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The Development of the Narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13537120701705924

1743-9086

Moshe Arens,

Intelligence, Security, War Strategy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Moshe Arens has served as Israel's Defence Minister and Foreign Minister and as Israel's ambassador to Washington. In recent years he has been researching the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 1. For a description of ZZW, its leaders and organization see Moshe Arens, ‘The Jewish Military Organization (ZZW) in the Warsaw Ghetto’, Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 2005), pp. 201–25. 2. For a detailed description of the fighting by ZOB and ZZW fighters during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising see Moshe Arens, ‘The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising—A Reappraisal’, Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 32 (2005). Also Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939–1943, Bloomington, Indiana, 1982; Reuben Ainsztein, The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, New York, 1979; Marian Apfelbaum, Retour sur le Ghetto de Varsovie, Paris, 2002. Regarding the fighting at Muranowski Square, Alexander Donat, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, writes, inter alia, in ‘Our last days in the Warsaw Ghetto’, in Commentary magazine in May 1963: ‘the resistance men there were under the command of Pawel Frenkel and Leon Rodal, and were the best armed and best trained fighters in the ghetto’. For the view from Berlin of the fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto see Josef Goebbels diary entry for 1 May, 1943: ‘There is nothing sensational in the reports from the occupied territories. The only thing noteworthy is exceptionally sharp fighting in Warsaw between our police, and in part even the Wehrmacht, and the Jewish rebels. The Jews have actually succeeded in putting the ghetto in a condition to defend itself. Some very hard battles are taking place there, which have gone so far that the Jewish top leadership publishes daily military reports. Of course this jest will probably not last long. But it shows what one can expect of the Jews if they have arms. Unfortunately, they also have some good German weapons in part, particularly machine-guns. Heaven only knows how they got hold of them’: J. Goebbels, Goebbels Tagebuecher aus den Jahren 1942–1943, Zurich, 1948, p. 318. 3. Yitzhak Zuckerman (Antek), A Surplus of Memory, Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Los Angeles, CA, 1993, p. 298. Left Po'alei Zion was a Marxist Zionist party, while Dror was a Socialist Zionist youth movement associated with the Socialist Zionist party Po'alei Zion, the precursor of the Israeli Labour party. 4. Yitzhak Zuckerman (Antek), A Surplus of Memory, Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Los Angeles, CA, 1993, pp. 339, 462. The Bund, although prepared to join ZOB, was not prepared to be represented in the political committee (ZKN) with the other parties that was to oversee the ZOB's military activity, and insisted on the establishment of a coordinating committee (ZKK) that would coordinate between ZKN and the Bund. 5. A fragment of such a broadcast was picked up in Stockholm and appeared on the front page of The New York Times, 22 April, 1943 under the caption ‘Secret Polish Radio Asks for Help, Cut off’. The story, datelined Stockholm, 21 April, read: ‘The secret Polish radio appealed for help tonight in a broadcast from Poland and then suddenly the station went dead. The broadcast as heard here said: The last 35,000 Jews in the ghetto at Warsaw have been condemned to execution. Warsaw again is echoing to musketry volleys. The people are murdered. Women and children defend themselves with their naked arms. Save us.’ The same story was carried the following day, 23 April, by the Histadrut daily Davar in Palestine, under the banner headline: ‘The Remnants of the Jewish Golah are Fighting for Their Lives—Resistance in Warsaw’. Some of these communiqués, as broadcast by the Polish underground radio, were evidently picked up by German intelligence. They, and Stroop's daily operational reports, were probably the basis for the entry on 1 May, 1943 in Josef Goebbel's diary. See Louis P. Lochner (ed.), Goebbels Tagebuecher aus den Jahren 1942–1943, p. 318. 