April 21, 2005

PASSOVER 1943, WARSAW: LEST WE FORGET

Pharoahs rise up in every generation. In our age, the Hitlers and Stalins are succeeded by the Pol Pots and Saddam Husseins. They all count on our collective forgetfulness; our wish to believe that all differences can be negotiated and resolved, that Man is essentially good. Human nature, striving to transcend itself, yearns for an end to conflict. Ideologies promise it. Whole professions devote themselves to "conflict resolution", as if human nature could ever be rid of conflict. The high-minded among us forswear violence in the name of 'peace'. Pacifists always claim the moral high ground. They believe destructiveness arises solely from frustration, and that when all human needs are adequately addressed, peace will reign. How quickly we forget Homo Homini Lupus, "Man is a wolf to man". We read the great thinkers from Machiavelli, to Hobbes, to Shakespeare to Burke to Johnson, to Freud, to Churchill and still we need reminders. They all recognized that utopian schemes for human improvement founder on the rock of human nature. Do not be fooled by wishful thinking, they all taught; to avoid war, prepare for it. When the terrorized Jews of the Warsaw ghetto learned of their likely fate, most didn't believe it. They chose to deny what their own eyes and ears were telling them.

"The news was brought by three persons who were to be put to death in Chelmno and who had miraculously escaped. Their story showed that during November and December 1940, approximately 40,000 Jews from Lodz, another 40,000 from Pomerania and towns from other regions incorporated into the Reich, and also a few hundred Gypsies from Bessarabia had died in the Chelmno gas chambers. They had been murdered by the Germans in the now well-known vile manner. The victims were told they were being taken for work and ordered to take along hand-luggage. Upon their arrival at the Chelmno Palace they were stripped of all their clothes and everyone was given a towel and soap, supposedly for the bathing that was to follow. All appearances were kept up to the very last minute. The victims were led into hermetically closed trucks containing gas chambers. The gas was forced into the chambers by the truck engines. Afterwards, in a clearing in the woods in the vicinity of Chelmno, Jewish grave-diggers unloaded the corpses from the trucks and buried them. The woods were surrounded by 200 SS-men. A certain SS-man called Bykowiec was in charge of the procedure. Inspections by SS and SA generals occurred several times..."

Yet even as the world outside the ghetto walls ignored the ongoing terror and slaughter of European Jewry, within the ghetto a few brave, ill equipped and outnumbered young people decided to rise against the Nazi hordes. It was the time of Passover, 1943. They confronted reality. They looked straight into the heart of darkness facing them, and decided the only good Nazi was a dead one, then proceeded to kill as many as possible, striking a blow that would resonate through history. Here is a first hand account of the courageous, doomed Warsaw ghetto uprising. The Nazis launched an all out assault to terrorize the remaining few resistors, "...But no, they did not scare us and we were not taken by surprise. We were only awaiting an opportune moment. Such a moment presently arrived. The Germans chose the intersection at Mila and Zamenhofa Streets for their bivouac area, and battle groups barricaded at the four corners of the street opened concentric fire on them. Strange projectiles began exploding everywhere (the hand grenades of our own make), the lone machine-gun sent shots through the air now and then (ammunition had to be conserved carefully), rifles started firing a bit farther away. Such was the beginning.

The Germans attempted a retreat, but their path was cut. German dead soon littered the street. The remainder tried to find cover in the neighbouring stores and house entrances, but this shelter proved insufficient. The "glorious" SS, therefore, called tanks into action under the cover of which the remaining men of two companies were to commence a "victorious" retreat. But even the tanks seemed to be affected by the Germans' bad luck. The first was burned out by one of our incendiary bottles, the rest did not approach our positions. The fate of the Germans caught in the Mita Street-Zamenhofa Street trap was settled. Not a single German left this area alive..."

Sixty-two years later, as another Passover arrives let us heed the request of Marek Edelman at the end of his survivor's account of the ghetto uprising:
"...On May 10th, 1943, the first period of our bloody history, the history of the Warsaw Jews, came to an end. The site where the buildings of the ghetto had once stood became a ragged heap of rubble reaching three storeys high.

We, who did not perish, leave it up to you to keep the memory of them alive--forever..."

See the full account here.