1.
The Holocaust in Poland
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The genocide officially sanctioned and executed by the Third Reich during World War II, collectively known as the Holocaust, took the lives of more than three million Polish Jews. German companies bid for the contracts to build the crematoria in concentration camps run by Nazi Germany in the General Government as well as in parts of occupied Poland and beyond. Throughout the German occupation, at risk to themselves and their families. Grouped by nationality, Polish rescuers represent the biggest number of people who saved Jews during the Holocaust, already recognized by the State of Israel, the Polish Righteous Among the Nations include 6,706 gentiles, more than any other nation. Following the 1939 invasion of Poland in accordance with the protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi Germany. Large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany, within months, the Polish Jews in the Soviet-occupied zone, who refused to swear an oath of allegiance, were deported to Siberia along with the Catholics. Their number is estimated at about 200,000 men, women and children, both occupying powers were equally hostile to the existence of sovereign Polish state, and endorsed the policy of ethnic cleansing. However, the Soviet rule was short-lived because the terms of the Nazi–Soviet Pact signed earlier in Moscow were broken, from 1941 to 1943 all of Poland was under the control of Nazi Germany. The semi-colonial territory of the General Government, set up in central and south-eastern Poland, prior to World War II, there were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland, living predominantly in the cities, about 10% of the general population. Database of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews provides information on 1926 Jewish communities across the country, following the conquest of Poland, the first German anti-Jewish measures involved the policy of expulsion of Jews from the territories annexed by the Third Reich. Annexed directly to the new Warthegau district, the city of Łódź absorbed the influx of some 40,000 Polish Jews forced out from the surrounding areas, a total of 204,000 Jews passed through the ghetto in Łódź. Initially, they were to be expelled to the Generalgouvernement, however, the ultimate destination of the massive removal of Jews was left open until the Final Solution was set in motion two years later. Persecution of Polish Jews by the German occupation authority began immediately after the invasion, during this period, the Germans ordered Jewish communities to appoint Jewish Councils to administer the ghettos and to be responsible in the strictest sense for carrying out orders. Most ghettos were set up in cities and towns where Jewish life was well organized, for logistical reasons, the Jewish communities in settlements without railway connections in occupied Poland were dissolved. In a massive deportation action involving the use of freight trains, the food aid was completely dependent on the SS. Jews were legally banned from baking bread, they were sealed off from the public in an unsustainable manner. By the end of 1941, most ghettoised Jews had no savings left to pay the SS for further bulk food deliveries, the Warsaw ghetto contained more Jews than all of France, the Łódź Ghetto more Jews than all of the Netherlands. More Jews lived in the city of Kraków than in all of Italy, all of southeast Europe – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece – had fewer Jews than the original four districts of the General Government
2.
Second Polish Republic
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The Second Polish Republic, also known as the Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland, refers to the country of Poland between the First and Second World Wars. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland and it had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia, the Second Republic was significantly different in territory to the current Polish state. It included substantially more territory in the east and less in the west, the Second Republics land area was 388,634 km2, making it, in October 1938, the sixth largest country in Europe. After the annexation of Zaolzie, this grew to 389,720 km2, according to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, almost a third of population came from minority groups,13. 9% Ukrainians, 10% Jews,3. 1% Belarusians,2. 3% Germans and 3. 4% Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country borders, Poland maintained a slow but steady level of economic development. By 1939, the Republic had become one of Europes major powers, the victorious Allies of World War I confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922. In the course of World War I, Germany gradually gained overall dominance on the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back, German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up a German puppet state on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State, the Council administered the country under German auspices, pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Council of State, with the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński, in 1918–1919, over 100 workers councils sprang up on Polish territories, on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia, the same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional Peoples Government of the Republic of Poland in Lublin. On Sunday,10 November at 7 a. m, Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaws railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski, next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces
3.
Warsaw
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Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It stands on the Vistula River in east-central Poland, roughly 260 kilometres from the Baltic Sea and 300 kilometres from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population is estimated at 1.750 million residents within a metropolitan area of 3.101 million residents. The city limits cover 516.9 square kilometres, while the area covers 6,100.43 square kilometres. Once described as Paris of the East, Warsaw was believed to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world until World War II. On 9 November 1939, the city was awarded Polands highest military decoration for heroism, Warsaw is one of Europe’s most dynamic metropolitan cities. In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Warsaw as the 32nd most liveable city in the world, in 2017 the city came 4th in the “Business-friendly” category and 8th in the “Human capital and life style”. It was also ranked as one of the most liveable cities in Central, Warsaw is considered an Alpha– global city, a major international tourist destination and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. The city is a significant centre of research and development, BPO, ITO, the Warsaw Stock Exchange is the largest and most important in Central and Eastern Europe. Frontex, the European Union agency for external security, has its headquarters in Warsaw. Together with Frankfurt, London and Paris, Warsaw is also one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in the European Union, the city is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and the University of Warsaw. The historic city-centre of Warsaw with its picturesque Old Town in 1980 was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, buildings represent examples of nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw provides many examples of architecture from the gothic, renaissance, baroque, neoclassical and modern periods, furthermore, the city is positioning itself as Europes chic cultural capital with thriving art and club scenes and renowned restaurants. Folk etymology attributes the city name to a fisherman, Wars, according to legend, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula River with whom Wars fell in love. In actuality, Warsz was a 12th/13th-century nobleman who owned a village located at the site of Mariensztat neighbourhood. See also the Vršovci family which had escaped to Poland, the official city name in full is miasto stołeczne Warszawa. A native or resident of Warsaw is known as a Varsovian – in Polish warszawiak, warszawianin, warszawianka, warszawiacy, other names for Warsaw include Varsovia and Varsóvia, Varsovie, Varsavia, Warschau, װאַרשע /Varshe, Варшава /Varšava /Varshava, Varšuva, Varsó. The first fortified settlements on the site of todays Warsaw were located in Bródno, after Jazdów was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new similar settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called Warszowa
4.
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
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The rest of Nazi occupied Poland was renamed as the General Government district. The annexation was part of the partition of Poland by Nazi Germany. Some smaller territories were incorporated directly into the existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while the bulk of the land was used to create new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia, of those, Reichsgau Wartheland was the largest and the only one comprising solely the annexed territory. The official term used by the Nazi authorities for these areas was the incorporated Eastern territories and they planned for a complete Germanization of the annexed territories, considering them part of their lebensraum. The local Polish population was to be enslaved, exterminated. The Polish elite especially became subject to murder, and an estimated 780,000 Poles were subject to expulsion. The remaining Polish population was segregated from the German population. These included forced labour and their exclusion from all political and many aspects of society. After Vistula-Oder offensive in early 1945, the Soviet Union took control over the territories, the ethnic German population either fled the Red Army or were later expelled and the territories became part of the Peoples Republic of Poland. Already in the fall of 1933 Adolf Hitler revealed to his closest associates his intentions to annex western Poland into an envisioned Greater Germany. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Third Reich, the remainder of the Polish territory was either annexed by the Soviet Union or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone. A tiny portion of pre-war Poland was annexed by Nazi Slovakia, since 1935, Nazi Germany was divided into provinces which had replaced the former German states and Prussian provinces. Of the territories annexed, some were attached to the already existing Gaue East Prussia and Silesia, while from others new Reichsgaue Danzig-West Prussia, Wartheland was the only Gau constituted solely from annexed territory, Danzig-West Prussia comprised also former German areas and the former Free City of Danzig. The occupied General Government remained outside the Third Reich, Nazi Germanys officials discussed the convention and tried to circumvent it by declaring the war against Poland over prior to the annexation, which in their view made the convention non-applicable. Based on laws of 21 May 1935 and 1 June 1938, Hitler appointed Arthur Greiser to become the CdZ of the Posen military district, and Danzigs Gauleiter Albert Forster to become the CdZ of the West Prussian military district. Frank was at the time appointed supreme chief administrator for all occupied territories. A decree issued by Hitler on 8 October 1939, provided for the annexation of western Polish areas, a separate by-law stipulated the inclusion of the area around Suwalki. These government regions were named after the German language names of their cities, Hohensalza, Posen, Kalisch, Bromberg, Danzig
5.
