THE SECOND EXPULSION, or "action," against the jews of the Warsaw ghetto began on Monday, January 18, 1943, and lasted four days. It was not entirely unexpected. Those Jews who remained from the mass expulsion could no longer delude themselves. They knew that they were not to enjoy a prolonged or stable existence. The Germans would soon end the ghetto.
Information about the deportations and the complete liquidation of ghettos throughout Poland continued to come in from far and wide. Rumors concerning actions that were soon to take place in Warsaw spread rapidly throughout the ghetto. On Monday, January 11, Abraham Levin recorded in his diary:
Our mood is very gloomy and depressed. News which reached us from various places indicates that the Germans intend to finish off the Jews completely. They will not leave a single Jew alive. This was the fate of Radomsko, and other places. This news is unbearably depressing. We fear that the new "action" here within our midst will be the last for all of us.
On Friday, January 15, Levin wrote, "As I have already mentioned an 'action' had been predicted for the 15th of this month ... we can be content that the night passed peacefully, and today there is no news of evil or tragic events. We cannot but be in constant fear, since we are unable to help ourselves and to rescue the few remaining survivors when the day of destruction comes." The last entry in Abraham Levin's diary was dated January 16; with that entry, the diary and its author were silenced forever.
Units of the Jewish Fighting Organization and the remaining Jews in general began to prepare themselves to maintain a permanent state of readiness. Groups of workers and skilled artisans were taken out of the workshops to unknown destinations. Every report of movements by the German police on the Polish side of Warsaw, or a suspicious German move near the gates of the central ghetto, only intensified the nervousness. Mondays were the days that had to be watched, for this was the day on which the expulsions usually began or were renewed.
Nevertheless, the expulsion on Monday, January 18, was something of a surprise. The Germans had been occupied with snatching Poles and sending them off to Germany for forced labor, and it was assumed that with their resources stretched, the Germans would not be free to deal with the Jews. Ludwik Landau, in his daily notes, wrote at the beginning of his entry for the eighteenth:
Warsaw [Polish Warsaw] passed through a horrible day. The snatches reached unheard of proportions. The pursuit went on in the street, the municipal trams, the intercity lines, the railway stations, in the railways and the churches ... it is not surprising that the city was empty yesterday: There is not a soul in the streets, and the trams are empty ... today the city was quiet. But rumor has it that the Germans are not stopping their efforts and that they are ordering cars for today and went off. That they are seen around town is explained by the fact that they have moved on to the ghetto. And indeed they have begun the uprooting again.
The action began when convoys of Jews from the Placowka outpost outside the ghetto were stopped at the exit gates and not permitted to leave the closed-off area. This was taken as a bad omen, and information concerning the barred gates and concentrations of Germans who were preparing to execute the action quickly spread throughout the ghetto.
At 6:00 A.M. the expulsions began. Armed Germans and Ukrainians, who were certain that it would be an easy job, tried to repeat the system they had used in the previous expulsion: they called out for Jews to come out of their houses and concentrate in the courtyards. But they soon learned that the ruse would not work. Jews were not prepared to obey their orders as in the past, and many work places were unoccupied.
The expulsion started in the central ghetto. Among those who were killed by indiscriminate and random shooting on the first day was Yitzhak Giterman, one of the heads of the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, a leading figure in the public underground and an active member of the Jewish National Committee.
Bernard Goldstein, an activist of the Bund in the underground, described the first moves of the January action in his memoir, Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto:
Suddenly, on the 18th of January, 1943, at 6 A.M., some of the streets in which the forced laborers of the workshops and factories still lived were filled with the sound of vile shouting, bursts of gunfire, and the noise of motorcycles and trucks. The wild beasts thrust their way into the courtyards and began to drag out, to brutally maul and fire on anyone who would not hurry to obey the order to go out into the street and form lines leading to the Umschlagplatz.
The workers who were gathered at the assembly points in order to go out to workshops and factories were also taken to the Umschlagplatz, accompanied by shouting, blows and a rain of bullets. Neither documents nor permits were acknowledged.
Among those Who turned up for work that day were members of the Judenrat, and some of them were also taken to the transports together with their families.
Some pursuers managed to surprise inhabitants of the houses and lay their hands on workers. Most of the people of the ghetto, however, escaped to hiding places that they had prepared in advance. Some were in improvised corners of their cellars, in attics, and in rooms disguised by cupboards or wooden walls.