6. Nahman Blumental and Yosef Kermish, Hameri Vehamered Begeto Varsha, Jerusalem, 1965, pp. 211–19. 7. Zuckerman knew that ZZW was defending the sector of Muranowski Square and that the Bund would not have agreed to raising the Zionist flag as a symbol of the uprising. 8. Yitzhak Zuckerman (Antek), A Surplus of Memory, p. 371. 9. Nahman Blumental and Yosef Kermish (eds.) Hameri vehamered begetto Varsha, p. 222. Schwartzbart, who was a General Zionist, represented the Zionists in the Polish government-in-exile in London, and Zygielbojm represented the Bund. Zygielbojm committed suicide on 12 May, 1943 in despair over the fate of the Jews of Poland. 10. Nahman Blumental and Yosef Kermish (eds.) Hameri vehamered begetto Varsha, p. 223. 11. Meilech Neustadt (ed.), Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, Tel Aviv, 2nd edin, 1947, p. 43; Davar, 30 April, 1943. 12. Klepfisz was a member of a ZOB unit of Bund members led by Yurek Blones in the Brushmakers' Workshop area, and fell there on 20 April, 1943. By referring to him as ‘the leader of the Jewish resistance’ the Bund representatives in Warsaw evidently desired to emphasize the Bund's role in the uprising. In June 1943 the Bund monthly in the US Unzer Tsait reported that ‘Comrade Klepfisz, the leader of the resistance, fell in battle’. In September 1943, Unzer Tsait published an obituary of Michal Klepfisz, hailing him as the ‘soul of armed resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto’. 13. Davar, 6 June, 1943. The report of their death was erroneous. Tosya Altman, hiding out in Warsaw at the time, was caught and executed by the Germans shortly thereafter; Zivia Lubetkin survived the war and settled in Israel. 14. Davar, 15 June, 1943. The article was signed with the Hebrew initials Mem. Nun. 15. Davar, 23 June, 1943. [T/s uable to amend the line below. Please add full pt after 16 and at end of line and a comma after June] 16. The New York Times, 20 June1943 17. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, p. 43. The emphasis on the role of Hehalutz and Hashomer Hatzair in the uprising was evidently designed to counter the claims of members of the Bund. 18. Davar, 22 August, 1943. 19. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, pp. 169–72.The report was probably sent by Feiner. The reference to Shomrim is to members of Hashomer Hatzair. 20. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, pp. 151–7. 21. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, p. 239. According to Neustadt six of the names on the list were included in error. The list appeared in Davar on 30 March, 1944; Each name was followed by his or her party affiliation; no Revisionists or members of Betar were on the list. Emmanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto chronicler, at the time in hiding in Warsaw, was concerned by the absence of data regarding the fighters of ZZW. ‘And why is there no data on ZZW, in the history we must leave their tracks, even though they are not sympathetic in our eyes’, he wrote to Berman on 13 December, 1943 (Moreshet, April 2003). On 28 December, 1943 he wrote again: ‘As for the Rev[isionists] I have no data on them … an effort should be made to complete the list. I have only two names: Rodalski [Rodal] and Frenkelowski [Frenkel]. The latter … was head of the firm. One of them or their comrades should be asked.’ 22. Davar, 21 January, 1944. 23. Davar, 1 March,1944. 24. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, pp. 186–205. 25. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, pp. 91–117. 26. In listing the emissaries that arrived in Warsaw from Vilna in the winter of 1941–2 bringing the news of the massacres at Ponar and the establishment of a united Jewish resistance organization in Vilna, the ZKN report omits the names of Yehuda Pinczewski and Yisrael Kempner, who were members of Betar. 