Resistance (36 page)

Stroop no longer proclaimed that the action had been completed. Every day he noted the number of Jews who had been caught and sent away. The tally reached nearly thirty thousand on April 26, according to his estimates. The previous day he estimated his casualties of fifty wounded (twenty-seven of the SS) and five dead. On April 27, Stroop stated that "the outward appearance of the Jews who were caught indicates that it is now the turn of those who led the uprising. Cursing against Germany, the Führer, and the German soldiers, they threw themselves out of the windows and balconies."

On the same day, there was a report of a fierce battle in a house outside the area where Jews were permitted to live and where Jews had entrenched themselves. This report also mentioned the capture of a large number of Poles, including two Polish policemen who knew of the entrenched Jews. On the twenty-eighth, Stroop spoke about continuing the battle against the nest of the "Jewish Military Organization," reporting that a group of fighters again appeared in the area that had been searched earlier on: "In some places, there was strong armed opposition today as well, and it was broken up."

In the announcement evidently published on April 27, Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews among the Poles, stated:

 

The opposition of the Jewish Fighting Organization now continues for nine days, which at first was fought from defensive positions and has now adopted partisan tactics, and has made a tremendous impression among the Polish population of Warsaw. The Poles now call the ghetto Ghettograd [after the prolonged siege of Stalingrad].

 

However, the dying ghetto did not have the chance that Stalingrad had. Neither supporters nor rescuers from the outside world, from other armies or from the population, came to aid the Jews. The Jews fought until the end in total isolation, accompanied by words of praise and pronouncements of encouragement—words, but no actual assistance.

On April 30, 1943, the Polish underground paper
Polska Zwyciezy
(Poland Will Conquer) reported:

 

In the British Isles, on the American continent and countries outside the German hell, the flames rising above Poland are not seen—the symbol of the torture and suffering of man abandoned to criminals ... Those of you on "the other side"
do not see or hear.
Every sound that reaches us from the burning ghetto affects our conscience and causes us pain. There, horrible crimes are beyond our comprehension. We read bulletins from the war fronts—from Africa, Russia and China, the Pacific. There, too, people are being killed, and acts of bravery and indifference to death go on. But there they are fighting and dying under different circumstances.

In the battle going on behind the ghetto walls, people die "differently." This is a battle of the lost versus wild beasts of prey. One must read bulletins from this battlefield as if they come from the front of struggling humanity, in order that the soldiers of this front can be proud [of] their comrades-in-arms who are being killed today in the houses and streets of the ghetto. The smoke clouds over Warsaw cannot disappear without a trace, for then all that was considered courageous would also disappear and the horrors which cry out for vengeance would also vanish.

 

Similar sentiment was expressed in
Trybuna Wolnosci
(Freedom's Platform), the journal of the Communist PPR, in the May 15 issue: "The battles have enormous political significance. This is the most important expression of organized self-defense in the occupied countries." But there were also publications that, despite the tragedy of the last days of the ghetto, reported events in hostile and skeptical terms. A popular thesis was that the Communists and members of the Soviet army were directing the rebellion. Such falsehoods evidently found willing ears, for in June 1943 the minister of security of the Polish goverment-in-exile, General Marian Kukiel, in a message from London to Warsaw, asked "whether there is any truth in the claim that the opposition of the Jews of Warsaw during the destruction of the Jewish ghetto was led and organized by Soviet officers and other ranks, who were parachuted from the air, and whether arms, munitions and anti-tank guns were supplied in the same way."

Even those who acknowledged the bravery and greatness of spirit of the ghetto fighters did not call on the Poles to help the Jews. Official statements by political bodies in the underground, which backed the government in exile, were confined to condemning Polish assistance to the Germans and demanding an end to the practice of informing on Jews and handing them over to the Germans. The Polish press in London focused on the recently revealed murder of Polish officers in Katyn, which caused considerable embarrassment and uncertainty, and virtually ignored events in the Warsaw ghetto and the war behind its walls.

In early May, the Polish underground press published a declaration by Jan Stanislaw Jankowski, the deputy responsible for those elements of the Polish underground subordinate to the London-based Polish government-in-exile. In an address to Poles on the Nazis' oppressive policies, Jankowski noted:

 

During the last few weeks, the capital of Poland has been the scene of the bloodthirsty annihilation of the remaining Jews in the Warsaw ghetto by the German police and their Latvian mercenaries. Their cruel persecution and the destruction of these Jews who are hiding is taking place in the ruins of the ghetto and outside its walls. The Polish people, immersed in the Christian spirit and who are not given to double standards of morality, are repelled by the German savagery. Since April 19, a conflict has been raging between unequals and we respect and sympathize with the Jews who are defending themselves bravely while detesting the German murderers. The political leadership of Poland has already expressed its profound condemnation of the anti-Jewish acts of the Germans and stresses this condemnation once again. The Polish population are right to feel sympathy with the persecuted Jews and the help they offer them should be continued.

 

Jankowski suggested no practical action in his declaration but merely generalized about the past and cautioned that one should not stray from the ways of the past.