Dr. Lensky wrote in his memoirs that
On the days of the expulsion, the 18th to the 21st of January, 1943, a group of Jewish doctors from the hospital, together with their families, sat hidden in a room behind a clothes closet. Thirty people were in that room. It was in a part of the hospital situated at Gesia Street 6–8. Ukrainians entered the place. Their colleagues had already taken the sick and some of the staff to Treblinka. When they saw that there was no one in the place, the Ukrainians hurried to fill their pockets with whatever they could lay their hands on. They sought watches, jewelry, gold and similar items. Approaching the closet behind which the people were hidden, they extracted drawers and took various items away with them.
The people in hiding behind the closet could hear the Ukrainians' voices and their every movement during their search. Fear penetrated deeply into the hearts of individuals hiding there, for there were some old people and little children in the place. The slightest movement, sneeze or cough could have given them away. But the Ukrainians who were busy plundering the place did not suspect that in the hideaway behind the closet the hearts of 30 Jews were beating madly....Of course, camouflage of this kind was inadequate and insecure.
The surprise German move against the ghetto had prevented the national committee from meeting and discussing whether the time was ripe for resistance action. Armed companies could not coordinate their steps. So they sprang into action independently.
The first shot was fired by Arieh Wilner when the pursuers penetrated a dwelling of members of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the vicinity of the OBW on Mila Street; the first battle in the ghetto was led by Mordecai Anielewicz. His plan was a simple one. Anielewicz chose a dozen fighters with pistols and stood prepared for the struggle. The fighters were to join the lines going to the Umschlagplatz, and at a certain point on the way and at a given signal, they were to burst out of the lines and attack the German guards escorting the queue.
LEGEND
— Ghetto Boundary July 22, 1942
— Reduced Ghetto
![[Image]](images/Resistance_220_1.jpg)
Main Ghetto
![[Image]](images/Resistance_220_2.jpg)
Area Unoccupied, Jews in Hiding
![[Image]](images/Resistance_220_3.jpg)
Area Resettled by Poles
![[Image]](images/Resistance_220_4.jpg)
Brushmakers' Shops
![[Image]](images/Resistance_220_5.jpg)
Ghetto Factory Area: Többens, K. G. Schultz, Rorich, Hoffmann, Schilling
![[Image]](images/Resistance_220_6.jpg)
Central Ghetto Factory Area, Többens
![[Image]](images/Resistance_220_7.jpg)
January 1943 Revolt
• Bunkers & Fighting Points April-May 1943 Revolt
•• Entrances, Gates to Ghetto
• Selected Features (Ghetto Public Institutions)
Thus, members of the group entered the long line of hundreds concentrated on Mila Street, and at the corner of Zamenhof and Niska, near the transports, the signal was given and the battle began. Each Jewish fighter assaulted the nearest German. Even on a one-to-one basis, this was not a battle between equals. The Jews were armed with a few pistols and limited ammunition, while the Germans had semiautomatic rifles and ample ammunition.
The Jews had the momentary advantage of surprise and exploited it fully. After a few minutes, the Germans recovered from the shock of being attacked, and the initial forces were soon augmented by reserves. Most of the Jewish fighters fell in battle.
The battle was a decisive one. The hundreds of Jews who had been standing in the lines dispersed; the Germans saw that they were facing Jewish resistance, and the first Germans fell in the streets of the ghetto. At the same time, the Jews drew encouragement from the dust of the battle, and many ghetto dwellers adopted whatever means of passive resistance possible in the circumstances—that is, not to obey the German orders, to hide, and to evade deportation.
Two days after the battle, Berlinski wrote a few brief sentences on his meeting with Anielewicz in Mila Street:
Today I am again with the people of Hashomer. Mordecai showed me the weapons that were taken.... They had disarmed the Germans, taken their weapons, and already know how to use them. Mordecai described the battle on the corner of Zamenhof and Niska, when he and a group of those who were being pursued initiated the struggle. Some of the SS members were killed and wounded; others fled, leaving behind their caps and some weapons. Then the Germans set fire to the building where Mordecai and his group were concentrated. He managed to escape. I congratulate him on his victory.
Another group led by Yitzhak Zuckerman defended themselves from a house in Zamenhof Street. They had entrenched themselves in an apartment, and when the Germans entered to search, the fighters opened fire. The bravery of Zechariah Artstein and Hanoch Gutman in this attack was particularly notable. According to some of the participants, two Germans were wounded. At the end of this defensive action, in which a Jewish fighter was killed, the group retreated to a house on Muranowska Street. A conflict on a smaller scale also took place in the workshop district.
January 18 marked a turning point in the existence of the Jewish Fighting Organization. The Germans had anticipated a smooth and simple process, but they encountered opposition and paid for it with casualties. For the first time, the Jew was no longer seen as a submissive victim.
