Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - 70th Anniversary

After the Germans had transported more than 275,000 Jews from the walled Jewish Ghetto in the Grossaktion of 1942, and many more had died or disappeared from the Ghetto at its peak population of approximately 400,000, it became apparent to the last surviving residents of the ghetto who remained either in hiding or because they were young and strong enough to work officially, that there was no hope in waiting for certain death. Organizations such as the Jewish National Committee (ZKN), the Bund, the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) and others began to coordinate their efforts, to strategize, and to arm themselves. Outnumbered and outgunned, they held out for three weeks against SS forces causing the Germans to retreat in at least two confrontations. Norman Davies calls the Ghetto Uprising "the largest single act of resistance against the Germans in Poland before the city-wide Warsaw Uprising of the following year."

The highlight of this years commemoration will be the long-awaited first preview of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, a magnificent building designed by Rainer Mahlamäki on the site of the former Ghetto that will present 1000 years of Jewish history in Poland, curated by a team led by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, to visitors from around the world and to Polish citizens, especially to school groups, who will learn that there is no Polish history without Jewish history, and we would be missing a major portion of Jewish history without Polish history.

The Polish Cultural Institute New York is working with Tablet magazine to produce a week of special coverage from Warsaw not only of the commemoration of the Ghetto Uprising and the opening of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, but on a wide range of topics, from new currents in Jewish music in Poland, the status of Jewish history in Poland, the politics of memory, and relations between Polish Jews and Christians, to the revival of Jewish life in Poland.