Resistance (33 page)

The enthusiasm reached its height when the Jews heard the brutal Nazi soldiers cry in fear. Mordecai Anielewicz wrote after four eventful days:

 

Something occurred that is beyond our wildest dreams. The Germans withdrew from the ghetto twice. One of our companies held out for 40 minutes, and the second for more than six hours.

 

The unexpected resistance caused an uproar among the Germans, and led to von Sammern's being summarily replaced. In the daily report of April 19, Stroop described the failure of the Germans' initial assault:

 

Immediately after the preparation of the units—a planned attack of fire from the Jews and the terrorists on a tank ... and Molotov cocktails were thrown at two armored cars. The tank burst into flames twice. This attack of the enemy caused our forces to retreat at first. There were 12 losses in this first action (6-SS men and 6 people from Trawniki). At approximately 8:00, there was a second troop action under the command of the undersigned.

 

In postwar testimony, Stroop offered more details about the attack and von Sammern's role:

 

On April 19th, at six in the morning, Colonel von Sammern began the action. He retained command ... with my approval, as he had made all the preparations and knew the area. We agreed that I should come to the ghetto at about 9
A.M.,
for until then I was unfamiliar with the place, not having been there until then. At 7:30, Sammern appeared at my residence and informed me that everything was lost. The forces that had entered the ghetto had retreated and there were already killed and wounded ... Sammern said he would contact Cracow and ask for Stukas in order to bomb the ghetto from the air and thus put an end to the uprising that had taken place. I told Sammern not to contact Cracow, and that I wanted to survey the situation where it had taken place.

 

Casimir Moczarski, a member of the Polish underground, had been arrested in Communist Poland and shared a cell with Stroop before his trial. Moczarski related how Stroop decribed the situation:

 

The telephone in the command room rang. Dr. [Ludwig] Hahn [an SS colonel and a commander of the security police and special services, the S.D., in Warsaw] arrived. I spoke to Krüger three times and once to Heinrich Himmler. They were enraged. The Reichsführer [Himmler], who had always been polite, used the most vulgar language again and again. They ordered that von Sammern be dismissed from his command immediately as well as from his function as commander of the SS and Police in Warsaw.

They demanded that all the units should be taken out of the ghetto and that within two hours the action should begin again under my command. I did not have to give the order to retreat for von Sammern's soldiers had simply run away. Dr. Hahn was quiet during this tension and spoke of the political outcome of the failure in the ghetto. Krüger, however, cursed and shouted over the phone, saying that it is a "shame," a political and military "defeat," a stain on the SS' good name, caused by "this intelligent doctor of philosophy from the Tyrol" (von Sammern] and that the "stupid fellow" should be put in jail, etc. He ordered that, after a new order was decided upon and things should calm down, all the soldiers and SS in Warsaw should be sent into action.

In response to his comment that they were worried about the mood of the Poles, who may make some move, Krüger said: "All the forces of the SS should be directed against the ghetto. In order to deter the Poles, an emergency call-up of the German units should be issued, to include the Wehrmacht, the Party, the Railways, the Post Office, the Guards."

 

According to Stroop's account, noted by Moczarski, Himmler was more restrained. He objected to the punishment of von Sammern, predicting it could result in difficulties within the party in Austria. Nonetheless, he ordered von Sammern's dismissal and placed all the forces of the army and the SS in the General Government on standby.

Stroop claimed that after taking over the command, he reorganized the campaign using suitable tactics for street fighting. According to Borzykowski, the battle started again in Nalewki after a lull of three hours. The Germans put up a barricade of mattresses and, thus fortified, concentrated their fire on a house in which some of the fighters were positioned. The mattresses began to burn, but the house also went up in flames and the fighters had to abandon it.

