered, by Peter Florian Dembowski, 2005</ref> Within the ghetto there were three Christian churches, the All Saints Church, St. Augustine's Church and the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. All Saints Church served Jewish Christians who were detained in the ghetto. At that time, the parish priest, Marceli Godlewski who before the war was connected to Endecja and anti-Jewish actions, now became involved in helping Jews. At the rectory of the parish, the priest sheltered and helped many escape, including Ludwik Hirszfeld, Louis-Christophe Zaleski-Zamenhof and Wanda Zamenhof-Zaleska. For his actions he was posthumously awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal in 2009.<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

ConditionsEdit

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Nazi officials, intent on eradicating the ghetto by hunger and disease, limited food and medical supplies.<ref name="USHMM encyclopedia">Template:Cite book</ref> An average daily food ration in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw was limited to 184 calories, compared to 699 calories allowed for gentile Poles and 2,613 calories for the Germans.<ref name="Roland"/> In August, the rations fell to 177 calories per person. This meager food supply by the German authorities usually consisted of dry bread, flour and potatoes of the lowest quality, groats, turnips, and a small monthly supplement of margarine, sugar, and meat.<ref name=Laqueur/> As a result, black market economy thrived, supplying as much as 80% of the ghetto's food.<ref name="USHMM encyclopedia" /><ref name=Laqueur/> In addition, the Joint had opened over 250 soup kitchens,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which served at one time as many as 100,000 meals per day.<ref name="USHMM encyclopedia" />

Men, women and children all took part in smuggling and illegal trade, and private workshops were created to manufacture goods to be sold secretly on the "Aryan" side of the city. Foodstuffs were often smuggled by children alone, who crossed the ghetto wall by the hundreds in any way possible, sometimes several times a day, returning with goods that could weigh as much as they did. Unemployment leading to extreme poverty was a major problem in the ghetto, and smuggling was often the only source of subsistence for the ghetto inhabitants, who would have otherwise died of starvation.<ref name=Laqueur/> "Professional" smugglers, in contrast, often became relatively wealthy.<ref name="USHMM encyclopedia" />

During the first year and a half, thousands of Polish Jews as well as some Romani people from smaller towns and the countryside were brought into the ghetto, but as many died from typhus and starvation the overall number of inhabitants stayed about the same.<ref name="Wdowiński"/> Facing an out-of-control famine and meager medical supplies, a group of Jewish doctors imprisoned in the ghetto decided to use the opportunity to study the physiological and psychological effects of hunger.<ref name="Engelking 2002">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Winick 2014">Template:Cite book</ref> The Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study,<ref name="Winick 1979">Template:Cite book</ref> as it is now known, remains one of the most thorough investigations of semi-starvation done to date.<ref name="Winick 2014" />

Education and cultureEdit

Despite grave hardships, life in the Warsaw Ghetto had educational and cultural activities, both legal and those conducted by its underground organizations. Hospitals, public soup kitchens, orphanages, refugee centers and recreation facilities were formed, as well as a school system. Some schools were illegal and operated under the guise of soup kitchens. There were secret libraries, classes for the children and even a symphony orchestra. Rabbi Alexander Friedman,<ref name="Farbstein"/> secretary-general of Agudath Israel of Poland, was one of the Torah leadersTemplate:Clarify in the Warsaw Ghetto; he organized an underground network of religious schools, including "a Yesodei HaTorah school for boys, a Bais Yaakov school for girls, a school for elementary Jewish instruction, and three institutions for advanced Jewish studies".<ref name="Friedman"/> These schools, operating under the guise of kindergartens, medical centers and soup kitchens, were a place of refuge for thousands of children and teens, and hundreds of teachers. In 1941, when the Germans gave official permission to the local Judenrat to open schools, these schools came out of hiding and began receiving financial support from the official Jewish community.<ref name="hillel">Seidman, Hillel. "Alexander Zusia Friedman", in Wellsprings of Torah: An Anthology of Biblical Commentaries, Vol. 1. Nison L. Alpert, ed. The Judaica Press, Inc., 1974, pp. xii–xxiii.</ref> Former cinema Femina became a theater in this period.<ref>Theater as Imperative in the Warsaw Ghetto: Artists and Audience in Jerzy Jurandot's FEMINA 1940–1942</ref> The Jewish Symphonic Orchestra performed in several venues, including Femina.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Israel Gutman estimates that around 20,000 prisoners (out of more than 400,000) remained at the top of ghetto society, either because they were wealthy before the war, or because they were able to amass wealth during it (mainly through smuggling). Those families and individuals frequented restaurants, clubs and cafes, showing in stark contrast the economic inequalities of ghetto life.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Tilar Mazzeo estimates that group at around 10,000 people—"rich industrialists, many Judenrat council leaders, Jewish Ghetto Police officers, profiteering smugglers, nightclub owners [and] high-end prostitutes" who were spending their time at over sixty cafes and nightclubs, "dancing among the corpses."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Manufacture of German military suppliesEdit