Moreover, from that day onward, the Germans refrained from searching the dwellings and from climbing up to attics and down to cellars. The ease with which they had taken Jews was a thing of the past, and as they witnessed, to their amazement, one could lose one's life not only on the battlefield at the front but also in the narrow lanes of the Warsaw ghetto.
One cannot wholly understand the change that took place in the Jewish public's attitude without appreciating the impression made by the events of January 1943. Jews were no longer passive; they could fight back. Yitzhak Zuckerman concluded that "the revolt in January is what made possible the April rebellion." Without the initiative taken in January, the subsequent widespread revolt three months later would not have occurred. The mute acceptance of their fate and the sense of hopelessness that accompanied the mass expulsions in the summer of 1942 gave way to more defiant attitudes. Evading the Germans proved possible. The crisis and frustration experienced by the fighters in September finally disappeared. When a company of fighters met in Mila Street after the battle, mourning for fallen friends did not diminish the sense of excitement and achievement in battle. They realized that their mission was no longer an impossible dream.
The Jewish Fighting Organization now appeared openly in the streets of the ghetto in January and freed those who were being led to the railway carriages, thus proving that its struggle was directed toward aiding all the persecuted Jews. On that day, the Jews in the ghetto and the Jewish Fighting Organization became blood brothers.
A Jewish poet living in the ghetto, who had previously contributed light verse for public entertainment in clubs and cafes, wrote a poem entitled "Counterattack" about the impact of the events of January. The following are a few lines from the poem:
Let us see, before the throat
Stifles the last cry of woe.
Their arrogant hands, their whip-holding fists
Hold our tense fear—fear of man.
From Niska, Mila and Muranow,
Like a bouquet of blood-flowers
The heart cries out from the gun-barrels
This is our spring—our counterattack.
The second expulsion, the January action, was over in four days. From the second day, the Germans were obliged to invest enormous effort in catching the Jews. They succeeded only in catching the sick and the feeble, or those they happened upon accidentally. During those four days, some 5,000—6,500 people were taken from the ghetto or murdered. Taking part in the action were some two hundred German police and eight hundred auxiliaries from the Ukraine and the Baltic states.
On the last day, there was mass slaughter. In a hail of bullets the Nazis murdered a thousand Jews in the streets of the ghetto in apparent retaliation for the fact that the ghetto was no longer silent and submissive. SS Senior Colonel Ferdinand von Sammern—Frankenegg, police commandant of the Warsaw district, evidently did not report to his superiors on the dead and wounded among his soldiers resulting from the resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.
There is no precise information on the German casualties during the January resistance. The Poles spoke of dozens, but this is certainly an exaggeration. At any rate, ambulances were heard racing in and out of the ghetto. One can assume that on the eve of the last action in April von Sammern did not dare to enlighten his superiors as to the true situation in the ghetto and was not eager to reveal the events of January and the existence of the armed Jewish force in the area under his supervision. The mere fact that the Jews were capable of fighting and that the Jewish people could be considered an active enemy rather than a subhuman group ready for extermination was perhaps beyond the Nazis' comprehension.
Notwithstanding the mass murders and the thousands hunted down in January, the Jews assumed that the Germans were deflected from carrying out their plans and forced to stop the action midway. Jewish resistance, they felt, had led to the failure of the mass expulsion and the withdrawal of German troops from the ghetto. This perception was also shared by the members of the military forces of the Polish underground. Neither Jews nor Poles had any reliable information stemming from German or other sources. The Jews responded to what was happening around them, and thus they assumed that the second expulsion would be total. After the Germans managed to uproot some 300,000 people in one concentrated sweep, it followed that during the second round they would complete the process by removing all the Jews of Warsaw.
Zivia Lubetkin, one of the veterans of the fighting organization, wrote in her memoirs:
The action in January continued only for four days. The Germans intended to do away with the entire Jewish population of Warsaw this time, but when they were confronted with armed and unexpected opposition, they stopped the "action." Evidently it did not seem to them befitting for Germans to pay with their lives for the death of the Jews of the ghetto.
Now they decided to gain time to achieve this end by finding a new method of annihilation. They did not know that time was also working to our advantage, that in our second confrontation they would have to pay a heavier price.
The Jews assumed that the resistance had revealed the Achilles' heel of the German military machine. They also believed that the Germans had been forced to recruit considerable forces for this action. From the German point of view, an outburst of street fighting could incite the Poles, who were thought to be waiting to get into the fray, and news of the resistance in Warsaw could not be hidden from the rest of the world, and would attract attention to their plight.
The Germans determined that the mass slaughter would continue as long as it proceeded smoothly. But when confronted by Jewish resistance, the Germans were halted. Filled with renewed confidence, the fighters mistakenly thought that the Nazis might stop the annihilation of the remaining Jews altogether.
The Poles were amazed at this manifestation of Jewish resistance, and the Polish underground press contained considerable praise for the Jews, discussing the difference between the lack of opposition of July-September 1942 and the events of January 1943. The central publication of the AK wrote that
the brave stand of these people, at the saddest moments of the Jewish experience, who had not lost their sense of honor, merited appreciation of what was one of the most brilliant chapters in the annals of the Jews of Poland.
Moreover, it was not only the Polish underground press that had warm words of praise. In the eyes of the Poles, it was assumed that the killing of the Jews was carried out because the Jews did not display any opposition. The Poles did not fathom the significance of the "final solution" as a German plan to physically exterminate the Jews of Europe on the basis of allegedly ideological principles and political purposes.
A secret Polish periodical of Polish farmers, Through Conflict to Victory, claimed in its issue of February 28, 1943, that
after the campaign of punishment, contrary to expectations, there came a momentary calm. The blockades and transports ceased. There is the general assumption that the reason for this stems from the armed resistance shown by the Jews, which made a deep and widespread impression.
Waclaw Zagorski, a prominent activist in Polish socialist circles and a friend of the Jews, pointed out in his notes from January 1943:
Opinions are increasingly confirmed that this form of Jewish self-defense is likely to bring about results. This is retaliation and armed resistance. For the first time, the Jews responded to the attempt to renew the shipments to the gas chambers in Treblinka with shooting. After three days the Germans withdrew their forces from the ghetto.
At the beginning of the first action, the resistance had appeared to many—including the "reasonable" circles of the underground—as a dangerous game that might hasten the deaths of those who could be rescued. Now, ironically, after a few months the resistance was viewed as a means of saving the remainder of the Jews. Thus, those who resisted were no longer seen as adventurous fighters who endangered the rest of the public but as faithful pathfinders whose bravery was the only possible response to an insoluble and utterly lost situation.
Only in Warsaw did the Uprising enjoy widespread mass support. In other ghettos where Jewish underground organizations had been active, such as Vilna and Bialystok, the masses had not taken to the idea of fighting and did not join the fighters during their uprisings. Many were impressed by the young people who were prepared to enter the fray, knowing that this battle could be their last and could end in utter disaster and death. Naturally, this manner of fighting—in which all those who participate are prepared to die fighting—attracted only the remarkable few, mostly young people who were responsible for neither their parents nor their children. Parents with children consistently clung to any solution or glimmer of hope, and when in the end they were without hope, they accepted their fate. In Warsaw, in the time between the first mass expulsions and the final destruction of the ghetto, the resolve of the fighters and the distrust of other ghetto residents hardened. The Jewish masses saw no grounds for hope except through fighting. Even if their perceptions were misleading, many were provoked to strong-willed actions.
Why did the Germans withdraw? Were the assumptions of the ghetto fighters correct? The weight of historical evidence contradicts the conclusion arrived at by Jews and non-Jews during January 1943. Some days before January 18, Himmler was in Warsaw and visited the ghetto. He issued a series of orders relating to the Jews. The head of the SS surveyed the town from his armored car, angered that the eradication of the ghetto had not been carried out as he had ordered. On the eleventh of the month, he wrote to Wilhelm Krüger, who headed the SS and the police in Cracow, complaining that forty thousand Jews remained in Warsaw, and revealing his decision that within a few days some eight thousand Jews would be "erased."
The local authorities had evidently chosen not to inform their commander that more than fifty-five thousand Jews remained in Warsaw, in order to limit his anger. They had not executed his expulsion plan in full, leaving far more Jews than the 10 percent he had permitted to remain.
Himmler was also displeased with the many workshops privately owned by Germans, which he saw as attempts to profit under the guise of exploiting Jewish labor. He was especially vexed by the example of the large Többens workshop. In a letter Himmler wrote:
If I am not mistaken, this is a case of a person who had nothing, becoming tremendously wealthy, if not a millionaire, within three years and this was made possible simply because we, the state, placed cheap Jewish labor at his disposal.
Himmler recommended transferring the sixteen thousand Jews occupied in the production of munitions to the vicinity of Lublin.
Thus, from its inception the second expulsion was not planned as a campaign of total annihilation of the ghetto, as the Jews had assumed, but as a correction and completion of the first expulsion. The Germans prepared themselves for a partial evacuation, which was also not executed in its entirety. It is indeed possible that the Jewish resistance played a part in this failure to fulfill the German plan. It is not known whether Himmler was informed of the armed struggles during the second action, or whether the decision to wipe out Jewish existence in Warsaw completely was conceived during his visit without any connection to the January expulsion and the incidents of resistance.
