Warsaw marks ghetto revolt anniversary
Source: Agencies |
April 20, 2013, Saturday
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SIRENS wailed and church bells tolled in Warsaw as largely Roman Catholic Poland paid homage yesterday to the Jewish fighters who rose up 70 years ago against German Nazi forces in the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
The mournful sounds marked the start of state ceremonies that were led by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. The president was joined by officials from Poland, Israel and beyond as well as a survivor of the fighting, Simha Rotem, to honor the first large-scale rebellion against the Germans during World War II.
About 750 Jews with few arms and no military training attacked a much larger and well-equipped German force that was about to send the remaining ghetto residents to death camps. The revolt was crushed the following month, and the ghetto was razed to the ground, most of its residents killed.
"We knew that the end would be the same for everyone (but) we wanted to choose the kind of death we would die," said Rotem, an 88-year-old who is among a few surviving fighters. "But to this day I have doubts as to whether we had the right to carry out the uprising and shorten the lives of people by a day, a week, or two weeks."
At the ceremony, Komorowski bestowed one of the country's highest honors on Rotem - the Grand Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland. Later the two of them, along with Israeli Education Minister Shai Piron and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a Polish Auschwitz survivor who helped rescue Jews during the war, walked side-by-side to the monument and bowed before it as soldiers laid a wreath.
The mournful sounds marked the start of state ceremonies that were led by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. The president was joined by officials from Poland, Israel and beyond as well as a survivor of the fighting, Simha Rotem, to honor the first large-scale rebellion against the Germans during World War II.
About 750 Jews with few arms and no military training attacked a much larger and well-equipped German force that was about to send the remaining ghetto residents to death camps. The revolt was crushed the following month, and the ghetto was razed to the ground, most of its residents killed.
"We knew that the end would be the same for everyone (but) we wanted to choose the kind of death we would die," said Rotem, an 88-year-old who is among a few surviving fighters. "But to this day I have doubts as to whether we had the right to carry out the uprising and shorten the lives of people by a day, a week, or two weeks."
At the ceremony, Komorowski bestowed one of the country's highest honors on Rotem - the Grand Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland. Later the two of them, along with Israeli Education Minister Shai Piron and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a Polish Auschwitz survivor who helped rescue Jews during the war, walked side-by-side to the monument and bowed before it as soldiers laid a wreath.
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