Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Jürgen Stroop (center), Oscha Karl Heinrich Klaustermeyer (rifle) and others during the insurgency in Warsaw in April 1943 protecting the Polish firefighters who are putting out fires.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a rebellion starting just prior to 19 April 1943 by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland. The most significant portion of the uprising took place from 19 April until 16 May. It was duly crushed by German troops under the command of the SS-Brigadeführer and Major-General of Police Jürgen Stroop. 17 Germans and volunteers had fallen, 93 were wounded. The armed "bandits" (as the Germans called them) had 300 casualties. According to the generally doubted "Stroop Report", a total of 57,065 Jews were either captured or killed.

Jews are led out of a bunker. Well-known photo from the Stroop Report. It has often been implied that the boy was soon killed. However, a New York physician, Tsvi C. Nussbaum, has stated that he was the boy and that he and relatives were not killed, but instead deported to the Bergen-Belsen camp. After the war, he migrated to Israel and later to the United States.

"Nussbaum’s story has held up under critical examination, and even decades later he still bore a striking resemblance to the boy in the photo."
"Jewish Holocaust historians “who have long considered the photograph a sort of sacred document” were not pleased by Nussbaum’s revelation, reported the New York Times, because they were “convinced that the symbolic power of the picture would be diminished were the boy shown to have survived.”"

Regarding revisionist criticisms of claimed Holocaust photographs more generally, see: External link.

History

SS-Gruppenführer Maximilian von Herff respectfully interrogates Jewish prisoners who willingly provide information. Behind him to the left is SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop (Warsaw 1943).

2,000 Germans and foreign volunteers fought against 1,500 men and women from the the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB), the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) and Polish gangs, supported by thousands of civilians. The Jews and their allies had the great advantage that they knew the city inside out and had been able to prepare terrorist warfare from cellars and bunkers since September 1939.

At 4:00 a.m., on April 19th the Germans attacked the barricaded ghetto. The battles were cruel and bloody. The insurgents fought with the courage of desperation. Mostly with pistols and Molotov cocktails they attack the well-equipped Germans. The troops of SS-Brigadeführer Stroop used three small Panzers, two 2 cm flak, one 10 cm howitzer, sub-machine guns, flame-throwers and mine throwers.

A battle was waged for every house. The terrorist men and women fought literally underground, from self-built bunkers to widespread cellars. The ambushes of their hidden snipers were the greatest danger for the Germans. The last escape routes were finally cut off by the flooding of the underground sewer system. On 16 May 1943, the fighting ended and peace was restored in Warsaw. It would last until the second failed Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944.

Revisionist criticisms of the politically correct view

The revisionist Robert Faurisson has written a description of the uprising that differs in many ways from the mainstream one. The "insurgents" are stated to partially have been a Jewish mafia, that extorted other Jews in the ghetto, and who resisted the relocation of the ghetto population since it would reduce their financial base as well as their freedom of movement. The intensity of the fighting and numbers involved are stated to be greatly exaggerated in politically correct descriptions. That the suppressing operation took several weeks to accomplish is argued to be due to Himmler having ordered the operation to be carried out very slowly, in order to minimize casualties.

Each morning, the troops would enter the ghetto, clear buildings of their residents, and use smoke candles (not poison gas) to drive out the Jews hiding in the air-raid shelters. The buildings were destroyed as they were evacuated. The extensive system of air-raid shelters ("bunkers" in politically correct descriptions) that complicated the operation are stated to have been built with German assistance, in order to protect the Jewish population from Soviet bombing raids that had started in 1942.

The Stroop Report

The "Stroop Report" on the uprising was prepared in May 1943 by Jürgen Stroop, the commander of the German forces, for SS chief Heinrich Himmler. It is sometimes cited as evidence for the politically correct view on the Holocaust. Revisionists dispute this, with arguments such as the report frequently being misrepresented. One example is regarding the number of Jews killed during and after the uprising. Furthermore, the report does not mention any gassings.

Another stated example of gross misrepresentation of the Report is in the 1965 verdict of the first Treblinka trial:

The expert Dr. Krausnick stated the following, inter alia: According to The Stroop Report, in the period from July 22, 1942, to October 3, 1942, approximately 310,000 and in the period from January to mid-May 1943 approximately 19,000 Jews were brought in freight trains from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka.” However, the Stroop Report actually reads as follows: “The first large resettlement action took place in the period from 22 July to 3 October 1942. In this action 310,322 Jews were removed. In January 1943, a second resettlement action was carried out by which altogether 6,500 Jews were affected.” Thus, Treblinka is not even mentioned in this passage of the Stroop Report."

The authenticity of the report has also been questioned, although an examination of the original seems beyond all doubt. SS-Sturmbannfueherer (Major) Jesuiter, Chief-of-Staff of the SS and Police Leader in the Warsaw District (i.e: Stroop's Chief-of-Staff), certified that the copies of all daily communiques matched the originals. Stroop himself and his adjutant , Karl Kaleske, both verified the Report after the war.

Deported Jews

Starting on 22 July 1942, according to the Stroop Report and the Jewish Council in Warsaw, many Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto, in order to be resettled (to the east according to the Jewish Council). According to politically correct history, these Jews were killed at locations such as Treblinka. Decisive evidence is wanting.

However, in the months that followed, letters and postcards that were addressed to relatives of deported Jews arrived in the Warsaw Ghetto, from Bialystok, Pinsk, Bobruisk, Brzezc, Smolensk, Brest Litovsk, and Minsk. Non-revisionists claim that such letters and postcards were forged under duress at Treblinka, but revisionists argue that not a single one of the self-described survivors of Treblinka has made claims of this kind. On 21 August 1942, Joseph Goebbels' diary stated:

"The responsible Higher-SS leader reported to me on the conditions in the [Warsaw] ghetto. The Jews are now in large part evacuated (evakuiert) and established in the East."

See also Korherr Report: Samuel Crowell with him arguing that various sources support that Jews captured in Warsaw were sent to camps in the Lublin province. More generally, see Holocaust demographics.

Claimed associations with the creation of Israel

Various claimed associations between the violent rebellion in Warsaw and the violent creation of Israel have been made, such as regarding the dates of Holocaust Memorial Days and in the influential 1978 Holocaust miniseries.

See also

• Holocaust ghettos
• Poland

External links

• The Warsaw Ghetto “Uprising”
• The “Warsaw Ghetto Boy”
• A Ghetto Fighter Recalls Her Capture
• The Stroop Report is a Forgery