But on February 16, Himmler sent an order to Krüger from his field headquarters which stated:
For reasons of security, I am ordering you to destroy the Warsaw ghetto after transferring the concentration camp from there. At the same time, all building parts and materials of any kind which can still be used are to be preserved.
The destruction of the ghetto and the transfer of the concentration camp is essential, otherwise we shall not succeed in getting Warsaw into a calm state and as long as the ghetto is standing, it will be impossible to wipe out the crime. A general plan for the destruction of the ghetto should be submitted to me, and in any case, we must arrive at the stage in which the residential area, which exists at present for 500,000 sub-humans [Unter-mertschert], and which had never been suitable for the Germans, will disappear from the face of the area, and the city of Warsaw, with its million inhabitants, which has always been a center of agitation and rebellion, should be reduced in size.
In the not quite three months between the January and April expulsions, when the remaining Jews of Warsaw were to be uprooted and the ghetto erased from the face of the earth, preparations were well under way for the approaching resistance and final struggle—the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The German authorities faced a very complex task in the utter annihilation ordered by Himmler. Jews in the ghetto were completely unaware of the bureaucratic struggles among German authorities. The SS was intent on pursuing the war against the Jews. The Wehrmacht was interested in the task of conducting World War II. While the SS was intensely ideological, the army was far more pragmatic. There were sharp differences between the commanding forces of the Wehrmacht in the General Government and the heads of the SS. The Wehrmacht had been promised a substantial number of Jewish workers. In addition, Jewish workers were employed in the munitions factories and other enterprises supplying such necessities as clothing, shoes, beds, and other items to the German armies. As a result of the murder of the Jews, the Jewish work force was gradually reduced, which led the Wehrmacht to complain that more and more Jews were being taken and that the production lines were being halted.
At the outset of the annihilation process, the Wehrmacht command in the General Government was not aware of the extent and substance of this manufacturing process. Still, in May 1942 the branch of the Wehrmacht responsible for munitions planned to replace the skilled Polish and Ukrainian workers with one hundred thousand Jews. Moreover, the munitions department intended to expand the manufacture of clothing and shoes within the General Government and thus relieve the burden of production in the Third Reich. Jewish workers were essential to this reconfiguration of the labor force.
On July 17, 1942, some days before the mass expulsion from Warsaw, Krüger had informed the Wehrmacht of the policy regarding the annihilation of the ghettos, a situation that would not permit any Jewish work force. At the same time, the SS asked the railway management to arrange for a sufficient number of freight trains.
On July 28, Albert Ganzenmüller, who ran the German railways, confirmed that "from 22 of July, there is a daily train carrying some 5,000 Jews from Warsaw through Malkinia to Treblinka." From the width and breadth of the General Government, reports reached the munitions department that the Jews were being taken away from the production process without any prior warning, and as a result the factories could not fulfill their obligations. The munitions branch tried to make certain that the Jews most needed in the production lines would not be expelled, and in Warsaw the agreement of the SS was obtained to the effect that the Jews employed in production for the war effort would be concentrated in a workers' ghetto, separated from the rest of the Jews.
It was evidently on the basis of this obligation to provide materiel to the Wehrmacht that after the mass expulsion the Germans concentrated the workshops and large enterprises in smaller ghettos, but, nevertheless, the uprooting of the Jews, including those defined as necessary workers, continued. Some six thousand Jewish workers in Warsaw were considered essential and were employed under the aegis of the munitions branch. In September 1942 the general field marshal and chief of staff of the high command of the armed forces, Wilhelm Keitel, ordered that the Jews be replaced by Polish workers. But this order could not alleviate the labor shortage because the Poles who could be recruited for this purpose, either voluntarily or otherwise, had been sent to Germany as forced laborers to work on farms or in German industry.
During the second half of September, the commander of the Wehrmacht forces in the General Government, General Curt Ludwig von Gienanth, sent a sharply worded letter to the high command of the Wehrmacht in which he pointed out the repudiation of their promises about the Jewish workers. He stated that the evacuation of the Jews caused difficulties and delays in the orderly production of munitions, preventing the most urgent work from being executed in time. Gienanth also noted that it was particularly difficult to replace skilled workers, given problems and the loss of time in training new workers. According to information from reliable sources in the SS, the Jews constituted three hundred thousand of the one million skilled workers in the General Government, including one hundred thousand experienced workers. In fact, the workers making winter clothing in the textile factories were all Jews. Gienanth claimed that as a result of the expulsion of the Jews, "the heavy pressure on the military potential of the Reich would immediately reduce the supplies to the front and the forces in the General Government."