27. This conclusion is supported by Zuckerman's testimony many years later (Beit Lohamei Hagetaot archives—Zuckerman's testimony, reel 17, pp. 13–17). There he relates his meeting in Warsaw in 1943, after the revolt, with Pawel Besztimt, a ZZW fighter, and the report of ZZW actions that Besztimt wrote at Zuckerman's request. Zuckerman says that he gave the report to Berman asking him to transmit it abroad. Berman, however, kept the report in his files, and it was discovered many years later after Berman's archives had arrived in Israel in 1973, and was only published in 1996. Zuckerman refers to another report written after the revolt by Jan Lopata, a ZZW fighter. He says that he does not remember if he passed the report on to Berman. No trace of this report has been found. See Yehuda Helman, Al Goralam shel Sridei Halohamim shel Haigud Hazvai Hayehudi Bevarsha (On the fate of the remnants of the ZZW fighters in Warsaw), Haifa, 1996. Lopata's report is also referred to by Henryk Zamoszkowski, a Left Po'alei Zion activist, in his testimony given on 27 July, 1945, Yad Vashem Archive M49/460. 28. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, pp. 131–44. The report was signed by Adolf Berman and Yitzhak Zuckerman, Shimon Gottesman of the General Zionists, Daniel Kaftor (Guzhik), one of the directors of Joint in Warsaw, and Yosef Sak of Po'alei Zion. 29. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, pp. 169–81. 30. Davar, 3 February, 1945. 31. Davar, 19 April, 1945. 32. Davar, 20 April, 1945. 33. Davar, 14 May, 1945. 34. Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights, New York, 1946. 35. Davar, 3 August, 1945. 36. Davar, 6 August, 1945. See also Zuckerman's description of his participation in the Zionist Assembly in London in A Surplus of Memory, pp. 596–601. 37. Davar, 14 December, 1945. 38. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, p. 36. The Revisionists are not even mentioned by Neustadt in his description of Jewish unity presumably achieved during the last weeks of the Warsaw Ghetto. 39. Neustadt, Hurban Umered Shel Yehudei Varsha, in a footnote on p. 39. 40. Yitzhak Zuckerman, Bageto Uvamered, Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, 1985, pp. 145–6. 41. Endecja was a pre-war Polish reactionary anti-Semitic party. 42. The term used in the ghetto for expropriations of money for the resistance from wealthy ghetto inhabitants or institutions. 43. In 1962, Kalman Mendelson was located in a Polish convalescent home by Haya Lazar who visited Poland in connection with the book her husband Hayim Lazar was writing on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Matzada shel Varsha. See The Jewish Military Organization (ZZW) in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Tel Aviv, Vol. 7, No. 77 (April 1993), p. 60. 44. See Mendelson's articles ‘Historia powstania ZZW’, ‘Rozwoj i dzialanosc ZZW, and ZZW w walce’, in Kronika (London) Nos. 18, 19 and 20 in May 1970, and ‘Ci ktorzy byli z nami’ in Argumenty, No. 15 (775), 15 April, 1973. 45. Hamashkif, 26 April, 1946. 46. The truth about the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, the Information Department of the World Betar Executive in Eretz Yisrael, Tel Aviv, 1946. Halperin described in some detail the fighting of ZZW units at Muranowski Square, in the Brushmakers' shop area, and in the Toebbens-Schultz shop area, naming the local commanders serving under Pawel Frenkel, commander of ZZW, indicating the extent of ZZW casualties, and describing the last ditch battle of Frenkel and some of his comrades after they had been cornered by German troops at Grzhibowska Street 13, outside the ghetto, on 11 May, 1943, a battle in which they all fell. A leading Revisionist, Abba Ahi-Meir, published in Hamashkif on 5 December, 1946, a scathing critique of Neustadt's book and a review of the book that had appeared in Davar. Under the pseudonym A. Shamai he wrote: ‘Did really no one from Betar and Brit Hahayal [a Revisionist organization of veteran soldiers] participate in the Warsaw Ghetto revolt? And what about the key position for the battles in the ghetto in Muranowska Street or the Square … None of this is to be mentioned in Neustadt's book … In a flow of partisan hatred the blood shed by the heroes, the Rodal brothers, Frenkel, Dr. Strykowski and many others, is ignored … In the eyes of Neustadt they sinned an unpardonable sin. Their sin was that they were disciples of Jabotinsky … This is how history is “written”. Historic truth is preached. Meilech Neustadt … [is] the equal of the writers of official Soviet history since the fall of Trotzky and his gangs’. 