File:Working Jews Warsaw Ghetto 02.jpg
Jews working in a ghetto factory

Not long after the ghetto was closed off from the outside world, a number of German war profiteers such as Többens and Schultz appeared in the capital.<ref name="Menszer"/> At first, they acted as middlemen between the high command and the Jewish-run workshops. By spring 1942, the Stickerei Abteilung Division with headquarters at Nowolipie 44 Street had already employed 3,000 workers making shoes, leather products, sweaters and socks for the Wehrmacht. Other divisions were making furs and wool sweaters also, guarded by the Werkschutz police.<ref name="CBnZŻ"/> Some 15,000 Jews were working in the ghetto for Walter C. Többens from Hamburg, a convicted war criminal,<ref name="Kurzman"/> including at his factories on Prosta and Leszno Streets among other locations. His Jewish labor exploitation was a source of envy for other ghetto inmates living in fear of deportations.<ref name="CBnZŻ"/> In early 1943 Többens gained for himself the appointment of a Jewish deportation commissar of Warsaw in order to keep his own workforce secure, and maximize profits.<ref name="Powell"/> In May 1943 Többens transferred his businesses, including 10,000 Jewish slave workers to the Poniatowa concentration camp barracks.<ref name="Nicosia"/> Fritz Schultz took his manufacture along with 6,000 Jews to the nearby Trawniki concentration camp.<ref name="Menszer"/><ref name="Libionka"/>

Treblinka deportationsEdit

File:Grossaktion Warsaw 1942.jpg
The Grossaktion Warschau 1942
File:Umschlagplatz Warsaw Ghetto 01.jpg
Umschlagplatz holding pen for deportations to Treblinka death camp
File:Umschlagplatz loading.jpg
The Grossaktion Warschau 1942 boarding onto the Holocaust trains

Approximately 100,000 ghetto inmates had already died of hunger-related diseases and starvation before the mass deportations started in the summer of 1942. Earlier that year, during the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, the Final Solution was set in motion. It was a secretive plan to mass-murder Jewish inhabitants of the General Government. The techniques used to deceive victims were based upon experience gained at the Chełmno extermination camp (Kulmhof).Template:Sfnp The ghettoised Jews were rounded up, street by street, under the guise of "resettlement", and marched to the Umschlagplatz holding area.<ref name="Memorial"/> From there, they were sent aboard Holocaust trains to the Treblinka death camp, built in a forest Template:Convert northeast of Warsaw.<ref name="Kopówka"/> The operation was headed by the German Resettlement Commissioner, SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, on behalf of SS-Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, the acting SS and police leader of the Warsaw District. Upon learning of this plan, Adam Czerniaków, leader of the Judenrat Council, killed himself. He was replaced by Marek Lichtenbaum,<ref name="Gutman1"/> tasked with managing roundups with the aid of Jewish Ghetto Police. No-one was informed about the real state of affairs.<ref name="Edelman" />