We have no information as to what happened after this letter was delivered to Himmler, but three weeks later General Gienanth was dismissed from his position. There were no protests or complaints from the Wehrmacht on humanistic, ideological, or political grounds. Complaints were purely pragmatic, centering on the Wehrmacht's needs and the difficulties that the expulsion of the Jews caused to the production process.
Friction on these issues was discussed at high levels. In December 1942 Hans Frank, head of the General Government, decided at a meeting of his "government" that "clearly the situation in the labor field was aggravated, if at the height of the war effort, an order is issued to prepare the annihilation." Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, SS general and chief commander of the SS and the police in the General Government, and Himmler's confidant in the Frank government, went even further in expressing his opinion.
On May 31, 1943, after the rebellion and the destruction of the ghetto, a conference on matters of security took place in Cracow, attended by Frank, Krüger, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the general in the SS who had replaced Heydrich in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). Krüger began by emphasizing the advantages and benefits derived from clearing the area of Jews. He then said:
Recently we received a repetition of the order to carry out the clearance of Jews within the shortest possible time. Therefore, the Jews must also be taken out of the munitions industry and related economic enterprises. Until now, only Jews working for the war effort were left. These Jews were concentrated in large camps and were daily taken to work in the above-mentioned enterprises. But the wishes of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler] is that these Jews should stop working... I have studied the matter thoroughly with Lieutenant-General Schindler [responsible for armaments in the General Government] and it appears that [despite the wishes of Himmler] this is not possible because there are experts among the Jewish workers, skilled mechanics and experienced artisans in the various branches and it is difficult to find replacements for them among the Poles. [I] therefore address the Obergruppenführer, to kindly ask him to change his decision regarding the evacuation of the Jewish work force.
Shortly thereafter, Krüger was ousted from his position. It is uncertain whether the general decline of security in the General Government was the cause of his departure or whether his statement played a part in his dismissal.
In September 1942, the matter was argued in Hitler's presence by Himmler and the man responsible for the Reich's labor concerns, Fritz Sauckel. Hitler himself decided that, for the time being, the skilled Jewish workers should remain in the General Government. This situation undoubtedly forced Himmler, who had given the order to destroy the Warsaw ghetto, to maintain temporarily the Jews occupied in the munitions factories and to transfer them to camps set up for this purpose.
In addition, Himmler and the SS made every effort to establish their hold on the economy, especially in the field of munitions. If Jewish workers were to continue for the time being, Himmler saw to it that the workers, the factories, and the workshops were brought under the supervision or ownership of the SS. It was decided to transfer the factories and the large workshops to camps in Poniatowa and Trawniki in the Lublin region, which was the power center of the SS and of the executor of the death camps, Odilo Globocnik.
The task assigned to the SS and the police in Warsaw was not easy in light of the changes in the ghetto following the bloody conflict with the Jewish Fighting Organization. The Germans were obliged to separate the inhabitants of the ghetto from the workers in the factories designated for transfer to the work camps and convince them to move to the new location. The SS also had to see that equipment and materials in the ghetto were transferred to work camps.
To execute this plan, they behaved with comparative restraint toward the Jews, making promises and offering concessions. Walter Többens, the owner of the largest factory in the ghetto and the target of Himmler's sharp criticism and suspicion, was appointed commissar of the transfer action. He had to persuade the Jews that this was a transfer to another working location and not an expulsion to a death camp.
Some twenty thousand Jewish workers were to be transferred to the work camps and Többens signed a contract under which the factories would be evacuated and supervised by the SS, while production supervision would remain in the hands of the former owners.
One doubts whether the German entrepreneurs trusted the SS assurances that these newly located enterprises were ensured a certain permanence. More likely, this proposal seemed desirable from their point of view and provided some confidence that they would retain the enormous capital they had accumulated through the exploitation of Jews.
At the beginning of March 1943, Többens announced the departure of two clothing workshops, but of 1,600 workers only 280 appeared for transport, and some of them escaped while still in the transport queues. The Germans pursued and detained them under the supervision of the workshop guards, but members of the ZOB managed to extricate 60 of the detainees. The plan for transferring workers from the area of the brush workshops ended in failure. Out of 3,600 workers, only 30 turned up.
In the second half of March, two transports of workers from the workshop area of the ghetto were transferred to the camps in Poniatowa and Trawniki. Jewish foremen returned to the ghetto and confirmed that indeed this was not an expulsion but a move to a working camp. Többens claimed that the new location would enable the Jews to live with their families, that the children would have proper schools, and that he personally guaranteed the safety of "his" Jews and of those who would agree to move. Despite his coaxing, after the first wave of evacuees, the Jews became more obstinate and would nor volunteer.
