There were approximately 1000 Jewish fighters who took part in the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, led by a handful of commanders. These young men and women were inadequately trained, poorly armed and badly outnumbered. Only a very few survived. All of the fighters in the Jewish resistance were heroes, refusing to surrender to the Nazis without a fight. These are short biographies of several of the leaders.

Mordechai Anielewicz

This young commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was born in 1919 in a poor neighbourhood of Warsaw. When he was just a teenager he became part of a youth movement that worked to help Jews get out of Poland. He was arrested and imprisoned for these activities. Upon his release from jail, he returned to Warsaw and to the ghetto where he helped publish an underground newspaper and organised meetings about resistance. He even snuck out of the ghetto several times to visit friends and comrades in other ghettos. All of these activities were moving Mordechai in the direction of becoming a leader, and in November 1942, at the age of twenty-three, he was elected as chief commander of the Jewish Fighting Organisation in the Warsaw Ghetto. He began to organise this group to fight back against the Nazis.

On April 19, 1943, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, when the Nazis began the last big deportation of Jews to the concentration camp from the Warsaw Ghetto, Mordechai and his resistance army struck. Despite the fact that they were badly outnumbered by the Nazi army, the Jewish fighters would not surrender. Many lost their lives in the battles that followed. Mordechai Anielewicz was killed on May 8 when Nazi troops stormed his headquarters. He was only twenty-four years old when he died.

There are some who would suggest that Mordechai and the others who were part of the uprising never really believed that they would survive. They knew it was hopeless to fight against a powerful and well-equipped Nazi army. Rather, Mordechai and the others fought back so that they could choose the kind of the death that they would have. In a final letter to his friend who was hiding outside the ghetto, Mordechai wrote: ‘I feel that great things are happening and what we dared do is of great, enormous importance … I am a witness to this grand heroic battle of the Jewish fighters.’

Mira Fuchrer

Mira was also a born activist and, as a teenager, had been a member of a youth movement that believed that the freedom of Jewish people could be accomplished by moving to the land that was to become Israel. It was during this time that she met and fell in love with Mordechai Anielewicz. During the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, she fought alongside Mordechai and was also killed on May 8 when Nazi troops stormed the headquarters where they were fighting. She was only twenty-three when she died.

Leah Perlstein

As a young teacher, Leah was also part of a movement of young people who were preparing themselves to eventually move to the land that was to become Israel. In 1940 she was helping to organise a group of Jewish people to leave Slovakia when she was called upon to help in the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. She worked outside the walls of the ghetto, purchasing weapons and negotiating with the Polish underground for their help. She was killed by Nazi soldiers in January 1943.

Aharon Bruskin

There is little that is known about the early life of this young man who was born in 1918 at the end of World War I. What is known is that he, too, was active in the Jewish Fighting Organisation of the Warsaw Ghetto, and fought alongside Mordechai Anielewicz during the uprising. On May 7 1943, he and a group of fighters snuck through the sewers of the ghetto to try and get help from friends on the outside. As they were climbing out of a sewer pipe, they were ambushed by a group of Nazi soldiers. Aharon was killed in that ambush. He was only twenty-five.

David Hochberg

This courageous young man was just nineteen years old when he became commander of a battle group in the Warsaw Ghetto. His mother had forbidden him to join the Jewish Fighting Organisation, but David defied her orders and became a member of the resistance. During the uprising, he was defending a bunker at Mila Street No. 29, where several hundred civilians were hiding. When the Nazis attacked, it was clear that everyone in the shelter was going to be killed. David gave up his weapons and blocked the narrow opening to the bunker with his own body. He was killed immediately, but while the Nazi soldiers were trying to remove his body from the small opening, the entire group of civilians who were hiding behind him managed to escape to safety.

Zivia Lubetkin

Zivia was one of the founders and the only woman on the High Command of the Jewish Fighting Organisation. Her name in Polish, Cuwia, was the code word for ‘Poland’ in letters that were sent by resistance groups both inside and outside the Warsaw Ghetto. In the final days of the uprising, she led a group of fighters through the sewers of Warsaw and managed to escape. She was one of the few surviving fighters. After the war, Zivia became active in helping other Holocaust survivors leave Eastern Europe en route to the land that would become Israel. She herself went there in 1946, where she helped found the Ghetto Fighters’ House museum, dedicated to the resistance fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. She married Yitzhak Zukerman, also a member of the Jewish Fighting Organisation in Warsaw. Zivia died in 1976.

Marek Edelman

Born in 1922, Marek was only twenty-one when he fought alongside Mordechai Anielewicz in the uprising. He was one of three sub-commanders defending the brushmakers’ area of the ghetto. Marek managed to escape from the ghetto in the final days of the uprising. After the war, he studied medicine and remained active in politics and fighting for rights and freedoms. In 1998, Marek was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest decoration.

The Memorial of the Heroes in the Warsaw Ghetto

Built by Nathan Rappaport in 1948, this monument is located in Warsaw on Zamenhofa Street where one of the main battles of the uprising was fought. Mordechai Anielewicz is pictured in the centre, holding a hand grenade.