During the Holocaust, some part of the Jewish community managed to organize armed resistance. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest in occupied Europe, an underground paramilitary resistance organization was created - the Jewish Fighting Organization (Polish: ŻOB, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa).
The creation of the organization was preceded by a series of events. In March 1942, a meeting of Warsaw Jewish leaders took place. The Zionist youth groups Ha-Shomer Ha-Tzair and Dror proposed the creation of a self-defense organization because, unlike the older generation, they foresaw the Nazis' intentions to destroy Warsaw's Jewry. Their appeal stated: “We know that the Hitler system of murder, massacre and robbery is steadily leading to a dead end and the destruction of the Jews” [1]. However, the proposal was rejected by a majority on the grounds that the militant organization would be defeated without the help of the Polish resistance, there was no evidence of a threat of deportation, and any armed resistance would provoke the Nazis to take revenge on the entire Jewish community. Instead, the Polish Workers' Party and the Jewish Socialist Party “Poalei Zion” united in the “Anti-Fascist Bloc” to fight the Nazi occupation authorities. Soon, the bloc united representatives of Zionist, communist and socialist Jewish parties.
On July 22, 1942, the Nazis began the so-called The “Great Action” – large-scale deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp – during which more than 254,000 Jews were relocated. On July 28, 1942, members of Jewish youth movements created the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) to resist Nazi actions. It was headed by the 23-year-old representative Ha-Shomer Ha-Tzair Mordechai Anielevich. In September 1942, the ŻOB increased in numbers and established contact with the Polish resistance movement, which helped with arms and explosives. The headquarters of the organization was located at the intersection of two streets - Myla and Zamenhof, which was of strategic importance for the placement of combat units and the future “shelter” during the uprising in the ghetto.
The first significant step of the ŻOB was the development of tactics for the Jews of the ghetto who managed to survive the period of the so-called “The Great Action”: “cleansing” the ghetto of traitors, collecting funds for the purchase of weapons, arranging hiding places in basements, informing the Jews about the ultimate goal of the Nazi policy of extermination, etc. A public protest accusing the Jewish police of collaboration with the Nazis was also planned, but this action never took place due to the beginning of the second wave of deportations on January 18, 1943. The second organization of Jewish resistance, called the Jewish Military Union (Polish: Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW), formed mainly of former officers of the Polish Army at the end of 1939, acted side by side with the ŻOB and also played an important role in the armed struggle of the Jews.
During the January “action”, among the first Jews captured by the Nazis were several ŻOB fighters who deliberately infiltrated the column of deportees. Led by Mordechai Anielevich, they disbanded and engaged in battle with the Nazis using small arms. The column dispersed and news of the ŻOB and ŻZW operation spread quickly throughout the ghetto. During this deportation, which lasted 4 days, the Germans managed to round up only about 5,000-6,000 Jews.
On the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, on April 19, 1943, the final liquidation of the ghetto began with the subsequent deportation of its inhabitants to death camps. At that time, only 50,000 to 70,000 Jews remained in the ghetto of over 400,000. When Nazi and police units entered the ghetto, the streets were empty; most of the Jews hid in carefully prepared bunkers, which, however, did not provide for escape routes. The ŻOB and ŻZW started an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto that lasted almost a month despite the numerical and armed superiority of the Nazis. The insurgents used houses and barricades from which to direct fire, using guerrilla warfare tactics that gave them a strategic advantage. But this advantage was lost when the Nazis began to systematically burn all the buildings of the ghetto, turning the underground bunkers into suffocating death traps.
On May 8, 1943, one of the leaders of the ŻOB, Israel Wilner, realizing the failure of the uprising, called on the remaining insurgents not to surrender alive to the Nazis. Many of them committed suicide. The ghetto was burned and razed to the ground, and the uprising was suppressed. The final act of destruction of “Jewish Warsaw” occurred on May 16, 1943, when the Great Warsaw Synagogue was blown up. According to the report “Warsaw Ghetto No More” by SS Gruppenführer Jürgen Strop, who led the punitive squads, during the “liquidation” at least 56,065 Jews were killed or deported to the Treblinka death camp.
The rest of the ŻOB fighters who managed to survive and escape from the ghetto later took an active part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The heroic example of the Jewish Fighting Organization became a symbol of the resistance and struggle for the survival of the Jewish people and inspired the prisoners of other ghettos and concentration camps to continue their resistance to the occupiers.
Dilfuza Hlushchenko
[1] Call to Armed Self-Defense, from Ha-Shomer Ha-Zair newspaper in the Warsaw Underground Jutrznia ("Dawn"), March 28, 1942