The ghetto uprising, 60 years on

last updated 8 January 2015

Warsaw

Warsaw’s few remaining Jews this week commemorated the 60th anniversary of the ghetto uprising, the first major act of civilian resistance to the Nazis in occupied Poland. The Nazis forced Warsaw’s 400,000 Jews to live in a neighborhood walled off from the rest of the city and topped with barbed wire. About 100,000 of them died there of hunger and disease; most of the others were deported in groups to concentration camps, where they were murdered. In 1943, 200 young men in the ghetto decided to fight back. They held off the German army for three weeks before the Nazis finally burned the whole ghetto down. “Warsaw pays homage to the ghetto heroes,” said Deputy Mayor Andrzej Urbanski. “Warsaw cries for all those who fought for basic human rights.”