Poland yesterday marked 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when hundreds of Jews launched a doomed attack against the Nazis, with the commemorations looking beyond the fighters and emphasizing the civilian experience.
The presidents of Germany and Israel were scheduled to join their Polish counterpart for the anniversary of the month-long revolt, which was the largest single act of Jewish resistance against the Germans during World War II.
Church bells and sirens were to sound at midday in honor of the insurgents who launched the uprising on April 19, 1943, and who died fighting rather than in gas chambers.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The heads of state were to speak at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial at the heart of the former Jewish district, before heading to a synagogue together.
As in previous years, volunteers across the city were to hand out paper daffodils for residents to pin to their jackets. The tradition is in honor of Marek Edelman, an uprising commander who, until his death in 2009, would mark the anniversary by depositing a bouquet of the flowers at the memorial.
Because of their color and form, daffodils resemble the yellow stars Nazis forced Jews to wear.
This year, the paper daffodils were also to be distributed in other Polish cities.
“We hope to hand out a total of 450,000 paper flowers,” said Zofia Bojanczyk, coordinator of the daffodil initiative.
“The figure symbolizes the number of Jewish women and men confined to the Warsaw Ghetto when it was at its most crowded,” she told reporters.
One year after they invaded Poland in 1939, the Germans set up the ghetto in a space of just more than 3km2. It was the largest of the World War II ghettos.
Many Jews died inside of starvation and disease, while most of the rest were sent to the Treblinka death camp.
At the outbreak of the uprising, about 50,000 civilians were still hiding in cellars and bunkers in the ghetto. The Germans put down the uprising with extreme brutality and set fire to the entire district, turning it to rubble and ash.
A number of events are being held for the anniversary, including talks by survivors, concerts, film screenings and theater performances.
The Kordegarda gallery has an exhibition of everyday items from the ghetto, which were recently unearthed and tell the story of how Jews in wartime Warsaw lived, loved and died.
“These are, so to speak, voices from the buried city, calling from beneath our feet,” cocurator Jacek Konik said.
A separate show, at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, features never-before-seen photographs of the ghetto taken by a Polish firefighter. They offer a different perspective, as until now most images of the ghetto were taken by Nazis.
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