Even more prominent was the statement by Wladyslaw Sikorski, leader of the Polish government-in-exile, on May 5, sixteen days after the desperate struggle began in the ghetto. Addressing the Poles in their homeland, he said:

 

The greatest crime in the history of mankind is being enacted. We know that you are assisting the tortured Jews as much as you can. I thank you, my countrymen, in my own name and that of the government. I beg you to render them the maximum assistance and with it, to diminish this terrible cruelty.

 

This was evidently a clear call asking the Poles to provide help to the fighting Jews. Even then no action to aid the Jews was taken. The strange silence of. the Polish press in London also continued. On April 2.9, the
Biuleatyn Informacyjny,
the AK journal in the Polish underground, published the nearest thing to an open call for aid to the Jews:

 

The spirit of the future obliges humanity to put an end to the mass murders regardless of who is responsible, otherwise the Second World War is lost, and the world will not free itself from the vicious circle of blood-letting. Helping the Jews escaping from the burning ghetto is a Christian obligation, until the days when liberated Poland will return to this part of Europe its security, real freedom, and its ancient European cultural sovereignty.

 

What is missing from this humane document is the simple and basic statement that Polish Jews are citizens of Poland and not just the proposed beneficiaries of a "Christian obligation," and that the Polish citizen has a patriotic duty to aid his countrymen who have been subjected to racist discrimination.

In his work on relations between the Poles and the Jews, Emanuel Ringelblum included a collection of conversations with Poles in Warsaw concerning events in the ghetto. Ringelblum may paint too dark a picture with comments taken from anecdotal random conversations. Nevertheless, a member of the PPS (the Polish Socialist party) noted that the party was not prepared to take military action:

 

We sympathize with the Jews in this tragic situation. It would be right to supply them with weapons, but active collaboration is impossible. For the principle matter, for the liberation, everyone has to suffer. The party must choose the right moment to begin the struggle and not be driven by emotions, no matter how noble they are. Some noble spirits have become bitter about the indifference and ignorance allotted to this great tragedy which is being enacted before the entire population: we remain as we were, as if nothing has happened. We eat well, and afterwards we go out to the balcony to watch the fires in the ghetto from above. We hear the thunderous echoes of bombs and explosives blowing up the buildings and the shelters—and we keep silent.

 

There was often a hint of antisemitism in the conversations reported by Ringelblum, as well as satisfaction with the happenings in the ghetto. Finally Warsaw was to be
Judenfrei
(free of Jews), and the dream of the Polish antisemites—a Warsaw devoid of Jews—had been realized. Some expressed open satisfaction that the Germans had murdered the Jews, while others kept such opinions to themselves. Sympathy was expressed by saying "that although the victims were Jews, they are after all human beings." Some Poles regretted the burning of the buildings more than that of the human beings inside of them. They feared only that the Germans, after disposing of the Jews, would turn their attention to the Poles; this marred their appreciation of the ethnic purification of Warsaw. Antisemites considered that the Jews flew the Polish flag only to please the Poles; they refused to believe that the Jews were capable of defending themselves and rebelling against the enemy.

On May 6, an article entitled "Preying on the Greatest Tragedy," in the Polish underground journal,
Rzeczypospolita Polska
(Polish Republic), stated:

 

It is well known that wherever there is a war, there are hyenas ... the last year had brought with it another sort of wartime hyena. They exploited the Jewish tragedy in order to blackmail and pressure the Jews in hiding or persecuted by the Germans. The majority of our population, healthy morally and with a true Christian spirit, viewed and view with repulsion the crimes of the German brutes towards the Jews and their attitude towards the victims of this crime is one of sincere and profound sympathy. But there are exceptions to the rule, who are regretfully too often members of the police, who do not hesitate to exploit the tragedy of the persecuted Jews who are subjected to acts of blackmail and considerable ransom. These people lacking self-respect or conscience who go in for this blackmail are fortunately very few in number. They are but one step away from the criminals who also do not hesitate to hand over the Jews to the Germans.

 

Sunday, April 25, was Easter. In the square bordering the ghetto, a crowd of gay holidaymakers in their festive dress had gathered. Close to the walls, the clouds of smoke, and the pervasive acrid smell, carousels turned and spirits were high. Helena Balicka-Kozlowska, a Polish woman who helped the Jews and the Jewish underground, wrote in her memoirs,
The Wall Had Two Sides
:

 

The square looked like a market: there were many hawkers of water and sellers of sweets and cigarettes. The place was filled with shouting and laughing exchanges. Near the carousel with the loud orchestra, there were field cannons. Their crews did not necessarily repel the curious crowds. They evidently felt more secure from Jewish attack among the Polish crowds.

 

The Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, who witnessed both fear and joy on this stretch of land divided by a wall, wrote the poem "Campo dei Fiori":

 

In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
baskets of olives and lemons,
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
with rose-pink fish;
armfuls of dark grapes
heaped on peach-down.

 

On this same square
they burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
the taverns were full again,
baskets of olives and lemons
again on the vendors' shoulders.

 

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
in Warsaw by the sky-carousel
one clear spring evening
to the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
the salvos from the ghetto wall,
and couples were flying
high in the cloudless sky.

 

At times wind from the burning
would drift dark kites along
and riders on the carousel
caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
blew open the skirts of the girls
and the crowds were laughing
on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.