Jewish Combat Organization
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The Jewish Combat Organization was a World War II resistance movement in occupied Poland, which was instrumental in engineering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ŻOB took part in a number of resistance activities as well. Thus began massive deportations of about 254,000 Jews, all of whom were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp, the Gross Aktion lasted until 12 September 1942. Overall it reduced the once thriving Warsaw Jewish community of some 400,000 to a mere 55,000 to 60,000 inhabitants, unlike the older generation, the youth groups took these reports seriously and had no illusions about the true intentions of the Germans. A number of the left Zionist youth groups, such as Hashomer Hatzair and Dror, the proposal was rejected by the Jewish Labour Bund who believed that a fighting organization would fail without the help of the Polish resistance. Others rejected the notion of armed insurgency saying that there was no evidence of a threat of deportation, moreover, they argued any armed resistance would provoke the Germans to retaliate against the whole Jewish community. In November 1942, ŻOB officially became part of and subordinated its activities to the High Command of the Armia Krajowa, in return the AK began providing ŻOB with weapons and training, with the first shipment of guns and ammunition being provided in December 1942. On 18 January 1943, the Nazis began a wave of deportations. The first Jews the Germans rounded up included a number of ŻOB fighters who had crept into the column of deportees. Led by Mordechai Anielewicz they waited for the signal, then stepped out of formation. The column scattered and news of the ŻZW and ŻOB action quickly spread throughout the ghetto, during this small deportation, the Nazis only managed to round up about 5,000 to 6,000 Jews. The deportations lasted four days during which the Germans met other acts of resistance from the ŻOB, however, Gutman concludes that the deportations. Had a decisive influence on the ghettos last months, the final deportation began on the eve of Passover,19 April 1943. When the Germans marched into the ghetto, they met armed resistance from fighters attacking from open windows in vacated apartments. The defenders of the ghetto utilized guerrilla tactics and had the strategic advantage not only of surprise. This advantage was lost when the Germans began systematically burning all of the buildings of the forcing the fighters to leave their positions. The fires above consumed much of the available oxygen below ground, by 16 May 1943, the German Police General Jürgen Stroop, who had been in charge of the final deportation, officially declared what he called the Grossaktion, finished. To celebrate he razed Warsaws Great Synagogue, the ghetto was destroyed and what remained of the uprising was suppressed
6.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
7.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
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A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties are not known, but were not more than 300 and it was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. In 1939, German occupational authorities began to concentrate Polands population of three million Jews into a number of extremely crowded ghettos located in large Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, concentrated approximately 300, 000–400,000 people into a packed,3.3 km² central area of Warsaw. The SS conducted many of the deportations during the operation code-named Grossaktion Warschau, czerniaków committed suicide once he became aware of the true goal of the resettlement plan. Approximately 254, 000–300,000 Ghetto residents met their deaths at Treblinka during the two-month-long operation, the Grossaktion was directed by SS-Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, the SS and police commander of the Warsaw area since 1941. He was relieved of duty by SS-und-Polizeiführer Jürgen Stroop, sent to Warsaw by Heinrich Himmler on 17 April 1943, Stroop took over from von Sammern-Frankenegg following the failure of the latter to pacify the Ghetto resistance. By the end of 1942, Ghetto inhabitants learned that the deportations were part of an extermination process, many of the remaining Jews decided to revolt. The first armed resistance in the ghetto occurred in January 1943, on 19 April 1943, Passover eve, the Germans entered the ghetto. The remaining Jews knew that the Germans would murder them and they decided to resist to the last, while the uprising was underway, the Bermuda Conference was held from 19–29 April 1943 to discuss the Jewish refugee problem. Discussions included the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces, hanna Krall, who interviewed the only surviving uprising commander, Marek Edelman, stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one gun in the whole Ghetto. The insurgents had little ammunition, more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, some weapons were handmade by the resistance, sometimes such weapons worked, other times they jammed repeatedly. Shortly before the uprising, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum visited a ŻZW armoury hidden in the basement at 7 Muranowska Street, in his notes, which form part of Oyneg Shabbos archives, he reported, They were armed with revolvers stuck in their belts. While I was there, a purchase of arms was made from a former Polish Army officer, amounting to a quarter of a million złoty, two machine guns were bought at 40,000 złoty each, and a large amount of hand grenades and bombs. Polish resistance provided the insurgents with a number of badly needed weapons and ammunitions from its meager stocks. Jewish right-wing resistance in the Jewish Military Union received large quantities of armament, including automatic weapons. AK disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the Ghetto, several ŻOB commanders and fighters later escaped through the sewers with assistance from the Poles and joined the Polish underground
8.
Cross of Valour (Poland)
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The Cross of Valor is a Polish military decoration. It was first introduced by the Council of National Defense on 11 August 1920 and it is awarded to an individual who has demonstrated deeds of valor and courage on the field of battle. It may be awarded to the person up to four times. The medal is only in wartime or shortly after. The medal was introduced in 1920 at the height of the Polish-Soviet War, initially it had no Order Council and was awarded personally by the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. Later the option was added of delegating the medals granting to front, through 29 May 1923, when the last medal for the Polish-Soviet War was awarded, the Cross of Valor had been granted to some 60,000 soldiers. It had been awarded, as well, to veterans of the January 1863 Uprising, in January 1940 the Polish Commander-in-Chief, Władysław Sikorski, issued an order reintroducing the Cross of Valor. On 20 September, the President of Poland agreed to award the medal to eligible individuals who had already been awarded it four times during the Polish-Soviet War. In 1943, after the Battle of Lenino, General Zygmunt Berling, commander of the Soviet-backed Polish 1st Corps, the medal itself was approved as a military decoration by order of the Home National Council on 22 December 1944. Until 1947, some 40,000 of the medals had been awarded to Polish soldiers fighting alongside the Red Army, zdzislaw P. Wesolowski, Polish Orders, Medals, Badges and Insignia, Military and Civilian Decorations, 1705–1985, Miami,1986
9.
Order of the Cross of Grunwald
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The Order of the Cross of Grunwald was conferred to Polish or the allied military for valour or merit in combat with Nazi Germany. After the end of the Second World War it continued to be awarded for outstanding merit in commanding or outstanding contribution to the development of the Polish Armed Forces and it was disestablished by the President of Poland via Parliament in 1992. Battle of Grunwald Grunwald Swords Madej, Kazimierz
10.
Hebrew language
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
11.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
12.
Nazi ghettos
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In German documents, and signage at ghetto entrances, the Nazis usually referred to them as Jüdischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden, both of which translate as the Jewish Quarter. There were several types including open ghettos, closed ghettos, work, transit. In a number of cases, they were the place of Jewish underground resistance against the German occupation, the first anti-Jewish measures were enacted in Germany with the onset of Nazism, without the actual ghettoization planning for the German Jews which was rejected in the post-Kristallnacht period. The first ghetto of World War II was established on 8 October 1939 at Piotrków Trybunalski, the first large metropolitan ghetto known as the Łódź Ghetto followed them in April 1940, and the Warsaw Ghetto in October. Most Jewish ghettos were established in 1940 and 1941, subsequently, many ghettos were sealed from the outside, walled off with brickwork, or enclosed with barbed wire. In the case of sealed ghettos, any Jew found leaving them could be shot. The Warsaw Ghetto, located in the heart of the city, was the largest ghetto in Nazi occupied Europe, the Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 people. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives, there were at least 1,000 such ghettos in German-occupied and annexed Poland, Ghettos across Eastern Europe varied in their size, scope and living conditions. The conditions in the ghettos were generally brutal, in Warsaw, the Jews, comprising 30% of the city overall population, were forced to live in 2. 4% of the citys area, a density of 7.2 people per room. In the ghetto of Odrzywół,700 people lived in an area occupied by five families. With the crowded living conditions, starvation diets, and insufficient sanitation, in the Łódź Ghetto some 43,800 people died of natural causes,76,000 in the Warsaw Ghetto before July 1942. To prevent unauthorised contact between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations, German Order Police formations were assigned to patrol the perimeter, within each ghetto, a Jewish Police force was created to ensure that no prisoners tried to escape. In general terms, there were three types of ghettos maintained by the Nazi administration, there were severe restrictions on entering and leaving them. Closed or sealed ghettos were situated mostly in German-occupied Poland and they were surrounded by brick walls, fences or barbed wire stretched between posts. Jews were not allowed to live in any other areas under the threat of capital punishment, in the closed ghettos the living conditions were the worst. The quarters were extremely crowded and unsanitary, starvation, chronic shortages of food, lack of heat in winter and inadequate municipal services led to frequent outbreaks of epidemics such as dysentery and typhus and to a high mortality rate. Most Nazi ghettos were of particular type. The Jewish population was imprisoned in them only to be deported or shot out of town by the German killing squads often with the aid of local collaborationist Auxiliary Police battalions and those parts of the city outside the walls of the Jewish Quarter were called Aryan
13.
Extermination camp
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This genocide of the Jewish people of Europe was the Third Reichs Final Solution to the Jewish question. It is now known as the Holocaust. In 1941, the experience gained in the killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By then, the Jews were already confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, and the Soviet POWs. The Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage, based on the killing of Europes Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard. Responsibility for the logistics were to be executed by the programme administrator, notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but the gassings at Kulmhof north of Łódź using gas vans began already in December, under Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange. The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt, Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gassing bunkers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September, todeslagers were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. The executioners did not expect the prisoners to more than a few hours beyond arrival at Belzec, Sobibór. The Jewish men, women and children were delivered from the ghettos for special treatment in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both, Orpo and Schupo. From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände, who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well. An SS anatomist, Dr. Johann Kremer, after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau, wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942 and they dont call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing. The distinction was evident during the Nuremberg trials, when Dieter Wisliceny was asked to name the extermination camps, then, when asked How do you classify the camps Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald. He replied, They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann, irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners for slave labour in other types of camps, which provided perfect cover for the extermination programme. Prisoners represented about a quarter of the workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions. On top of that, the new death camps outside the borders of the Third Reich proper could be kept secret from the German civil populace. The killing method was based on experience gained by the SS during the secretive Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia, there were two types of death chambers operating during the Holocaust. The three killing centres of Einsatz Reinhard were constructed predominantly for the extermination of Polands Jews trapped in the Nazi ghettos
14.
Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe
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Jewish resistance under the Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. Nevertheless, there are cases of attempts at resistance in one form or another including over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings. Historiographically, the study of Jewish resistance to German rule is considered an important aspect of the study of the Holocaust, even passivity was a form of resistance. To die with dignity was a form of resistance, to resist the demoralizing, brutalizing force of evil, to refuse to be reduced to the level of animals, to live through the torment, to outlive the tormentors, these too were acts of resistance. Merely to give a witness of these events in testimony was, in the end, simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit. Bauer disputes the view that most Jews went to their deaths passively. As a result, from roughly May 1940 to October 1941, the most prominent of these were published by the Jewish Socialist party and the Zionist Labor Movement. These papers lamented the carnage of war, but for the most part did not encourage armed resistance, after fierce fighting, vastly superior German forces pacified the Warsaw Ghetto and either murdered or deported all of the remaining inhabitants to the Nazi killing centers. The Germans claimed that they lost 18 dead and 85 wounded, though this figure has been disputed, some 13,000 Jews were killed, and 56,885 were deported to concentration camps. There were many major and minor ghetto uprisings, however most were not successful. Some of the ghetto uprisings include the Białystok Ghetto Uprising and the Częstochowa Ghetto Uprising, there were major resistance efforts in three of the extermination camps. In August 1943, an uprising took place at the Treblinka extermination camp, the participants obtained guns and grenades after two young men used forged keys and snuck into the armory unit. The weapons were distributed around the camp in garbage bins. However, during the distribution of arms, a Nazi guard stopped a prisoner, the prisoners then attacked the Nazi guards with guns and grenades. Several German and Ukrainian guards were killed, a tank was set on fire, barracks and warehouses were burned, military vehicles were disabled. The guards replied with fire, and 1,500 inmates were killed—but 70 inmates escaped to freedom. The guards chased those who had escaped on horseback and in cars, but some of those who escaped were armed, gassing operations at the camp were interrupted for a month. In October 1943, an uprising took place at Sobibór extermination camp, led by Polish-Jewish prisoner Leon Feldhendler, the inmates covertly killed 11 German SS officers, including the deputy commander, and a number of Ukrainian guards
15.