The Jewish Fighting Organization addressed the workshop employees in a proclamation warning them that volunteering to move meant the destruction of the ghetto and the annihilation of the evacuees. On March 20, Többens entered the battle of proclamations, retaliating with a proclamation of his own. In this manner, the German responsible for the transfer conducted an open controversy with the Jewish Fighting Organization on the walls of the ghetto. Többens declared:
The last transport was not put to death ... Jewish munitions workers! Do not listen to those who wish to mislead you. They want to incite you into actions which may have unavoidable results.
Többens claimed that there was no security in the "shelters" or hiding places and no safe refuge among the Poles on the Aryan side. It was a fact, he added, that the Jews with money returned from the Aryan side because they could not abide what awaited them there, and they now wanted "to be among the transferred." Finally, Többens suggested that Jews put their trust only in the heads of the enterprises being transferred to the work camps of Poniatowa and Trawniki, and advised them to take their wives and children with them. (In fact, the Jews who were transported to these camps before the final destruction of the ghetto were murdered in a mass slaughter that took place in the Lublin area in November 1943—the slaughter known as "the harvest festival.")
In addition to the transfer of Jews to the work camps, the German owners of the workshops and factories surreptitiously, but not always successfully, moved the equipment and stocks of materials to these camps. The Jewish Fighting Organization used fires and other methods of sabotage to destroy equipment and materials that the Germans intended to transfer.
During this period, the idea of resistance was on the rise, although people with means and connections stepped up their attempts to find hiding places in the Aryan part of Warsaw. Amost every-remaining Jew in Warsaw participated in the construction of shelters and hiding places and in the preparation of equipment for survival in hiding. The shelters were readied in cellars and tunnels beneath the courtyards of buildings. The more secure were specially built for hiding, on the assumption that the enemy would find plans for all the houses and could then follow the outlines of existing cellars to find them.
The work of digging and preparing the bunkers was mainly done at night, mostly in rotation by the people who were to share the bunker. The earth that had been dug out was buried in the ordinary cellars, in order not to leave any trace of the work. Those individuals who formed a group to construct a bunker were obliged to pay a large sum of money to equip it adequately to be used as a hiding place. The work was done cleverly and with a great deal of thought. Wooden bunks were installed, sanitary arrangements made, and considerable attention was given to the stocking of foodstuffs. Smuggling provided for foods that would last.
A good bunker linked up with the central water supply system of the city, which passed under the ghetto and ensured the flow of fresh water. This applied to electricity as well. The organizers of the installation and occupation of the bunkers were very keen on having a medical doctor among them and on obtaining a supply of medicines. The best bunkers were not only well equipped but also had a camouflaged source of air. Exceptional bunkers also attached to a tunnel leading out of the ghetto or to the vacant area between the no man's land and the inhabited ghettos. Much thought was needed to plan the disguised entrances to the bunkers, which had to be completely invisible from the outside. Some professionals took part in their planning and construction, and frequently experts were hired for the purpose. Every bunker had its guiding group to ensure its efficient operation.
The number of houses in which there were no bunkers were few and far between, but there were courtyards in which two or three had been installed. At any rate, everyone tried to have a place in a bunker, just as they had a place to rest their heads above ground. And indeed, near the beginning of the final expulsion and destruction of the ghetto, almost the entire Jewish population of the central ghetto had places in bunkers. Seemingly overnight, the ghetto, particularly the central area, had become a city on two levels—houses above ground, and cellars and runnels below.
Between January and April 1943, the Jewish Fighting Organization was unified; the hierarchy of personnel and the strategic plans were laid down for the inevitable struggle. The period between the two expulsions was one of marked change and preparation for the last battle. The organization did not delude itself that its resistance would prompt the Nazis to give up the idea of wiping out the ghetto and to leave them alone; instead, the imminent annihilation required swift preparations since it was the enemy who would determine the date of the battle.
The Jewish Fighting Organization and the revisionist ZZW had learned a great deal from the January conflict. A German surprise attack could take place at any moment. As a result, after January, there was a hasty organization of fighting groups into squads attached to dwelling places, which also served as the central posts of their concentrated force. There they kept their personal arms and trained, maintaining an ambiance of semimilitary discipline. Members of the squads were forbidden to leave without permission from the officer in charge. Yet an atmosphere of intimacy and friendship existed among the young men and women who made up these squads.