Strong firing was also directed against the large concentration of Jewish forces at the corner of Zamenhof and Mila streets. There was a stubborn fight. The Germans' heavy arms could fire accurately and systematically at the windows and entrances of the houses from a distance. The Jewish fighters returned fire, but their pistols were not made for such distances. The fighters of the ZOB abandoned their posts for the bunker in Zamenhof Street. Only at 5:30
P.M.
did Stroop arrive with supporting forces in the Muranow area, where von Sammern and his troops had been unable to penetrate during the morning assault. The ZZW force of the central ghetto was ready. The firing power of the Jewish fighters was strong. Their machine guns prevented a German advance in the open area, and a prolonged battle developed. Stroop claimed, "A special fighting unit subdued the enemy, penetrated into houses, but did not catch the enemy. The Jews and the criminals defended themselves everywhere, post by post, and at the last moment, escaped thorough the attics or underground channels." Summarizing the battles under his command on that day, Stroop said, according to Moczarski:

 

We achieved the enemy's retreat from the roofs and from the higher posts to the cellars, or to the bunkers or tunnels. During the combing, only zoo Jews were caught. Afterwards special units were operated against the bunkers which we knew about, and they were ordered to bring out the inhabitants of the bunkers and destroy the bunkers. In this action, some 380 Jews were caught. It appears that the Jews were in the sewerage tunnels.

 

The ZOB lost only one fighter on the first day of the struggle—a man known only as Yehiel, who belonged to Mordecai Grobas's squad. The ZZW had many more losses, including one of the commanders, Eliahu Halberstein. According to Stroop's report, one German was killed and thirty-two wounded, including twenty-four SS men, two gendarmes, six men from the supporting forces, and two Polish policemen.

There was more to the Germans' failure on April 19 than heavy fire, withdrawal, and their inability to capture the fighters. The Germans had expected to need just three days to capture the remaining Jews, almost the entire Jewish population of the central ghetto, and to transfer 16,000 temporary Jewish workers to the work camps, as well as to take over the equipment and materials stored throughout the ghetto. On the first day of the Uprising, however, they caught only 580 Jews.

In reality, the Germans had no intention of giving up their plans to eradicate the ghetto. Jewish resistance only inflamed their violence and determination. The Jew was no longer the downtrodden creature with whom one could do as one pleased. In this new confrontation the Jew was an enemy to be wary of; deporting the Jews would require a price in blood and lives.

While the Jews gave up the illusion that resistance would save them, they did not leave the bunkers either on the first day or in the days that followed. On the contrary, the fortification of the bunkers was an important element of their defensive campaign. At night, the ghetto was again free. People came out of the bunkers, and fighters appeared in the streets with their weapons. Even while the first houses had begun to burn, with no one there to extinguish them, there were displays of enthusiasm, and inhabitants shared their impressions of what had happened, most feeling that their desire for revenge had been realized. Sounds of explosives and shooting could be heard from afar.

In his memoirs, Borzykowski told of going to fetch an electric battery for his unit. On his way out, he found himself on the doorstep of the apartment of Rabbi Dov-Ber Meisel, one of Warsaw's well-known religious leaders.

 

When stepping into the house, I remembered that it was Passover. The first Seder. The glasses of red wine on the table brought to mind the memory of the Jews who were wiped out on the eve of the holiday. The Haggadah was read to the accompaniment of firing and bursting bombs of the night in the ghetto. Through the windows, the constant flashes of fire from nearby burning houses lit up the faces of those seated around the table in the dark room ... when we parted from one another, the rabbi was very friendly and blessed me with success. "1 am old," he said, "but you are youngsters; do not be afraid, fight and succeed. And may God go with you."

 

The commanders of the ghetto Uprising did not share in the exhilaration. German intentions were clear. The hundreds of Jews who were caught were too few to make up a transport so they were killed on the spot. Also, the burning of the houses indicated that the Germans' destructive wrath knew no bounds.