History of the Jews in Poland
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The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over 800 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world, Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the Partitions of Poland which began in 1772, in particular, from the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe. Known as paradisus Iudaeorum, it became a shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities, according to some sources, about three-quarters of the worlds Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife, Polands traditional tolerance began to wane from the 17th century onward. Still, as Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, Antisemitism was a growing problem throughout Europe in those years, from both the political establishment and the general population. At the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, one-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II, half of them were 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in The Holocaust, constituting 90% of Polish Jewry. Although the Holocaust occurred largely in German-occupied Poland, there was collaboration with the Nazis by its citizens. Collaboration by individual Poles has been described as smaller than in other occupied countries, statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission indicate that less than 0. 1% of Polish gentiles collaborated with the Nazis. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the largest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, britain demanded Poland to halt the exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful. Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in late 1968 as the result of the Soviet-sponsored anti-Zionist campaign. After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized, Religious institutions were revived, largely through the activities of Jewish foundations from the United States. The first Jews arrived in the territory of modern Poland in the 10th century, by travelling along the trade routes leading eastwards to Kiev and Bukhara, Jewish merchants, known as Radhanites, crossed the areas of Silesia. In the summer of 965 or 966 Jacob made a trade and diplomatic journey from his native Toledo in Moslem Spain to the Holy Roman Empire, the first actual mention of Jews in Polish chronicles occurs in the 11th century. It appears that Jews were then living in Gniezno, at time the capital of the Polish kingdom of the Piast dynasty. Among the first Jews to arrive in Poland were those banished from Prague, the first permanent Jewish community is mentioned in 1085 by a Jewish scholar Jehuda ha-Kohen in the city of Przemyśl. The first extensive Jewish emigration from Western Europe to Poland occurred at the time of the First Crusade in 1098. Under Bolesław III, the Jews, encouraged by the tolerant regime of this ruler, settled throughout Poland, Bolesław III recognized the utility of Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country
16.
Given name
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A given name is a part of a persons personal name. It identifies a person, and differentiates that person from other members of a group, such as a family or clan. The term given name refers to the fact that the name usually is bestowed upon a person and this contrasts with a surname, which is normally inherited, and shared with other members of the childs immediate family. Given names are used in a familiar and friendly manner in informal situations. In more formal situations the surname is commonly used, unless it is necessary to distinguish between people with the same surname. The idioms on a basis and being on first-name terms allude to the familiarity of addressing another by a given name. The order given name – family name, commonly known as the Western order, is used throughout most European countries and in countries that have cultures predominantly influenced by Western Europe. The order family name – given name, commonly known as the Eastern order, is used in East Asia, as well as in Southern and North-Eastern parts of India. The order given name - fathers family name - mothers family name is used in Spanish-speaking countries to acknowledge the families of both parents. Today the order can also be changed legally in Spain using given name - mothers family name - fathers family name, under the common Western naming convention, people may have one or more forenames. If more than one, there is usually a main forename for everyday use, sometimes however two or more forenames may carry equal weight. There is no particular ordering rule for forenames – often the main forename is at the beginning, a childs given name or names are usually chosen by the parents soon after birth. If a name is not assigned at birth, one may be given at a ceremony, with family. In most jurisdictions, a name at birth is a matter of public record, inscribed on a birth certificate. In western cultures, people normally retain the same name throughout their lives. However, in some cases names may be changed by petitioning a court of law. People may also change their names when immigrating from one country to another with different naming conventions, in France, the agency can refer the case to a local judge. Some jurisdictions, like in Sweden, restrict the spelling of names, parents may choose a name because of its meaning
17.
Aftermath of World War I
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The aftermath of World War I saw drastic political, cultural, economic, and social change across Europe, Asia, Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. As Germany was dependent on imports, it is estimated that 523,000 civilians had lost their lives. N. P. Howard, of the University of Sheffield, the continuation of the blockade after the fighting ended, as author Robert Leckie wrote in Delivered From Evil, did much to torment the Germans. Driving them with the fury of despair into the arms of the devil, the terms of the Armistice did allow food to be shipped into Germany, but the Allies required that Germany provide the means to do so. The German government was required to use its reserves, being unable to secure a loan from the United States. Further, Marks states that despite the problems facing the Allies, from the German government, gläser further claims that during the early months of 1919, while the main relief effort was being planned, France provided food shipments to Bavaria and the Rhineland. She further claims that the German government delayed the effort by refusing to surrender their merchant fleet to the Allies. Finally, she concludes that the success of the relief effort had in effect deprived the of a credible threat to induce Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Food shipments, furthermore, had been dependent on Allied goodwill. Other treaties ended the belligerent relationships of the United States and the other Central Powers, included in the 440 articles of the Treaty of Versailles were the demands that Germany officially accept responsibility for starting the war and pay economic reparations. Historians continue to argue about the impact the 1918 flu pandemic had on the outcome of the war and it has been posited that the Central Powers may have been exposed to the viral wave before the Allies. The resulting casualties having greater effect, having been incurred during the war, when the extent of the epidemic was realized, the respective censorship programs of the Allies and Central Powers limited the publics knowledge regarding the true extent of the disease. Because Spain was neutral, their media was free to report on the Flu and this misunderstanding led to contemporary reports naming it the Spanish flu. A significant precursor virus was harbored in birds, and mutated to pigs that were kept near the front, the exact number of deaths is unknown but about 50 million people are estimated to have died from the influenza outbreak worldwide. The dissolution of the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires created a number of new countries in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Some of them, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, had substantial ethnic minorities who were not fully satisfied with the new boundaries that cut them off from fellow ethnics. For example, Czechoslovakia had Germans, Poles, Ruthenians and Ukrainians, Slovaks, the League of Nations sponsored various Minority Treaties in an attempt to deal with the problem, but with the decline of the League in the 1930s, these treaties became increasingly unenforceable. One consequence of the redrawing of borders and the political changes in the aftermath of the war was the large number of European refugees
18.
Tarbut
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The Tarbut movement was a network of secular, Hebrew-language schools in parts of the former Jewish Pale of Settlement, specifically in Poland, Romania and Lithuania. Its existence was primarily between World War I and Two, although some schools affiliated with the movement continue to operate today, Tarbut was a Zionist network of Hebrew-language educational institutions founded in 1922, when the first Tarbut conference was held in Warsaw. Tarbut schools had 25,829 students in 1921,37,000 in 1934–1935 and these included about 25% of all students enrolled in Jewish schools in Poland, and 9% of Polands entire Jewish student population. The curriculum was secular, including science, humanities, and Hebrew studies, by the time the war brought the European Tarbut schools to an end, they had long been suffering from chronic underfunding. European Jews who appealed to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for aid included poet Chaim Nachman Bialik and Zionist leaders Nahum Sokolow and Vladimir Jabotinsky. Nonetheless, some Tarbut schools continued to operate during the war years, notably one in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, the school operated until the end of the war under the headmastership of Nachum Szochet. The graduating students took high school matriculation exams under the auspices of the Polish government-in-exile, Tarbut responded to the shift in Hebrew literature publishing to Palestine taking place around the time of its founding by fostering increased local Hebrew-language childrens publishing. Olamis material included current events in Palestine alongside information about Jewish life in Poland, the Tarbut network no longer exists today, and so no school can today affiliate with it. Adina Bar-El, The Tarbut Network in Poland and its Childrens Periodicals, YIVO Institute, Zionism and Zionist Parties
19.
Betar
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The Betar Movement (ביתר, also spelled Beitar} is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Chapters sprang up across Europe, even during World War II, after the war and during the settlement of what became Israel, Betar was traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Jewish pioneers. It was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group Irgun Zevai Leumi and it was one of many right-wing movements and youth groups arising at that time that adopted special salutes and uniforms. Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth, most notably prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, today, Betar promotes Jewish leadership on university campuses as well as in local communities. Its history of empowering Jewish youth dates back to before the State of Israel, across Europe, Betar militias played major roles in independently resisting Nazi forces and their various assaults on Jewish communities. Betar was founded by Zeev Jabotinsky at a meeting of Jewish youth in Riga, Latvia, Jabotinsky spoke of the Arab attacks on the settlement of Tel Hai and other Jewish settlements in the Galilee. This is the philosophy of Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinsky proposed creating Betar to foster a new generation of Jews thoroughly indoctrinated in these nationalist ideals, in 1931, Jabotinsky was elected rosh Betar at the first world conference in Danzig. Joseph Trumpeldor, the leader of the Jewish settlers who were killed at Tel Hai in 1920, served as the primary role model of the Betar. A disabled man with one arm, he led his people in the futile defense of the settlement and died with the words, Never mind. The words of Shir Betar, written by Jabotinsky, include a line that quotes Trumpeldors last words to never mind, as the song expresses, Betar youth were to be as proud, generous, and fierce as Trumpeldor, and as ready to sacrifice themselves for Israel. The name Betar ביתר refers to both the last Jewish fort to fall in the Bar Kokhba revolt and to the altered Hebrew name of Brit Yosef Trumpeldor, although Trumpeldors name is properly spelt with tet, it was written with taf so as to produce the acronym. Despite resistance from both Zionist and non-Zionist Jews, Betar quickly gained a following in Poland, Palestine, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany. It was particularly successful in Poland, which had the largest Jewish population in Europe at the time, in 1934, Poland was home to 40,000 of Betars 70,000 members. Routine Betar activities in Warsaw included military drilling, instruction in Hebrew, militia groups organized by Betar Poland helped to defend against attacks by the anti-Semitic ONR. The interwar Polish government helped Betar with military training, some members admired the Polish nationalist camp and imitated some of its aspects. The group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-Communism and fascist principles, mussolinis invasion of Abyssinia, however, was seen as cowardly by Betar and they broke with him shortly after. In total, Betar was responsible for the entrance of over 40,000 Jews into Palestine under such restrictions, during World War II, Betar members, including former Polish Army officers, founded Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, which fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
20.
