Beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943

Four weeks after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the capital Warsaw was occupied. By 1939, it was home to the largest Jewish community in Europe, with over 350,000 people - around 30 percent of Warsaw's population. Immediately after the occupation, the German units began to terrorize the Jewish population through various coercive measures.

On April 19, 1943, open resistance against the SS began in the Warsaw ghetto. However, the chances of winning the battle against the well-armed SS men were close to zero for the insurgents. It was possible to prevent people from being deported for a short time, but in the long run the situation was hopeless for the resistance fighters. They had almost no weapons, had hardly any military training and fought with the courage of desperation. In the beginning they had some small successes, as they knew "their ghetto" quite well, but in the long run the resistance was doomed to failure. The Germans set fire to the houses in the ghetto. Less than a month later, on May 16, 1943, the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto was over.