Much of the time, the members of the groups kept busy reading books and discussing social or political questions. As some of the survivors of the ZOB have described, they resembled discussion societies rather than fighting squads. The food was simple—rationed portions of bread and jam, with the morning drink sweetened by saccharine. Lunch consisted of soup. They did not deviate from this rather poor diet later, when they commanded larger sums of money. The funds raised voluntarily or by force were dedicated to acquiring arms.
According to available data, there were twenty-two fighting groups composed of youth movement members. The Dror movement had five groups; Hashomer Hatzaír, the Bund, and the Communists had four groups each; while Akiva, Gordonia, Hanoar Hazioni, Po'alei Zion C.S., and the Left Po'alei Zion had single groups. Preserving the youth movement framework of separate fighting units was necessary in order to maintain continuity and to strengthen the bonds among the fighters. Many considered their membership in the Jewish Fighting Organization the natural culmination of the long path they had taken in the ranks of their movement.
At the same time, close relationships were established between the squads. They visited one another, and occasionally individuals transferred from squad to squad. Commanders of the squads were appointed based on the youth movments they belonged to, but their appointments were founded on seniority rather than on ideological convictions or intellectual qualities, as they had been in the past.
The ghetto was divided into three sections: the central ghetto, the large workshop area, and the brushmakers' area. The central ghetto was the primary focus of the organization, and its headquarters, led by Mordecai Anielewicz, was entrenched there. The commander of the local force, which consisted of nine fighting squads dispersed throughout the area, was Israel Kanal. In the workshop area, eight squads were led by Yitzhak Zuckerman, and in the brushmakers' area, five squads were under the command of Marek Edelman.
During the organization's formation, a strategic plan was developed that proved to be of great importance during the armed conflict. The members had no military experience and lacked understanding or knowledge of fighting methods, least of all military maneuvers in urban surroundings. Having no alternative, they had to base their strategy on a thorough knowledge of the area and on their recent experience. From the events of January, they knew that the organization could not engage in hand-to-hand battles in the streets or squares of the ghetto, as these would be decided by the crushing force of the Germans. In January this technique had worked, and changed the mood and stand of the ghetto, but in a calculated struggle over a period of time, different methods were required, including the deployment of forces in many places which could exploit the area and the element of surprise.
The organization's strategy was based on the reality of the situation. The houses in the ghetto were almost of equal height, between three and five stories, topped with tiled roofs that formed triangular attics. Between the roofs, passages were formed with ladders. At first, this route allowed for surreptitious movement from house to house. Over time, these passages were improved and became an element in the action plan. It was possible to appear at posts near the attics or the upper stories without moving about in the streets and to withdraw without being seen by the forces in the street. Clearly, in the familiar alcoves, on the narrow ladders, in the corners and crevices, the fighters had a marked advantage over the Germans, who feared entering the dark and little-known maze.
Positions were chosen from which to open fire, overlooking the crossroads through which German forces would pass to enter the ghetto. The weakest aspect of the plan was the lack of arms. In fact, after the events of January, many Jews sought to join the group but were refused due to the shortage of weapons. But by the beginning of April, every fighter in the fighting squads was armed with a revolver. In the interim the Jewish Fighting Organization "cleaned house." There were two fields of activity: the punishment and the execution of people in the ghetto who had collaborated with the Germans to the detriment of the Jews or had helped the Germans to carry out the expulsion. Emanuel Ringelblum named thirteen who were shot.
The ZOB did not prepare for withdrawal, and hence the strategy lacked a basic component of an ordinary battle plan. This was not accidental. Fighters planned to fight and fall in the streets and the neighborhoods. At their first meeting, according to Henryk Wolinski, "Jurek," or Arieh Wilner, the fighting organization's emissary, said, "We do not wish to save our lives. None of us will come out of this alive. We want to save the honor of mankind."
Unlike the Jewish fighting organization in Vilna (FPO), which planned an escape route after the fighting in order to continue the struggle, the ZOB refused every option for rescue and survival. Nor did the organization participate in preparing bunkers for its members, or tunnels leading to the "Aryan" side. In these respects, its concepts differed from those of the ZZW (the Jewish Fighting Union), although the lack of documentation makes it difficult to determine what its plans were.
During the three months that preceded the fighting and the great rebellion, the Germans focused their efforts on removing equipment from the factories and transferring workers. In their desire to achieve these aims in a reasonable and calm atmosphere, they reduced their intervention in the internal affairs of the ghetto. When the German authorities approached the Judenrat and urged them to act firmly, Marc Lichtenbaum, who had replaced Czerniakow as its leader, stated that he was unable to do so, as the real power rested in other hands. And indeed, despite the regulations concerning secrecy, the Jewish Fighting Organization was the actual ruler of the ghetto.
![[Image]](images/Resistance-29.jpg)