Hashomer Hatzair
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Hashomer Hatzair along with HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed of Israel are members of the International Falcon Movement – Socialist Education International. Hashomer Hatzair is the oldest Zionist youth movement still in existence, initially Marxist-Zionist, the movement was influenced by the ideas of Ber Borochov and Gustav Wyneken as well as Baden-Powell and the German Wandervogel movement. Hashomer Hatzair believed that the liberation of Jewish youth could be accomplished by aliyah to Palestine, after the war the movement spread to Jewish communities throughout the world as a scouting movement. Psychoanalysis was also an influence, partly through Siegfried Bernfeld, so was the philosopher Martin Buber, otto Fenichel also supported Hashomer Hatzairs efforts to integrate Marxism with psychoanalysis. Members of the movement settled in Mandatory Palestine as early as in 1919, in 1927, the four kibbutzim founded by Hashomer Hatzair banded together to form the Kibbutz Artzi federation. The movement also formed a party which shared the name Hashomer Hartzair. That is why, when a group of Zionist leaders met in New York in May 1942 in the Biltmore Hotel. The Socialist League was the only Zionist political party within the Yishuv to accept Arab members as equals, support Arab rights, by 1939, Hashomer Hatzair had 70,000 members worldwide. The movements membership base was in Eastern Europe, with the advent of World War II and the Holocaust, members of Hashomer Hatzair focused their attention on resistance against the Nazis. Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of Hashomer Hatzairs Warsaw branch, became head of the Jewish Fighting Organization, other members of the movement were involved in Jewish resistance and rescue in Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia. The leaders of Hashomer Hatzair in Romania were arrested and executed for anti-fascist activities, the head of Hashomer Hatzair in Łódź, Abraham Gancwajch, on the other hand, formed the Jewish Nazi collaboration network Group 13 in December 1940, active in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was also the leader of the infamous Gestapo-sponsored Jewish organisation Żagiew, after the war, the movement was involved in organizing illegal immigration of Jewish refugees to Palestine. Members were also involved in the Haganah military movement as well as in the leadership of the Palmach, today, Hashomer Hatzair continues as a youth movement based in Israel, and operates internationally. In Europe, North and Latin America, as well as in Australia, Hashomer Hatzair organizes activities, activities are still relatively ideological, but over time have been adapted to the needs of modern communities, vastly different from the context in which Hashomer Hatzair was created. Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Hungary, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine, Australia, noam Chomsky sympathized with and worked with the group, although he was never a member. The movements even share an office in New York, today the movement operates in Tzavta Centro Comunitario, in the neighborhood of Almagro, City of Buenos Aires. It is one of 9 Zionist Youth Movements in the city and it has around 120 members, running regular Saturday activities and secular Kabalat Shabat service, besides two machanot per year. The movement in Australia is located in Melbourne and was established in 1953 as an away from Habonim Dror
21.
Invasion of Poland
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The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident, as the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom. While those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September, in the end their aid to Poland was very limited. The Soviet Red Armys invasion of Eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with a protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible, on 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, the Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of sovietization. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance formed the Polish Underground State within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party, under its leader Adolf Hitler, as part of this long-term policy, Hitler at first pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, trying to improve opinion in Germany, culminating in the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Earlier, Hitlers foreign policy worked to weaken ties between Poland and France, and attempted to manoeuvre Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact, forming a front against the Soviet Union. The Poles feared that their independence would eventually be threatened altogether, the so-called Polish Corridor constituted land long disputed by Poland and Germany, and inhabited by a Polish majority. The Corridor had become a part of Poland after the Treaty of Versailles, many Germans also wanted the city of Danzig and its environs to be reincorporated into Germany. Danzig was a city with a German majority. It had been separated from Germany after Versailles and made into the nominally independent Free City of Danzig, the series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. Poland participated with Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia that followed the Munich Agreement and it coerced Czechoslovakia to surrender the region of Český Těšín by issuing an ultimatum to that effect on 30 September 1938, which was accepted by Czechoslovakia on 1 October. This region had a Polish majority and had been disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the aftermath of World War I, the Polish annexation of Slovak territory later served as the justification for the Slovak state to join the German invasion. Poland rejected this proposal, fearing that after accepting these demands, it would become subject to the will of Germany
22.
Polish Land Forces
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The Land Forces are a military branch of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland. They currently contain some 65,000 active personnel and form many components of European Union, Polands recorded military history stretches back for hundreds of years – since the 10th century, but Polands modern army was formed after 1918. When Poland regained independence in 1918, it recreated its military which participated in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921, the Polish land forces as readied for the Polish-Soviet War was made up of soldiers who had formerly served in the various partitioning empires, supported by some international volunteers. There appear to have been a total of around 30 Polish divisions involved, boris Savinkov was at the head of an army of 20,000 to 30,000 largely Russian POWs, and was accompanied by Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius. The Polish forces grew from approximately 100,000 in 1918 to over 500,000 in early 1920, in August 1920, the Polish army had reached a total strength of 737,767 people, half of that was on the frontline. Given Soviet losses, there was rough numerical parity between the two armies, and by the time of the battle of Warsaw Poles might have even had an advantage in numbers. Among the major formations involved on the Polish side were a number of Fronts, including the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front, the German invasion of Poland began on 1 September 1939, and the Wehrmacht seized half the country quickly despite heavy Polish resistance. Among the erroneous myths generated by this campaign were accounts of Polish cavalry charging German tanks, in the east, the Red Army took the other half of the country in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Following the countrys fall, Polish soldiers began regrouping in what was to become the Polish Army in France. Both the Polish Armed Forces in the West and the Polish Armed Forces in the East, as well as interior forces, while the forces fighting under the Allied banner were supported by the Polish air force and navy, the partisan forces were an exclusive land formation. However the army today has its roots in the surrogate force formed in support of Soviet interests during the establishment of the Peoples Republic of Poland after the Second World War. Two Polish armies, the First Army and the Second Army fought with the Red Army on the Eastern Front, the formation of a Third Army was begun but not completed. The end of the war found the Polish Army in the midst of intense organisational development, although the implementation of the Polish Front concept was abandoned, new tactical unit and troop types were created. As a result of mobilisation, troop numbers in May 1945 reached 370,000 soldiers, Military districts were organised in liberated areas. The districts exercised direct authority over the units stationed on the territory administered by them, the southern border, from Jelenia Gora to the Użok railway station was occupied by the First Army. Its headquarters staff formed the basis of the Silesian Military District, in mid-1945, after the end of World War II, the Polish Army, as part of the overall armed forces, the Peoples Army of Poland, was divided into six districts. In June 1945 the 1st, 3rd and 8th Infantry Divisions were assigned internal security duties, the rule was that military units were used primarily against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, while the Internal Security Corps was used to fight the armed underground independence. Often however army units fought the underground resistance, and vice versa, the culmination of the UPA suppression operation was the so-called Wisła Action which took place in 1947
23.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
24.
Vilnius
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Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and its largest city, with a population of 542,664 as of 2015. Vilnius is located in the southeast part of Lithuania and is the second largest city in the Baltic states, Vilnius is the seat of the main government institutions of Lithuania as well as of the Vilnius District Municipality. Vilnius is classified as a Gamma global city according to GaWC studies and its Jewish influence until the 20th century has led to it being described as the Jerusalem of Lithuania and Napoleon named it the Jerusalem of the North as he was passing through in 1812. In 2009, Vilnius was the European Capital of Culture, together with the Austrian city of Linz, the name of the city originates from the Vilnia River. The city has also known by many derivate spellings in various languages throughout its history. The most notable names for the city include, Polish, Wilno, Belarusian, Вiльня, German, Wilna, Latvian, Viļņa, Russian, Вильнюс, Yiddish, ווילנע , Czech. A Russian name from the time of the Russian Empire was Вильна/Вильно, the name Vilna is still used in Finnish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Hebrew. Wilna is still used in German, along with Vilnius, the neighborhoods of Vilnius also have names in other languages, which represent the languages spoken by various ethnic groups in the area. Historian Romas Batūra identifies the city with Voruta, one of the castles of Mindaugas, during the reign of Vytenis a city started to emerge from a trading settlement and the first Franciscan Catholic church was built. These letters contain the first unambiguous reference to Vilnius as the capital, According to legend, Gediminas dreamt of an iron wolf howling on a hilltop and consulted a pagan priest for its interpretation. He was told, What is destined for the ruler and the State of Lithuania, is thus, the Iron Wolf represents a castle and a city which will be established by you on this site. This city will be the capital of the Lithuanian lands and the dwelling of their rulers, the location offered practical advantages, it lay within the Lithuanian heartland at the confluence of two navigable rivers, surrounded by forests and wetlands that were difficult to penetrate. The duchy had been subject to intrusions by the Teutonic Knights, Vilnius was the flourishing capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the residence of the Grand Duke. Gediminas expanded the Grand Duchy through warfare along with strategic alliances and marriages, at its height it covered the territory of modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Transnistria, and portions of modern-day Poland and Russia. His grandchildren Vytautas the Great and Jogaila, however, fought civil wars, during the Lithuanian Civil War of 1389–1392, Vytautas besieged and razed the city in an attempt to wrest control from Jogaila. The two later settled their differences, after a series of treaties culminating in the 1569 Union of Lublin, the rulers of this federation held either or both of two titles, Grand Duke of Lithuania or King of Poland. In 1387, Jogaila acting as a Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło, the city underwent a period of expansion. The Vilnius city walls were built for protection between 1503 and 1522, comprising nine city gates and three towers, and Sigismund August moved his court there in 1544
25.
