Ulica Anielewicza
 |
Anielewicza Street, formerly Gesia Street, is in the Muranów district, the heart of pre-war Jewish Warsaw. It is named after Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Anielewicz was born into a poor family in Warsaw in 1919 or 1920. After finishing secondary school he became an active Zionist (in Hashomer Hatzaír) and, from 1940, an underground activist. He fled Warsaw in September 1939 and was briefly imprisoned by the Soviets before returning to the capital. Increasingly he concentrated on turning youth movements into an armed resistance movement, and was one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB). His underground work involved him visiting groups in various Polish cities, and he was absent from the ghetto during the Great Deportation (22nd July-12th September 1942). This gave him a more positive outlook than his ZOB colleagues, who had seen much of the ghetto's population murdered without being able to do anything to intervene. Anielewicz was appointed commander of the ZOB in November 1942. He played a dynamic part in preparing for the Ghetto Uprising - Emanuel Ringelblum described him as "the soul of the organisation, one of its most devoted workers." Anielewicz committed suicide, along with his wife and many of his staff, in the besieged ZOB headquarters bunker at 18 Mila Street on 8th May 1943. By early 1944 he had been posthumously awarded the Virtuti Militari, the Polish military cross, by the Polish government-in-exile in London.
In a letter written during the Ghetto Uprising (on 23rd April 1943) Anielewicz wrote: "Be well, my friend! Perhaps we will see one another again. The most important thing is that my life's dream has come true. Jewish self-defence in the ghetto has been realised. Jewish retaliation and resistance has become a fact. I have been witness to the magnificent heroic battle of the Jewish fighters."
In Israel a kibbutz, Yad Mordechai, is named in his honour and a monument is erected to his memory.
 |
Mordechaj Anielewicz, 1919 (or 1920) - 8th May 1943