Warsaw ghetto uprising commemorated

[homeofthebrave]

I commend these brave fighters for standing up against the illegal occupation of their country... of course, nowadays they would be called 'terrorists' for sure...

Warsaw ghetto uprising commemorated

Thu Apr 19, 7:16 PM ET

WARSAW, Poland - The last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising placed yellow daffodils on a granite memorial Thursday to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the start of the ill-fated, armed resistance.

Marek Edelman, shivering on a chilly spring day, walked arm-in-arm with his granddaughter from the stark monument for heroes of the uprising in downtown Warsaw to several other sites within the Nazi-era ghetto for Warsaw Jews.

On one of Edelman's stops, a group of teenagers sang Yiddish songs that roused the fighters who rose up on April 19, 1943 against Germany's attempts to liquidate the ghetto.

Edelman, who picked out the tunes, sang along softy.

In a separate ceremony, Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and other officials placed wreaths at the monument to those killed in what was the first major act of civilian resistance against the Nazis in Poland during World War II.

They opted to fight their captors in the face of plans to exterminate the tens of thousands of Jews remaining in the ghetto, where Nazis had crowded more than 400,000 people in November 1940. The residents, outnumbered and outgunned, held off German troops for three weeks with homemade explosives and a cache of smuggled weapons.

Most of fighters were killed and the Nazis burned down the ghetto street by street.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_ ... nniversary


P.S. These fighters also killed numerous Jews who collaborated with the Germans, just gunned them down in their himes, or while they were eating at a cafe... because it had to be done!

[grzybek]

Thanks for the post. If you want know more about Ghettto uprising, read "Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation With Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" written by Hanna Krall (Polish title: Zdazyc przed Panem Bogiem).

the first major act of civilian resistance against the Nazis in Poland during World War II.

This is half-true. Polish people organised under German occupation their own quasi-state (Polskie Panstwo Podziemne, Polish Secret State ), which coordinates many actions of resistance (more than 400 000 Poles were struggling with German occupant with weapon in their hands, many milions made an passive resistance). There are confirmed German losses from 1941 to 1944

Attacks on Germans 5,733
Locomotives damaged 6,930
Locomotives delayed in overhaul 803
Derailed transports 732
Railroad cars damaged 19,058
Transports set afire 443
Disruption of electric power in Warsaw 638
Military vehicles damaged or destroyed 4,326
Railroad bridges blown up 38
Aircraft damaged 28
Gas storage tanks destroyed 1,167
Gas tanks in tons of gas destroyed 4,4674
Oil shafts incapacitated 3
Carloads of wood wool burnt 150
Military warehouses burnt 122
Military food storage houses burnt 8
Production in factories brought to a standstill 7
Defective parts for aircraft engines produced 4,710
Defective cannon barrels produced 203
Defective artillery shell produced 90,000
Defective aircraft radios produced 10
Defective capacitors for electronic industry 570,000
Defective lathes produced 1,700
Important plan machinery damaged 2,872
Various acts of sabotage 25,154

Read more in Wikipedia about Polish Secret State

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Secret_State

Jewish Uprising is often confused with Warsaw Uprising in 1944, especially in West Europe and the USA. Read more about WU:

http://www.warsawuprising.com

Thanx for attention

[osamathefamer]

These people who fought for themselves should be comemorated as heros. They killed those facist pigs that invaded their homeland and died for freedom.

[grzybek]

and died for freedom.

Jews didn't die for freedom. Just for freedom of dying... They didn't have any chance to succeed, so they were fighting to show that they didn't agree to be killed in German concentration camps.