General Government
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The territory was expanded in 1941 to include the District of Galicia. The General Government was run by Nazi Germany as an administrative unit for logistical purposes. Within days, Eastern Galicia was overrun and renamed Distrikt Galizien, until 1945 the General Government comprised much of central and southern Poland, including the major Polish cities of Warsaw, Kraków, Lwów, Lublin, Tarnopol and Stanisławów, among others. The Nazi German rulers of the Generalgouvernement territory had no intention of sharing power with the Poles or Ukrainians throughout the war, the authorities rarely even mentioned the name Poland in government correspondence. The only exception to this was the General Governments Bank of Issue in Poland, on 31 July 1940 governor Hans Frank, on Hitlers authority, shortened the name to just Generalgouvernement. A more literal translation of Generalgouvernement, which is a borrowing from French, the correct translation of the term Gouvernement is not government but actually governorate, which is a type of administrative division or territory. The area was known colloquially as the Restpolen. The designation General Government was chosen in reference to the Government General of Warsaw, after Germanys attack on Poland, all areas occupied by the German army including the Free City of Danzig initially came under the military rule. To settle the deviation from the agreement, the German. Under this revised version of the pact the territory concerned was exchanged for the inclusion in the Soviet sphere of Lithuania, with the new agreement the entire central part of Poland, including the core ethnic area of the Poles, came under exclusively German control. Hitler decreed the annexation to the German Reich of large parts of the occupied Polish territory in the western half of the German zone. Germany organized most of areas as two new Reichsgaue, Danzig-West Prussia and Wartheland. The remaining three regions, the areas of Zichenau, Eastern Upper Silesia and the Suwałki triangle. Draconian measures were introduced by both RKF and HTO, to facilitate the immediate Germanization of the territory, typically resulting in mass expulsions. The remaining parts of the former Poland were to become a German Nebenland as a frontier post of German rule in the east, a Führers decree of October 12,1939 established the General Government, the decree came into force on October 26,1939. Hans Frank was appointed as the Governor-General of the General Government, German authorities made a sharp contrast between the new Reich territory and a supposedly occupied rump state that could serve as a bargaining chip with the Western powers. The Germans established a border between the two German zones to heighten the difficulty of cross-frontier communication between the different segments of the Polish population. The official name chosen for the new entity was the Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete, however, this name did not imply anything about the actual nature of the administration
26.
Romania
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Romania is a sovereign state located in Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and it has an area of 238,391 square kilometres and a temperate-continental climate. With over 19 million inhabitants, the country is the member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth-largest city in the EU, the River Danube, Europes second-longest river, rises in Germany and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km, coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romanias Danube Delta. The Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest are marked by one of their tallest peaks, Moldoveanu, modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the sovereign Kingdom of Romania. Romania lost several territories, of which Northern Transylvania was regained after the war, following the war, Romania became a socialist republic and member of the Warsaw Pact. After the 1989 Revolution, Romania began a transition back towards democracy and it has been a member of NATO since 2004, and part of the European Union since 2007. A strong majority of the population identify themselves as Eastern Orthodox Christians and are speakers of Romanian. The cultural history of Romania is often referred to when dealing with artists, musicians, inventors. For similar reasons, Romania has been the subject of notable tourist attractions, Romania derives from the Latin romanus, meaning citizen of Rome. The first known use of the appellation was attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, after the abolition of serfdom in 1746, the word rumân gradually fell out of use and the spelling stabilised to the form român. Tudor Vladimirescu, a leader of the early 19th century. The use of the name Romania to refer to the homeland of all Romanians—its modern-day meaning—was first documented in the early 19th century. The name has been officially in use since 11 December 1861, in English, the name of the country was formerly spelt Rumania or Roumania. Romania became the predominant spelling around 1975, Romania is also the official English-language spelling used by the Romanian government. The Neolithic-Age Cucuteni area in northeastern Romania was the region of the earliest European civilization. Evidence from this and other sites indicates that the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture extracted salt from salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage
27.
Mandatory Palestine
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Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity under British administration, carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. British civil administration in Palestine operated from 1920 until 1948, further confusing the issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. At the wars end the British and French set up a joint Occupied Enemy Territory Administration in what had been Ottoman Syria, the British achieved legitimacy for their continued control by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922. The civil Mandate administration was formalized with the League of Nations consent in 1923 under the British Mandate for Palestine, the land west of the Jordan River, known as Palestine, was under direct British administration until 1948. The land east of the Jordan, a region known as Transjordan, under the rule of the Hashemite family from the Hijaz. The divergent tendencies regarding the nature and purpose of the mandate are visible already in the discussions concerning the name for this new entity. As a set-off to this, certain of the Arab politicians suggested that the country should be called Southern Syria in order to emphasise its close relation with another Arab State. During the British Mandate period the area experienced the ascent of two major nationalist movements, one among the Jews and the other among the Arabs, following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine was governed by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. In July 1920, the administration was replaced by a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner. The first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, a Zionist recent cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920, following the arrival of the British, Muslim-Christian Associations were established in all the major towns. In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem and its main platforms were a call for representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration. The Zionist Commission was formed in March 1918 and was active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine, on 19 April 1920, elections were held for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community. The Zionist Commission received official recognition in 1922 as representative of the Palestinian Jewish community, Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organizations, investors, and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British intended to favor Zionism, when Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Kamil al-Husayni died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist. As Grand Mufti, as well as the influential positions that he held during this period. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had created by Samuel in December 1921. The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, in addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine
28.
Mira Fuchrer
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Mira Fuchrer – activist of the Jewish resistance movement in the Warsaw Ghetto, member of Jewish Combat Organisation, fighter in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Mira Fuchrer was born in Warsaw and she was active in Hashomer Hatzair youth organisation which is where she likely met Mordechai Anielewicz. Mira and Mordechai got together and in September 1939 they fled to Vilnius and they returned to Warsaw in January 1940 and in November the same year they joined the fate of other Jewish citizens of Warsaw in the ghetto. In the ghetto Mira worked in a tailors shop together with her friends Towa Frenkel and Rachel Zilberberg. In 1942 she visited other ghettos as a courier, during the Ghetto Uprising she fought in the so-called central ghetto. On the 8th of May 1943 she was in a bunker at 18 Mila Street together with Mordechai Anielewicz, when the bunker was discovered and surrounded by the Germans the fighters refused to surrender. The majority committed suicide at Arie Wilners command, the name of Mira Fuchrer is engraved on the obelisk, set at the steps of the memorial known as Anielewicz Mound in 2006. It is among 51 names of fighters whose identities were established by historians, warszawa, Wydawnictwo Twój Styl. p.381
29.
Monument to the Ghetto Heroes
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The Ghetto Heroes Monument is a monument in Warsaw, Poland, commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 during the Second World War. It is located in the area which was formerly a part of the Warsaw Ghetto, the monument was built partly of Nazi German materials originally brought to Warsaw in 1942 by Albert Speer for his planned works. The completed monument was unveiled in April 1948. The monument was raised in the square of Anielewicza Street, Karmelicka Street, Lewartowskiego Street, from August 1942 until the end of the Warsaw ghetto this was the last location of the Judenrat. Also the site witnessed several clashes between the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish partisans and the German and auxiliary troops, the decision to build a monument to the Ghetto partisans was made as early as in 1944, by the Central Committee of Polish Jews in Lublin. The monument was designed by Leon Suzin and it was also decided to build a larger monument in the future. The new, larger monument, sculpted by Nathan Rapoport, was unveiled on April 19,1948, the monument stands 11 meters tall. As Rapoport himself explained, the wall of the monument was designed to not just the Ghetto walls. The great stones would thus have framed the memory of events in Warsaw in the figure of Judaisms holiest site. The western part of the monument shows a bronze sculpture of insurgents - men, women and children, armed with guns. The central standing figure of this frieze is that of Mordechai Anielewicz who was the leader of Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, also known as the ŻOB, the eastern part of the monument shows the persecution of Jews at the hands of the Nazi German oppressors. The monument has a three language sign, Jewish nation to its fighters and martyrs, the labradorite used in parts of the monument comes from the German supplies, ordered by Albert Speer in 1942 for planned Nazi German monuments. The Warschauer Kniefall gesture by Willy Brandt took place at the monument in 1970, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews located opposite the monument was opened in April 2013. Entry on the monument at sztuka. net, includes a gallery
30.