The extermination of Jews by means of poisonous gases was carried out at Treblinka II under the auspices of Operation Reinhard, which also included Bełżec, Majdanek, and Sobibór death camps.Template:Sfnp About 254,000 Warsaw Ghetto inmates (or at least 300,000 by different accounts) were sent to Treblinka during the Grossaktion Warschau, and murdered there between Tisha B'Av (July 23) and Yom Kippur (September 21) of 1942.<ref name="YadVashem1"/> The ratio between Jews killed on the spot by Orpo and Sipo during roundups, and those deported was approximately 2 percent.Template:Sfnp

For eight weeks, the deportations of Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka continued on a daily basis via two shuttle trains: each transport carrying about 4,000 to 7,000 people crying for water; 100 people to a cattle truck. The first daily trains rolled into the camp early in the morning often after an overnight wait at a layover yard; and the second, in mid-afternoon.Template:Sfnp Dr Janusz Korczak, a famed educator, went to Treblinka with his orphanage children in August 1942. He was offered a chance to escape by Polish friends and admirers, but he chose instead to share the fate of his life's work.<ref name="Lifton"/> All new arrivals were sent immediately to the undressing area by the Sonderkommando squad that managed the arrival platform, and from there to the gas chambers. The stripped victims were suffocated to death in batches of 200 with the use of monoxide gas. In September 1942, new gas chambers were built, which could kill as many as 3,000 people in just 2 hours. Civilians were forbidden to approach the camp area.<ref name="Edelman"/> In the last two weeks of the Aktion ending on September 21, 1942, some 48,000 Warsaw Jews were deported to their deaths. The last transport with 2,200 victims from the Polish capital included the Jewish Ghetto Police involved with deportations, and their families.<ref name="Arad"/> In October 1942 the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) was formed and tasked with opposing further deportations. It was led by 24 year–old Mordechai Anielewicz.<ref name="USHMM2"/> Meanwhile, between October 1942 and March 1943, Treblinka received transports of almost 20,000 foreign Jews from the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia via Theresienstadt, and from Bulgarian-occupied Thrace, Macedonia, and Pirot following an agreement with the Nazi-allied Bulgarian government.<ref name="USHMM4"/>

By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to their deaths.<ref name="USHMM2"/> The underground activity of ghetto resistors in the group Oyneg Shabbos increased after learning that the transports for "resettlement" led to the mass killings.<ref name="USHMM5"/> Also in 1942, Polish resistance officer Jan Karski reported to the Western governments on the situation in the ghetto and on the extermination camps. Many of the remaining Jews decided to resist further deportations, and began to smuggle in weapons, ammunition and supplies.<ref name="USHMM2"/>

Ghetto Uprising and final destruction of the ghettoEdit

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File:Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 09.jpg
Suppression of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Captured Jews escorted by the Waffen SS, Nowolipie Street, 1943

On January 18, 1943, after almost four months without deportations, the Germans suddenly entered the Warsaw Ghetto intent upon further roundups. Within hours, some 600 Jews were shot and 5,000 others removed from their residences. The Germans expected no resistance, but the action was brought to a halt by hundreds of insurgents armed with handguns and Molotov cocktails.<ref name="Seeman"/><ref name="Patt"/><ref name="Schoen"/>

Preparations to resist had been going on since the previous autumn.<ref name="Gilbert"/> The first instance of Jewish armed struggle in Warsaw had begun. The underground fighters from ŻOB ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}: Jewish Combat Organization) and ŻZW ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}: Jewish Military Union) achieved considerable success initially, taking control of the ghetto. They then barricaded themselves in the bunkers and built dozens of fighting posts, stopping the expulsions. Taking further steps, a number of Jewish collaborators from Żagiew were also executed.<ref name="Wdowiński"/>

File:Gęsia Street in Warsaw after the war.jpg
Warsaw Ghetto area after the war. Gęsia Street, view to the west
File:Warsaw Ghetto after WWII 04.jpg
Ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto

The final assault started on the eve of Passover of April 19, 1943, when a Nazi force consisting of several thousand troops entered the ghetto. The initial offensive against the ghetto underground launched by Sammern-Frankenegg was met with armed resistance and suffered casualties. He was relieved of command by Heinrich Himmler and replaced by SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop.Template:Sfn After the initial setback, 2,000 Waffen-SS soldiers under the field command of Stroop systematically burned and blew up the ghetto buildings, block by block, rounding up or murdering anybody they could capture. Significant resistance ended on April 28, and the Nazi operation officially ended in mid-May, symbolically culminating with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on May 16. According to the official report, at least 56,065 people were killed on the spot or deported to German Nazi concentration and death camps (Treblinka, Poniatowa, Majdanek and Trawniki).<ref name=Report>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Better source needed The site of the ghetto became the Warsaw concentration camp.

Preserving remnants of the Warsaw GhettoEdit

The ghetto was almost entirely leveled during the Uprising; however, a number of buildings and streets survived, mostly in the "small ghetto" area, which had been included into the Aryan part of the city in August 1942 and was not involved in the fighting. In 2008 and 2010 Warsaw Ghetto boundary markers were built along the borders of the former Jewish quarter, where from 1940 to 1943 stood the gates to the ghetto, wooden footbridges over Aryan streets, and the buildings important to the ghetto inmates. The four buildings at 7, 9, 12 and 14 Próżna Street are among the best known original residential buildings that in 1940–41 housed Jewish families in the Warsaw Ghetto. They have largely remained empty since the war. The street is a focus of the annual Warsaw Jewish Festival. In 2011–2013 buildings at number 7 and 9 underwent extensive renovations and have become office space.<ref name=RMi>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=UMSW>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Nożyk Synagogue also survived the war. It was used as a horse stable by the German Wehrmacht. The synagogue has today been restored and is once again used as an active synagogue. The best preserved fragments of the ghetto wall are located 55 Sienna Street, 62 Złota Street, and 11 Waliców Street (the last two being walls of the pre-war buildings). There are two Warsaw Ghetto Heroes' monuments, unveiled in 1946 and 1948, near the place where the German troops entered the ghetto on 19 April 1943. In 1988 a stone monument was built to mark the Umschlagplatz.<ref name=UMSW/>

There is also a small memorial at ul. Miła 18 to commemorate the site of the Socialist ŻOB underground headquarters during the Ghetto Uprising. In December 2012, a controversial statue of a kneeling and praying Adolf Hitler was installed in a courtyard of the ghetto. The artwork by Italian artist, Maurizio Cattelan, entitled "HIM", has received mixed reactions worldwide. Many feel that it is unnecessarily offensive, while others, such as Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, feel that it is thought-provoking, even "educational".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

People of the Warsaw GhettoEdit

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CasualtiesEdit

File:Umschlagplatz noc.JPG
Umschlagplatz Memorial on Stawki Street
File:Mur getta warszawskiego.jpg
Borders of the ghetto are marked in remembrance of its victims

SurvivorsEdit

  • Rokhl Auerbakh – Polish Jewish writer and essayist; member of the ghetto chroniclers group led by Emanuel Ringelblum. Died in 1976.
  • Mary Berg – 15-year-old diarist (in 1939) born to American mother in Łódź; Pawiak internee exchanged for German POWs in March 1944.<ref name="Berg"/> Died in 2013.
  • Adolf Berman – leader in Jewish Underground in Warsaw; member of Zegota and CENTOS – died in 1978.
File:Icchak Cukierman.jpg
Yitzhak Zuckerman testifies for the prosecution during the trial of Adolf Eichmann

Associated peopleEdit

File:Warsaw Ghetto destroyed by Germans, 1945.jpg
Ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1945; left, the Krasiński's Garden and Swiętojerska street. The entire city district was leveled by the German forces according to order from Adolf Hitler after the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943

See alsoEdit

NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

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External linksEdit

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