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On Sept. 1, 1939, Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland triggered World War II, prompting France and the United Kingdom to honor their defensive pact with Poland and declare war on Germany in response.
As Germany invaded from the west, the Soviet Union invaded from the east, culminating in the division and annexation of Poland under the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty.
The Nazis subsequently unleashed brutality on Poland’s considerable Jewish population, herding them into urban ghettos to await transport to the Majdanek and Treblinka extermination camps.
Following weeks of combat, the Jewish Military Union lost all of its commanders, prompting its last fighters to escape to the Michalin forest through the Muranowski tunnel on April 29, marking the end of the major engagement, although sporadic resistance continued until early June.
An estimated 13,000 Jews were killed during the uprising, while nearly all the rest were deported to the Majdanek and Treblinka concentration camps. Virtually every structure in the Warsaw Ghetto was subsequently demolished, and Stroop reported to his superiors on May 16, 1943, that the Warsaw Synagogue had been blown up. After razing the incinerated buildings, the Nazis built the Warsaw concentration camp complex in their place.
Railway networks were used to transport hundreds of thousands of Jews to the gas chambers to be murdered, inside the former Nazi death camps. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
However, justice would come for Stroop and the other Nazi commanders who oversaw the anti-Jewish brutality in Poland. Virtually all died in combat during the war or were captured by Allied forces and faced either execution or lengthy prison sentences. Stroop was captured in Germany by American troops, and following his conviction for war crimes, was hanged in Poland in 1952.
While the Jewish resistance faced overwhelming odds against the vastly larger and better armed German forces, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising stands as an important milestone in Jewish history, demonstrating the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity, and inspiring other resistance and partisan forces both in Poland and beyond.
In 2018, Simcha Rotem, who played a key role as a courier in the Warsaw resistance, became the last survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, dying in Jerusalem, aged 94.