Polish government-in-exile
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Only after the end of Communist rule in Poland did the government-in-exile formally pass on its responsibilities to the new government of the Third Polish Republic in December 1990. The government-in-exile was based in France during 1939 and 1940, first in Paris, from 1940, following the Fall of France, the government moved to London, and remained in the United Kingdom until its dissolution in 1990. Should the Presidents successor assume office, the term of his office shall expire at the end of three months after the conclusion of peace and it was not until 29th or 30th September 1939 that Mościcki resigned. Raczkiewicz, who was already in Paris, immediately took his constitutional oath at the Polish Embassy and he then appointed General Władysław Sikorski to be Prime Minister and, following Edward Rydz-Śmigłys stepping down, made Sikorski Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces. Most of the Polish Navy escaped to Britain, and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and airmen escaped through Hungary, Polish citizens held captive in Soviet camps were released under the Sikorski–Mayski Agreement to form military units that would fight Nazi Germany under Allied command. Berlings Army formed in the Soviet Union in 1944 fought alongside, even after the fall of Poland, Poland remained the third strongest Allied belligerent, after France and Britain. The Polish government in exile, based first in Paris, then in Angers, France, escaping from France the government relocated to London, it was recognized by all the Allied governments. The amnesty allowed the Poles to create eight military divisions known as the Anders Army and they were evacuated to Iran and the Middle East, where they were desperately needed by the British, hard pressed by Rommels Afrika Korps. These Polish units formed the basis for the Polish II Corps, led by General Władysław Anders and it was also the first official document singling out the sufferings of European Jews as Jews and not only as citizens of their respective countries of origin. The note of 10 december 1942 and the Polish Governmnent efforts triggered the Declaration of the Allied Nations of 17 December 1942, the Soviet government said that the Germans had fabricated the discovery. The other Allied governments, for reasons, formally accepted this. Stalin then severed relations with the Polish government in exile, since it was clear that it would be the Soviet Union, not the western Allies, who would liberate Poland from the Germans, this breach had fateful consequences for Poland. In an unfortunate coincidence, Sikorski, widely regarded as the most capable of the Polish exile leaders, was killed in an air crash at Gibraltar in July 1943 and he was succeeded as head of the Polish government in exile by Stanisław Mikołajczyk. During 1943 and 1944, the Allied leaders, particularly Winston Churchill, but these efforts broke down over several matters. Mikołajczyk, however, refused to compromise on the question of Polands sovereignty over her prewar eastern territories, a third matter was Mikołajczyks insistence that Stalin not set up a Communist government in postwar Poland. Mikołajczyk and his colleagues in the Polish government-in-exile insisted on making a stand in the defense of Polands pre-1939 eastern border as a basis for the future Polish-Soviet border. However, this was a position that could not be defended in practice – Stalin was in occupation of the territory in question, many Polish exiles opposed this action, believing that this government was a façade for the establishment of Communist rule in Poland. This view was proven correct in 1947, when the Communist-dominated Democratic Bloc won a blatantly rigged election
31.
Annexation
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Annexation is the political transition of land from the control of one entity to another. It is also the incorporation of unclaimed land into a states sovereignty, in international law it is the forcible transition of one states territory by another state or the legal process by which a city acquires land. Usually, it is implied that the territory and population being annexed is the smaller, more peripheral and it can also imply a certain measure of coercion, expansionism or unilateralism on the part of the stronger of the merging entities. Because of this, more positive euphemisms like political union/unification or reunification are sometimes seen in discourse, during World War II, the use of annexation deprived whole populations of the safeguards provided by international laws governing military occupations. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 amplified the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 with respect to the question of the protection of civilians, the team cemented in a brass plaque on Halls Ledge and hoisted the Union Flag to stake the UKs claim. One example of a claimed annexation after World War II is the Kingdom of Norways southward expansion of the dependent territory Queen Maud Land. On most maps there had been an area between Queen Maud Lands borders of 1939 and the South Pole until June 12,2015 when Norway formally claimed to have annexed that area. The Antarctic Treaty, however, states, The treaty does not recognize, dispute, nor establish territorial sovereignty claims, within countries that are subdivided noncontiguously, annexation can also take place whereby a lower-tier subdivision can annex territory under the jurisdiction of a higher-tier subdivision. An example of this is in the United States, where incorporated cities, municipalities can also annex or be annexed by other municipalities, though this is less common in the United States. Laws governing the ability and the extent cities can expand in this fashion are defined by the individual states constitutions, annexation of neighbouring communities occurs in Canada. Irredentism List of national border changes since World War I Texas annexation Adam Roberts, transformative military occupation, applying the laws of war and human rights,100 The American Journal of International Law
32.
Tisha B'Av
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Tisha BAv is regarded as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar and it is thus believed to be a day which is destined for tragedy. Tisha BAv falls in July or August in the Western calendar, the observance of the day includes five prohibitions, most notable of which is a 25-hour fast. According to Rabbinic tradition, the sin of the Ten Spies produced the annual fast day of Tisha BAv. When the Israelites accepted the report that the land of Canaan would be impossible to conquer. The night that the people cried was the ninth of Av, the fast commemorates the destruction of the Jewish First Temple and the Second Temple, both of which occurred on the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av, about 655 years apart. The three weeks leading up to Tisha BAv are known as The Three Weeks, while the nine days leading up to Tisha BAv are known as The Nine Days. According to the Mishnah, five specific events occurred on the ninth of Av that warrant fasting, only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, brought a positive report, while the others spoke disparagingly about the land. The majority report caused the Children of Israel to cry, panic, for this, they were punished by God that their generation would not enter the land. Because of the Israelites lack of faith, God decreed that for all generations this date would become a day of crying and misfortune for their descendants. According to the Talmud in tractate Taanit, the destruction of the First Temple began on the Ninth of Av. The Second Temple built by Ezra and Nehemiah was destroyed by the Romans in August 70 CE, scattering the people of Judea, the Romans subsequently crushed Bar Kokhbas revolt and destroyed the city of Betar, killing over 500,000 Jewish civilians on August 4,135 CE. Following the Bar Kokhba revolt, Roman commander Turnus Rufus plowed the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, note, Due to a two-year difference within the Hebrew calendar, the years in which the First and Second Temple were destroyed have been disputed. Regardless of the dates of these events, for many Jews, Tisha BAv is the designated day of mourning for them. The Jews were expelled from England on July 18,1290, the Jews were expelled from France on July 22,1306. The Jews were expelled from Spain on July 31,1492, germany entered World War I on August 1–2,1914, which caused massive upheaval in European Jewry and whose aftermath led to the Holocaust. On August 2,1941, SS commander Heinrich Himmler formally received approval from the Nazi Party for The Final Solution, as a result, the Holocaust began during which almost one third of the worlds Jewish population perished. On July 23,1942, began the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. The Israeli disengagement from Gaza starts in the Gaza Strip, expelling 8000 Jews who lived in Gush Katif,15 August 2005,10 Av,5765, Tisha BAv falls in July or August in the Western calendar
33.
Warsaw Ghetto boundary markers
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The Warsaw Ghetto boundary markers are memorial plaques and boundary lines that mark the maximum perimeter of the former ghetto established by the Germans in 1940 in occupied Warsaw, Poland. The markers were designed by Eleonora Bergman and Tomasz Lec in cooperation with Ewa Pustoła-Kozłowska, the ghetto area, surrounded by a wall, was initially 307 hectares, with time, it was reduced. Starting in January 1942, it was divided in two parts called the small and large ghettos, approximately 360,000 Warsaw Jews and 90,000 from other towns were herded into the ghetto. During the summer of 1942, the Germans deported and murdered close to 300,000 people in the gas chambers of Treblinka, on April 19,1943, an uprising broke out in the ghetto. Until mid-May, fighters and civilians perished in combat or in the systematically burned ghetto buildings, the remaining population was murdered by Germans in November 1943 in the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps. To the memory of those who suffered, fought and perished, cement strips 25 cm wide with the cast iron bilingual sign MUR GETTA 1940/GHETTO WALL1943 placed in sidewalks and lawns showing the exact location of the ghetto walls. The dates 1940-1943 have symbolic meaning as the years when the Warsaw Ghetto existed, therefore, they should not be treated literally because most of the commemorated places were excluded in 1941-1942, one site was included into the ghetto in 1941, and two – in 1942. Most plaques were placed on the 2.3 m tall cement posts that were designed on sett pavement. The markers were built between April and November 2008 and were inaugurated on 19 November 2008 by the mayor of Warsaw Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, on 27 January 2010 on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 22nd marker was unveiled on site of the preserved ghetto wall in Sienna Street. The project was financed by the City of Warsaw and the Polish Ministry of Culture, władysław Anders Street corner of Świętojerska Street – here, on the site of the former Nalewki Street stood one of the most important ghetto gates. Through this very gate at 5.30 am on 19 April 1943 the German, Latvian and they were met with Jewish resistance, which sparked off the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Bielańska Street corner of Corazziego Street - here the ghetto included the Great Synagogue in Tłomackie Street and this area was excluded from the Jewish district on 20 March 1942. Bonifraterska Street near Międzyparkowa Street – this point, at the intersection of Bonifraterska and Żoliborska Streets, was the northeastern corner of the ghetto. Over the northern part of Przebieg Street there was a wooden footbridge – one of four such structures built in the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1950, Biała Street, which led to the Court from the south, was rebuilt approximately 200 meters to the west. In order to ease heavy traffic on Żelazna Street on 26 January 1942 a wooden footbridge was erected over Chłodna Street. In December 1941, this part of the Wola district was excluded from the Jewish quarter,1 Parade Square – the southeast boundary of the ghetto ran along the premises here. On 5 October 1941 the ghetto border was moved to the middle of Sienna Street, drzewiecki Avenue near Iron-Gate Square – from this point westwards a narrow strip of land was excluded from the ghetto due to the role of Chłodna Street as an important east-west transport corridor. It included Mirowskie Market Halls, Mirowskie Barracks, and St. Charles Borromeo church up to Żelazna Street, drzewiecki Avenue near John Paul II Avenue – this was the northern boundary of the small ghetto that ran from here westwards along the existing walls that divided the premises
34.
