79th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The official commemorations of the 79th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began at noon on Tuesday, in front of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. Precisely at 12:00, alarm sirens were sounded to pay tribute to the fallen insurgents.

The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, recited a prayer for the departed. The participants of the ceremony then laid wreaths at the monument.

The remembrance ceremony was attended by members of Jewish organisations, war veterans, The Righteous Among the Nations, representatives of central and local governments, ambassadors, members of Polish cultural institutions, as well as residents of Warsaw.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on the 19th of April, 1943. It was the largest and most heroic act of armed resistance taken up by the Jews during World War Two. It was also the first civic uprising in occupied Europe. The insurgents took up the fight without any hope of a happy ending. They were driven by desire to seek revenge and to incur the greatest possible losses on their perpetrators. First and foremost, however, they chose to die with dignity, holding guns in their hands.

During the uneven battle, which lasted for nearly one month, the Germans razed the Ghetto to ground, burning one building after another. On May 8, the leader of the insurgents, Mordechai Anielewicz, together with a group of several dozen fighters, committed suicide in a bunker at 18 Miła street. A small number of survivors managed to escape the burning ghetto through the sewers.

The SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, sent to Warsaw to quash the Ghetto Uprising, had written in his report: "180 Jews, bandits and subhumans were eliminated. The former Jewish residential district ceased to exist. The grand operation concluded with the blowing up of the Warsaw synagogue at 20:15. [...] The overall number of captured and surely exterminated Jews is 56,065." The entire ghetto, with the exception of 8 buildings, had been torn down.

Daffodil has become a symbol of remembrance of the tragic events of the spring of 1943 thanks to the last leader of the Uprising, Marek Edelman, who used to mark each anniversary by laying bouquets of yellow flowers at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes.