Warsaw Ghetto Uprising anniversary remembered

Prime Minister Beata Szydło and other leading politicians, including the head of the opposition Civic Platform party Grzegorz Schetyna, attended commemorations at the site of the former Ghetto.

The Jewish insurgency against the Polish capital's Nazi German occupiers was launched on 19 April 1943, with about 1,000 poorly armed partisans taking up the fight.

Photo: Polin Museum

Tens of thousands of paper daffodils were handed out on the streets of the Polish capital on Wednesday by volunteers from the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

The initiative was initiated by the museum in 2013, on the 70th anniversary of the rising.

Daffodils are associated with noted insurgent and later Solidarity activist Marek Edelman, who placed daffodils at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes each year on the anniversary of the uprising.

The flowers mark a poignant contrast with the yellow stars that Jews were made to wear during the Nazi German occupation.

The insurgency

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began after the Germans launched the second large wave of deportations from the ghetto, which started on 18 January 1943.

The uprising was launched on 19 April, with insurgents holding out for close to a month, until the revolt was finally crushed on 16 May 1943.

It is estimated that about 13,000 Jews died in the ghetto during the revolt. It had been the largest ghetto created by the Germans on Polish soil. The majority of the captured survivors were transported to death camps, marking the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Some surviving Jewish combatants, including Marek Edelman, later fought in the Warsaw Uprising, launched by Poland's underground Home Army (AK) on 1 August 1944. (rg/pk)