Home Army
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The Home Army was the dominant Polish resistance movement in Poland occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej, over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish Government-in-Exile, and it constituted the armed wing of what became known as the Polish Underground State, estimates of the Home Armys 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000, the most commonly cited number being 400,000. This last number would make the Home Army not only the largest Polish underground resistance movement, the Home Army was disbanded on 19 January 1945, after the Soviet Red Army had largely cleared Polish territory of German forces. The Home Army sabotaged German operations such as transports headed for the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union and it also fought several full-scale battles against the Germans, particularly in 1943 and in Operation Tempest in 1944. The Home Army, in support of the Soviet military effort, tied down substantial German forces, the most widely known Home Army operation was the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. The Army also defended Polish civilians against atrocities perpetrated by German, because the Home Army was loyal to the Polish Government-in-Exile, the Soviet Union saw it as an obstacle to a Soviet takeover of Poland. Consequently, over the course of the war, conflict grew between the Home Army and Soviet forces, all the while, however, many other resistance organizations remained active in Poland. Most of them merged with the Armed Resistance or with its successor. The Polish Government in Exile envisioned the Home Army as an apolitical, Home Army plans envisioned, at wars end, the seizure of power in Poland by the Government Delegation for Poland and by the Government in Exile itself, which expected to return to Poland. In addition to the Polish government in London, an organization operated in Poland itself - a deliberative body of the resistance. The Political Consultative Committee formed in 1940 pursuant to an agreement between several political parties, the Socialist Party, Peoples Party, National Party and Labor Party. In 1943 it was renamed to Home Political Representation and in 1944 to Council of National Unity, after Germany started its invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Soviet Union joined the Allies and signed an Anglo-Soviet Agreement on 12 July 1941. This put the Polish Government in a position, since it had previously pursued a policy of two enemies. Though a Polish-Soviet agreement was signed in August 1941, cooperation continued to be difficult, until the major rising in 1944, the Home Army concentrated on self-defense and on attacks against German forces. The Home Army supplied valuable intelligence to the Allies, 43% of all received by the British secret services from continental Europe in between 1939 and 1945 came from Polish sources. Until 1942 most British intelligence on Germany came from Home Army reports, until the end of the war, the Home Army remained Britains main source of news from Central and Eastern Europe. Home Army intelligence provided the Allies with information on German concentration camps and on the V-1 flying bomb,242, photographs, eight key V-2 parts, and drawings of the wreckage
35.
Molotov cocktail
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A Molotov cocktail, also known as a petrol bomb, bottle bomb, poor mans grenade, fire bomb or just Molotov, is a generic name used for a variety of bottle-based improvised incendiary weapons. They are primarily intended to set targets ablaze rather than obliterate them, the name Molotov cocktail was coined by the Finns during the Winter War. The name was a reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. The Finns sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs Molotov bread baskets in reference to Molotovs propaganda broadcasts, when the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the Molotov cocktail, as a drink to go with the food. The wick is soaked in alcohol or kerosene, rather than petrol. In action, the wick is lit and the bottle hurled at a target such as a vehicle or fortification. When the bottle smashes on impact, the cloud of petrol droplets and vapour ignites. Other flammable liquids such as fuel, methanol, turpentine, jet fuel. Improvised incendiary devices were used for the first time in the Spanish Civil War between July 1936 and April 1939, before they became known as Molotov cocktails, after that, both sides used simple petrol bombs or petrol-soaked blankets with some success. Tom Wintringham, a veteran of the International Brigades, later publicised his recommended method of using them, We made use of petrol bombs roughly as follows, take a heavy curtain, half a blanket, or some other heavy material. Wrap this over the mouth of the jar, tie it round the neck with string, when you want to use it have somebody standing by with a light. Put a corner of the material down in front of you, turn the bottle over so that petrol soaks out round the mouth of the bottle and drips on to this corner of the material. Turn the bottle right way up again, hold it in right hand, most of the blanket bunched beneath the bottle. When near enough, your pal lights the petrol soaked corner of the blanket, throw the bottle and blanket as soon as this corner is flaring. See that it drops in front of the tank, the blanket should catch in the tracks or in a cog-wheel, or wind itself round an axle. Do not play with these things, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, a border conflict of 1939 ostensibly between Mongolia and Manchukuo, saw heavy fighting between Japanese and Soviet forces. Short of anti-tank equipment, Japanese infantry attacked Soviet tanks with gasoline-filled bottles, Japanese infantrymen claimed that several hundred Soviet tanks had been destroyed this way, though Soviet loss records do not support this assessment. On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, starting what came to be known as the Winter War, the Finns perfected the design and tactical use of the petrol bomb
36.
Jewish Military Union
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Żydowski Związek Wojskowy was an underground resistance organization operating during World War II in the area of the Warsaw Ghetto, which fought during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was formed primarily of officers of the Polish Army in late 1939. Its role in the uprising in the ghetto was underplayed, in favour of the more socialist Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, the ŻZW was formed some time in November 1939, immediately after the German and Soviet conquest of Poland. At the end of December such an organization was indeed formed and received the name of Żydowski Związek Walki, on January 30,1940, its existence was approved by General Władysław Sikorski, the Polish commander in chief and the prime minister of the Polish Government in Exile. Between 1940 and 1942 additional cells were formed in most major towns of Poland, including the most notable groups in Lublin, with time however it was decided that the members stay in occupied Poland to help organize the struggle against the occupiers. In the later period the ŻZW focused on acquisition of arms for the struggle as well as on helping the Jews to escape the ghettos. Thanks to the ties with the Związek Walki Zbrojnej and then the AK. Those resistance organizations also provided help with weapons and ammunition acquisition, although the ŻZW was active in a number of towns in Poland, its major headquarters remained in Warsaw. When most of the Jewish inhabitants were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, the ŻZW remained in contact with the world through Iwański. By the summer of 1942, the League had 320 well-armed members in Warsaw alone and it also started to train more members and by January 1943 it already had roughly 500 men at arms in Warsaw alone. The military leader of the ŻZW at the time of the uprising was Dr. Paweł Frenkiel, the organization was divided onto groups of five soldiers. Three groups formed a unit, four units formed a platoon and four platoons - a company, in early January 1943 the ŻZW had two entirely manned and fully armed companies and two additional en cadre companies, to be manned by newly arrived volunteers when need arises. This indeed happened in April 1943, though the number of ŻZW soldiers to take part in the Uprising is a matter of debate. Apart from the groups, the ŻZW was organized into several departments. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ŻZW is said to have had about 400 well-armed fighters grouped in 11 units, ŻZW fought together with AK fighters in Muranowska Street. Dawid M. Apfelbaum took position in Miła Street, heniek Federbusz group organized a strong pocket of resistance in a house near Zamenhoff Street. Jan Pika unit took position in Miła Street, while unit of Leizer Staniewicz fought in the Nalewki, Gęsia Street, dawid Berlińskis group took position in second part of Nalewki. Roman Winsztok commanded group near Muranowska, where also the headquarters of the Union was located, photograph of ZZW headquarters at 2 Muranow Street Warsaw Already during the war the influence and the importance of the Żydowski Związek Wojskowy was being downgraded
37.
Guerrilla warfare
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The term, the diminutive form of war in Spanish, is usually translated as little war, and the word, guerrilla, has been used to refer to the concept since the 18th century, and perhaps earlier. In correct Spanish usage, a person who is a member of a guerrilla is a guerrillero if male, the term guerrilla was used in English as early as 1809, to refer to the fighters, and also to denote a group or band of such fighters. However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes the style of warfare. The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale, guerrillas usually carries positive connotations, and is often used by such fighters themselves and by their sympathizers, while their foes in many cases call them terrorists. Making an objective definition of the difference between a guerrilla and a terrorist has proven a difficult task, the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around the use of a small, mobile force competing against a larger, more unwieldy one. The Guerrilla focuses on organizing in small units, depending on the support of the local population, tactically, the guerrilla army would avoid any confrontation with large units of enemy troops, but seek and eliminate small groups of soldiers to minimize losses and exhaust the opposing force. Not limiting their targets to personnel, enemy resources are preferred targets. All of that is to weaken the strength, to cause the enemy eventually to be unable to prosecute the war any longer. It is often misunderstood that guerrilla warfare must involve disguising as civilians to cause enemy troops to fail in telling friend from foe, however, this is not a primary feature of a guerrilla war. This type of war can be practiced anywhere there are places for combatants to cover themselves, at least one author credits the ancient Chinese work The Art of War with providing instruction in such tactics to Mao. The Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his The Art of War or 600 BC to 501 BC, was the earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare and this directly inspired the development of modern guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla tactics were employed by prehistoric tribal warriors against enemy tribes. Evidence of conventional warfare, on the hand, did not emerge until 3100 BC in Egypt. Since the Enlightenment, ideologies such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, because of the innovative tactics he used during his command, he made himself the name of Terror Romanorum. A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency operation involves actions taken by the government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it. Counter-insurgency operations are common during war, occupation and armed rebellions, the two most influential of scholars of counter-insurgency have been Westerners whose job it had been to fight insurgents. Robert Thompson fought during the Malayan Emergency and David Galula fought during the Algerian War, together these officers advocated multi-pronged strategies to win over the civilian population to the side of the counter-insurgent. The widely distributed and influential work of Sir Robert Thompson, counter-insurgency expert of the Malayan Emergency, thompsons underlying assumption was that the counter-insurgent was committed to improving the rule of law and bettering local governance
38.