47. Unzer Velt (Munich), 4 June, 1948. 48. Churves Dertseilen, Lodz, 1947, Tsum Tsenten Yortog, Warsaw, 1953, Der Oifshtand in Varshaver Getto, Warsaw, 1955, Walka in zaglada warszawkiego getta, Warsaw, 1959, Powstanie w getcie warszawskim, Warsaw, 1963. The last book appeared in an English translation, Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, New York, 1975. 49. Haim Lazar Litai, Matzada Shel Warsha, Hairgun Hacwai Hajehudi Bmered Geto Warsha, ZZW, Tel Aviv, 1963. 50. Haim Lazar Litai, Matzada Shel Warsha, Hairgun Hacwai Hajehudi Bmered Geto Warsha, ZZW, Tel Aviv, 1963., pp. 11–12. 51. Rahel Auerbach, Mered Getto Varsha, Tel Aviv, 1963, p. 21. 52. Nahman Blumental and Yosef Kermish, Hameri Vehamered Begetto Varsha,Jeruslaem, 1965, p. 23. 53. Shmuel Krakowski, Lehimah Yehudit Befolin Neged Hanatzim, Jerusalem, 1977, pp. 12–13. Philip Friedman, an authority on Polish–Jewish history, edited a collection of documents relating to the Warsaw Ghetto in Martyrs and Fighters, New York, 1954. Joseph Wulf edited a compilation of Juergen Stroop's daily operational reports and his final report submitted to the SS reporting on the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as stenographic records of conversations with him while he was in prison in Warsaw awaiting trial, in Das Dritte Reich und seine Vollstrecker, Berlin, 1961. 54. The book was first published in Hebrew as Yehudei Varsha 1939–1943 Geto, Mahteret, Mered, Jerusalem, 1977. 55. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943, p. 347. Disparaging these sources Gutman goes on to cite ‘revelations’ by Tadeusz Bednarczik, a known Polish anti-Semite, as typical of the ‘falsehoods’ spread by ‘Polish quarters’. But the known anti-Semite Bednarczik is hardly typical of Poles who testified to their association with ZZW, like Petrykowski, Iwanski, Zajdler and Rolirad. 56. Lazar, Matzada shel Varsha, p. 82. 57. Adolf Berman, O ruchu oporu w getcie Warszawskim—Refleksje, Bulletin ZIH, No. 29. Warsaw, March, 1959. 58. See the articles by Kalman Mendelson, ‘Historia powstania ZZW’, Kronika, No. 18, Warsaw 2 May, 1970, ‘Rozwoj I dzialanosz ZZW’, Kronika, No. 19, Warsaw 9 May, 1970, ‘Ci ktorzy byli z nami’, Argumenty, No. 15 (775), Warsaw, 15 April, 1973. 59. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939–-1943, p. 360. 60. See Petrykowski's testimony given on 5 January, 1960 at the Polish National Committee in Warsaw, in Blumental and Kermish, Hameri vehamered begetto Varsha, pp. 169–70. 61. For Pawel Besztimt's reminiscences of ZZW actions, written shortly after he left the ghetto in 1943, see Yehuda Helman, ‘Al Goralam Shel Sridei Halohamim Shel Haigud Hazvai Hayehudi Bevarsha, Dapim’, Studies on the Shoah, Vol. 5 (1996–7), p. 312. 62. Simha Korngold's memoir can be found in the Yad Vashem archives O33/1566. 63. Jack Eisner, The Survivor, New York, 1980, p. 181. 64. Testimony by Walewski given in Warsaw on November 25, 1948 before Janina Skoczinska, a member of the main committee investigating German war crimes in Poland. 65. Gutman The Jews of Warsaw, p. 377. In a book published in 1994, Resistance, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, New York, 1994, Gutman does refer to the renewed battle at Muranowski Square quoting Stroop's operational report of April 28 where Stroop referred to ‘the continuing battle against the nest of the Jewish Military Organization’. 66. Jack Eisner, The Survivor, New York, 1980. 67. David Landau, Caged—The Landau Manuscript, National Library of Australia, Australia, 1999. 68. Joseph Kermish (ed.), Mered Getto Warsha be-Enei ha-Oyev. HaDochot shel Jurgen Stroop, Jerusalem, 1966. Also in the original German, Joseph Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und seine Vollstrecker, Berlin, 1961, pp. 93–179 and 74–81. 69. Machon Jabotinsky Archive 13–27. 70. Kermish, Mered Getto Warsha be-Einei ha-Oyev. 71. Kazimierz Moczarski, Gespraeche mit dem Henker, Duesseldorf, 1978. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMOSHE ARENS Moshe Arens has served as Israel's Defence Minister and Foreign Minister and as Israel's ambassador to Washington. In recent years he has been researching the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.