Jewish resistance leaders also encouraged fellow ghetto inhabitants to defy deportation orders and hide from German authorities. As a result, the Jews who were arranged in columns at the Umschlagplatz had a chance to disperse. However, the attack disoriented the Germans. Most of the Jewish fighters died in the battle. At a prearranged signal, this group broke ranks and fought their German escorts. They planned to send thousands of the ghetto’s remaining Jews to forced-labor camps in the Lublin District of the General Government.Ī small group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, infiltrated a column of Jews being forced to the Umschlagplatz (transfer point). In January 1943, German SS and police units returned to the Warsaw ghetto to resume mass deportations. The First Attempt at Resistance against the Germans ![]() They obtained a small number of weapons, mostly pistols and explosives, from AK contacts. But in October, the ŻOB managed to establish contact with the AK. At the time of the uprising, the ŻOB had about 500 fighters in its ranks and the ŻZW had about 250.ĭuring the summer of 1942, efforts to establish contact with the Polish military underground movement, called the Home Army ( Armia Krajowa AK), did not succeed. This second force was called the Jewish Military Union ( Żydowski Związek Wojskowy ŻZW).Īlthough initially there was tension between the ŻOB and the ŻZW, both groups worked together to oppose German attempts to destroy the ghetto. There was also a second force organized by the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement, especially its youth group, Betar. It is estimated that ŻOB had roughly 200 members at the time of its formation. They created an armed self-defense unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization ( Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa ŻOB). In response to these deportations, several Jewish underground organizations banded together on July 28, 1942. The “Great Action” had been disguised as a “resettlement operation.” However, by late summer 1942 it was clear to many ghetto inhabitants that deportations from the ghetto meant almost certain death. The Jewish Underground (ŻOB and ŻZW) in the Warsaw ghetto ![]() By early 1943, the surviving Jews in the Warsaw ghetto numbered approximately 70,000 to 80,000 individuals. They killed approximately 35,000 Jews inside the ghetto during this operation. During what was described as the “Great Action,” the Germans deported about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka. The “Great Action”įrom July 22 until September 12, 1942, German SS and police units, assisted by auxiliaries, carried out mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. Established by the Germans in October 1940, and sealed that November, the ghetto housed approximately 400,000 Jews. The Warsaw ghetto was the largest Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Europe.
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