From the very first day of battle it was clear that the revolvers, the standard weapons of the fighters, were not suited to street fighting against an enemy equipped with fire-spitting semiautomatic weapons. A few days later, Anielewicz wrote in his last letter to Yitzhak Zuckerman, "You should know, the pistol is of no value, we almost did not use it. We need: hand grenades and rifles, machine guns and explosives." But it was too late, and the desperately needed weapons never arrived.

One wonders whether the experienced officers of the Polish underground knew that revolvers would be ineffective in a fighting campaign in the heart of the city. In his book
Those Seven Years,
Zuckerman recalled his first days as a representative of the Jewish Fighting Organization on the Aryan side. He arrived there on April 13, less than a week before the Uprising. After a few days, he met Henryk Wolinski, who was responsible for the Jewish department of the AK. Zuckerman found Wolinski to be sympathetic to the problem of the Jews but obliged to speak for AK's official position. Zuckerman wrote:

 

He told me the harshest thing: he told me that a plan was being devised to transfer the Jewish Fighting Organization to the partisans. I expressed my astonishment at the idea. I told him that when we received their message that we must hurry lest the "salt will arrive after the meal"—I was certain that they were speaking of the updating and development of our mutual plans [initiated by Jurek) relating to the uprising in the ghetto. I told him that I understood there was a master plan, which was mainly [an attack by] the A.K. on the central ghetto when the uprising started...

He said that they had reached the conclusion that in this period of increasing forces hostile to the Poles, they feared that should the uprising start in the ghetto, it would spread out beyond its borders ... We knew the basic principles
of
their theory, which maintained that there is a major struggle between the two main powers: Germany and the Soviets, and that they must wait and see the outcome of this struggle ... that Poland had to wait and gather its strength, until the two powers bleed one another until they are exhausted. Then they [the Poles] would appear on the scene of battle.

 

On Monday, the twentieth of April, the major fighting arena was the brushmakers' workshops, the enclave of houses and partial streets near the central ghetto which contained about four thousand jews, most of them employed in brush manufacturing. Five fighting squads under the command of Marek Edelman were stationed in the area, as well as a unit of the ZZW. The Germans quickly stormed those houses displaying flags. At the height of the battle, the ZZW commander, Leon Rodal, fell victim to the German assault. The Germans surrounded the central ghetto with weapons, including machine guns and light cannons.

In his daily report of April 20, Stroop indicated that he had decided to move the brushmaking industry out of the area, and consequently ordered its German manager to have the workers come forward voluntarily. It is likely that Stroop benefited from the agreement with Többens, who ran many shops inside the ghetto, and was supported by Globocnik, who headed the extermination camps in the Lublin area, first to relocate the factories to Poniatowa and only then to turn the ghetto into a field of death and scorched earth.

At 2:00
P.M.,
a German unit appeared at the entrance to the workshop area, detonating a mine and causing confusion and injuries. After an hour, the Germans retreated under fire from the Jewish fighters. An hour later they returned and tried to advance in small groups, moving along hesitantly. In the ensuing battle, the Germans rushed into the houses. Edelman described the scene:

 

We are suddenly surrounded in one of the attics. Nearby, the Germans are in the same attic and it is impossible to reach the stairs. In the dark corners of the attic we cannot even see one another. We do not notice Sewek Dunski and Junghajzer who crawl up the stairs from below, reach the attic and get behind the Germans and throw a grenade. We do not even stop to consider how Michal Klepfisz jumped straight onto the German machine gun firing from behind the chimney. All we see is the cleared path after the Germans have been thrown out. Several hours later, we find Michal's body perforated like a sieve by a salvo from two machine-guns.

 

At 3:00
P.M
. three German officers with white kerchiefs unexpectedly attached to the lapels of their uniforms called for a cease-fire and negotiations with the commander of the area. The Germans did not intend to negotiate with the fighters but only wanted a lull in which to persuade the workshop workers to make themselves available for deportation. The Germans evidently assumed that their strong show of force would intimidate the workers into agreeing to evacuation.