Warsaw Ghetto
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The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. There were over 400,000 Jews imprisoned there, at an area of 3.4 km2, with an average of 7.2 persons per room, from the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi camps and mass-killing centers. Warsaw was one of the most diverse cities in the Second Polish Republic before the war began, the majority of Polish Jews lived in the merchant districts of Muranów, Powązki, and Stara Praga, while most ethnic Germans and Russians lived in Śródmieście. Over 90% of Catholics lived further away from the commercial and vital centre of the capital. Many Jews left the city during the depression, which was more severe, in 1938 the Jewish population of the Polish capital was estimated at 270,000 people. The Siege of Warsaw continued until September 29,1939, on September 10 alone, the Luftwaffe conducted 17 bombing raids on the city, three days later,50 German planes attacked the city centre, targeting specifically Wola and Żoliborz. In total, some 30,000 people were killed, and 10 percent of the city was destroyed, along with the advancing Wehrmacht, the Einsatzgruppe EG IV and the Einsatzkommandos rolled into town. On November 7,1939, the Reichsführer-SS reorganized them into local security service, meanwhile, the German fifth column members of Selbstschutz were released immediately. The commander of EG IV, SS-Standartenführer Josef Meisinger, was appointed chief of police for the newly formed Distrikt Warschau, after the takeover of Warsaw, the German authorities began the registration of the ethnic Germans who were issued the Kennkarte separate from the rest of the locals. By June 1940 there were 2,500 Reichsdeutsche and 5,500 Volksdeutsche registered in Warsaw, in the next two years their number more than doubled, on top of over 50,000 German military personnel. By the end of the September campaign the number of Jews in and around the capital increased dramatically with thousands of refugees escaping the Polish-German front in anyway possible, in less than a year, the number of refugees in Warsaw exceeded 90,000. The Jewish Council in Warsaw was formed by the Nazis on October 7 and it was composed of 24 prominent individuals led by Adam Czerniaków, personally responsible for carrying out German orders. The persecution of Jews began soon thereafter, on October 26, the imposition of Jewish forced labour was announced, to clear the rubble from bomb damage among similar tasks. One month later, on November 20, the accounts of Polish Jews. On November 23, all Jewish establishments were ordered to display a Jewish star on doors, beginning December 1, all Jews older than ten where compelled to wear a white armband, and on December 11, they were forbidden from using public transit. On January 26,1940, the Jews were banned from holding communal prayers ostensibly due to the risk of spreading epidemics, food stamps were being introduced by the German authorities, and the liquidation of all smaller Jewish communities in the vicinity of Warsaw had intensified. The Jewish population of the capital reached 359,827 before the end of the year, on the orders of Warsaw District Governor, Ludwig Fischer, the Ghetto wall construction started on April 1,1940, circling the area of Warsaw inhabited predominantly by Jews. The work was supervised by the Warsaw Judenrat, the Nazi authorities expelled 113,000 ethnic Poles from the neighbourhood, and ordered the relocation of 138,000 Warsaw Jews from the suburbs into the city centre
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Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust, Hitler was born in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I and he joined the German Workers Party, the precursor of the NSDAP, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, the failed coup resulted in Hitlers imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy, by 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain, Hitler sought Lebensraum for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British, in June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe, failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, on 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians, in addition,29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, Hitlers father Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, in 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Aloiss mother Maria Anna. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedlers brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, in 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Aloiss father. Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, the Hitler surname is probably based on one who lives in a hut. Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Aloiss mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the familys 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenbergers existence, Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary, close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
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Passover
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Passover or Pesach, is an important, biblically derived Jewish holiday. The Jewish people celebrate Passover as a commemoration of their liberation by God from slavery in Egypt and it commemorates the story of the Exodus as described in the Hebrew Bible especially in the Book of Exodus, in which the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. According to standard biblical chronology, this event would have place at about 1300 BCE. Passover commences on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Nisan and lasts for seven days or eight days for Orthodox, Hasidic. The rituals unique to the Passover celebrations commence with the Passover Seder when the 15th of Nisan has begun, in the Northern Hemisphere Passover takes place in spring as the Torah prescribes it, in the month of spring. It is one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays, when the Pharaoh freed the Israelites, it is said that they left in such a hurry that they could not wait for bread dough to rise. In commemoration, for the duration of Passover no leavened bread is eaten, thus matzo is eaten during Passover and it is a tradition of the holiday. Samaritans still make this pilgrimage to Mount Gerizim, but only men participate in public worship, the Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which typically falls in March or April of the Gregorian calendar. Passover is a festival, so the 15th day of Nisan typically begins on the night of a full moon after the northern vernal equinox. However, due to months or leap months falling after the vernal equinox, Passover sometimes starts on the second full moon after vernal equinox. If the barley was not ripe, or various other phenomena indicated that spring was not yet imminent, however, since at least the 4th century, the date has been fixed mathematically. Diaspora Jews historically observed the festival for eight days, and most still do, reform and Reconstructionist Jews and Israeli Jews, wherever they are, usually observe the holiday over seven days. The reason for this day is due to enactment of the ancient Jewish sages. It is thought by scholars that Jews outside of Israel could not be certain if their local calendars fully conformed to practice of the Temple at Jerusalem. Karaites and Samaritans use different versions of the Jewish calendar, which are out of sync with the modern Jewish calendar by one or two days. In 2009, for example, Nisan 15 on the Jewish calendar used by Rabbinic Judaism corresponds to April 9, on the calendars used by Karaites and Samaritans, Abib or Aviv 15 corresponds to April 11 in 2009. The Karaite and Samaritan Passovers are each one day long, followed by the six-day Festival of Unleavened Bread – for a total of seven days, scholarly consensus dates the origin of the festival to a period earlier than the Exodus. Hyssop was employed to daub the blood of a sheep on the lintels
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Zivia Lubetkin
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Zivia Lubetkin was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and the only woman on the High Command of the resistance group Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa. She survived the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland and immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1946, Zivia Lubetkin was born in Poland in Byteń near Słonim. She joined the Labor Zionist Movement at an early age, in her late teens she joined the Zionist youth movement Dror, and in 1938 became a member of its Executive Council. After Nazi Germany and later the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939 she made a journey from the Soviet occupied part of the country to Warsaw to join the underground there. In 1942, Lubetkin helped found the left-wing Zionist Anti-Fascist Bloc, during her years of underground activities, the name Cywia became the code word for Poland in letters sent by various resistance groups both within and outside of the Warsaw Ghetto. She was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and she took part in the Polish Warsaw Uprising in 1944, fought in the units of the Armia Ludowa. She herself immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1946, in 1961, she testified at the trial of captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Her two children, Shimon and Yael, were born in Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetta’ot, where she lived for the remainder of her life and her granddaughter, Roni Zuckerman, became the Israeli Air Forces first female fighter pilot in 2001. Die letzten Tage des Warschauer Gettos,1,1948, pp. 1–13 Lubetkin, Zivia
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Yitzhak Zuckerman
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Zuckerman was born in Vilnius, partitioned Poland into a Jewish family. As a young man he embraced the concepts of socialism and Zionism, in the spring of 1940 he moved to Warsaw, where he became a leader of the leaders of the Dror Hechaluc youth movement, along with his future wife Zivia Lubetkin. In 1941 he became the deputy commander of the ŻOB resistance organisation, in this capacity, he served mainly as the envoy between the commander of ŻOB and the commanders of the Polish resistance organizations of Armia Krajowa and Armia Ludowa. On December 22,1942, he and two attacked an café in Kraków that was being used by the SS and Gestapo. Zuckerman was wounded and narrowly escaped, and his two comrades were tracked down and killed, in 1943, he was working on the Aryan side of Warsaw to procure guns and ammunition when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising erupted. Unable to enter the ghetto to join his comrades in battle, along with Simcha Kazik Rotem, he organized the escape of the surviving ZOB fighters through the sewers to safety. During the later Warsaw Uprising of 1944, he led a troop of 322 survivors of the Ghetto Uprising as they fought the Germans in the ranks of the Home Army. After the war he worked as part of the Bricha network, whose operatives smuggled Jewish refugees out of Eastern, in 1947 he himself made that journey, settling in what would soon be Israel. GFH has a center named for Zivia and Yitzhak Zuckerman. In 1961 he appeared as a witness at the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Israel and he died in 1981, in the kibbutz he had founded. His granddaughter Roni Zuckerman became the Israeli Air Forces first female fighter pilot, in 2001, the tale of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was turned into a made-for-TV film entitled Uprising, with actor David Schwimmer portraying Zuckerman. Marek Edelman Yitzhak Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory, Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, berkeley, University of California Press,1993. ISBN 0-520-07841-1 Yitzhak Zuckerman, A life in the ghetto, translated and edited by Barbara Harshav
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Simcha Rotem
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He was a member of the Akiva youth movement. In 1942 he joined the ZOB, Rotem became particularly useful as a courier for the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. The nickname Kazik—an abbreviation of a Polish name Kazimierz, which means in Polish someone who destroys opponents prestige/glory during battle, as a ZOB member, Kazik took part in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. He became the courier, reporting directly to the ZOB commander on the Gentile side. When it became apparent that the Germans would prevail, he was sent via a passageway to the Gentile side of Warsaw where he met with Zuckerman to arrange an escape for the fighters. However, the passageway was discovered by the Nazis, unable to return, he and Zuckerman were trapped on the Gentile side while the fighting raged and the ghetto burned. Desperate to reach his comrades, Rotem made several attempts to enter the ghetto through the sewers before finally succeeding. Throughout the rest of the war he continued his activities with the resistance, in particular helping to care for the several thousand Jews. In August 1944, he took part in the Polish Warsaw Uprising, as of 2013, he is one of three survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In the 2001 TV Mini-Series Uprising he is portrayed by actor Stephen Moyer, grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta Officers Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland Gold Polish Army Medal Rotem, Simhah. Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter, The Past within Me, new Haven, Yale University Press,1994. Moje miejsce między trupami My Place Among the Dead, Gazeta Wyborcza, July 14–15,2007
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ŻOB
