The Development of the Jewish Fighting Organisation
The changed Warsaw Ghetto was largely populated by the young, especially young men. Probably less than 1,000 people below the age of 10 or above the age of 60 remained, at least among the 'official' population. Life was easier, and though food still had to be smuggled in there was more to go round. The youth movements of the various political parties had been vindicated in their mistrust of the Germans and in their call to arms. All of this created the proper conditions for a major act of resistance, though this was still comparatively far away in autumn 1942.
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The Youth Movements The move towards armed resistance was dominated by the youth movements of the Jewish political parties. All the youth movements prepared their members for adult activism, and some were specifically intended to prepare young people for future emigration to Palestine. They were however part of a tendency that saw the teenage years as an age in themselves, not just a step towards adulthood. Ironically this view had originated in early twentieth century Germany. The youth movements were generally better led than their parent parties because their leaders had remained with them or, like Mordechaj Anielewicz, had fled to Soviet-occupied Poland and later returned to Warsaw. The youth movements survived and then gained prominence in the ghetto because the adult world had lost its authority. The movements protect their members by feeding them, and some kept libraries and had a semi-university atmosphere. The youth movements also had contact with other Jewish communities in Poland (using young women as couriers), while the political parties were largely limited to contact with Jews abroad. During the Great Deportation youth movements took action to protect their members. Hashomer Hatzaír, for example instructed its activists to leave their parents' homes. Many never saw their parents again. Some groups even gave wire cutters to activists to help them escape from transports to Treblinka. Unlike the older politicians, the young saw the threat of genocide early on and wanted to resist it with force, in Warsaw. |
The development of armed Jewish resistance had already started before the Great Deportation. News of the murder of Jews in Wilno by Einsatzgruppen had led to plans for armed resistance as early as January 1942, when Mordechaj Anielewicz had shown a pistol to Emanuel Ringelblum. Initially the Socialist Bund opposed creating a Jewish fighting force because it believed in an alliance between Poles of the same class rather than an alliance between Jews with different political convictions. The younger Zionist activists saw that they needed the Bund, because it was the only party with access to the Polish underground, in the form of the Polish Socialist Party.
The Bund's refusal to cooperate led the young activists to approach the Communist Polish Workers Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR). The main Polish underground force, the Home Army (Armia Krajowa or AK), was not interested in helping an armed rising that might endanger its own far more long term preparations. The Communists on the other hand were in favour of an instant guerrilla war. This suited the Jews, who did not have time on their side. However the Communists were really interested in getting fighters to join them in the forests as partisans. Nor did they have any real contact with the USSR, despite what the Jews believed.
The Warsaw PPR and some Zionist groups formed a military force called the 'anti-fascist bloc'. It was trained by Communists (one, Pinkus Kartin, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War), but on 30th May 1942 three Communists were arrested, including Kartin. Though they did not betray the organisation their loss led to the disintegration of the bloc.
On 28th July 1942, at the start of the Great Deportation, three Zionist youth movements, Hashomer Hatzaír, Dror and Akiva, created the Jewish Fighting Organisation (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or ZOB). They attempted to contact the Polish underground and issued a manifesto. Even at the height of the Great Deportation this action aroused fears that the ZOB would antagonise the Nazis. In early August a few pistols arrived from the Communist underground. The ZOB attempted to assassinate the head of the Jewish Police, but then suffered a series of disasters, including the loss of their weapons, in early September 1942.
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"I can say that there was never a moment so lovely as ... before [our movement's] demise ... There was a common responsibility, not concern for ourselves ... the possibility that one of us would abandon the other and get along somehow - something that sometimes even happened within families - did not exist in our circles." Yitzhak Zuckerman |
During the massive selections after 6th September the ZOB hid in Mila Street. Many of the youth activists survived the Great Deportation. The end of the Aktion gave them time to prepare for a final German attempt to destroy the ghetto, though many in the ZOB wanted to act prematurely.
A Jewish National Committee (Zydowski Komitet Narodowy or ZKN) was set up. This was a political body and far less important than the ZOB itself. More organisations joined the ZOB, including the Bund and the Communists. The Bund's membership required a third body, the Jewish Co-ordinating Committee (Zydowska Komisja Koordynacyjna or ZKK), as the Bund thought the ZKN too Zionist. The enlarged ZOB of October 1942 was virtually a new organisation.
Hasidic Orthodox Jews play no part in resistance, while one right-wing Zionist party, Betar, set up its own armed force, the Jewish Fighting Union (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy or ZZW). Its members were older, and many were former Polish Army officers. The ZZW got considerable help from an AK officer called Henry Iwanski, and were better armed than the ZOB, though significantly smaller. When the ghetto Uprising came there were also unaffiliated 'wildcat' fighting groups, some established by criminals or smugglers and many by the ordinary citizens of the ghetto who hadn't joined the ZOB or ZZW.
On 29th October the ZOB killed the Jewish Police officer who had been largely responsible for overseeing the Great Deportation. The organisation began to make its power felt in the ghetto. In December 1942 it received ten pistols from the AK.
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"... the youth, the only ones to remain on the battlefield. People with imagination." Abraham Lewin, 3rd September 1942 |
On 18th January 1943 the Germans switched tactics from snatching gentile Poles for forced labour and began a brief Aktion in the ghetto. This was only intended to deport (and of course then kill) enough Jews to reduce the ghetto's population to near the official post-Great Deportation figure, but to the Jews it looked like the beginning of the end.
This time most people hid from the Nazis, while the ZOB fought back. The Bund's Marek Edelman recalled that "The ZOB had its baptism by fire in the first substantial street battle on the corner of Mila and Zamenhofa. We lost the cream of our organisation there. The commander of the ZOB, Mordecai Anielewicz was saved by a miracle." Despite the casualties they suffered, the ZOB managed to rescue some of the deportees, though 5,000 were still killed or sent to their deaths. Everyone assumed that the January Aktion had stopped because of the ZOB's resistance. This was not the case, but the Germans did show a marked aversion to going into buildings after the fighting. The ZOB's actions greatly increased its standing in the ghetto.
Jewish Warsaw prior to 1939 * War & Occupation * The Warsaw Ghetto
The Great Deportation * The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising * After the Ghetto Uprising