Holocaust and Uprising: Episode 46

In April 1943, Jewish people forced into the grossly overcrowded ghetto in Warsaw rose up against the nazis, killing hundreds of SS soldiers. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising failed, but its memory lives on. 

 

SS members force Jewish people out of shelters for deportation to death camps, spring, 1943. Source: Wikimedia Commons. 

 

A map of the Warsaw Ghetto, the area nazi oppressors forced Jewish people to remain in. 

 

SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop (center), commanded of the SS brigade that destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto. 

 

In April and May, the SS systematically destroyed every building in the Warsaw Ghetto.  

 

SS soldiers continuing to destroy the Warsaw Ghetto, May 1943. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. 

"Waves of stone, crushed bricks, a sea of brick. There isn’t a single wall intact — the beast’s anger was terrible." — Soviet journalist Vasily Grossman, Warsaw, 1945.