Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Eighty Years Ago

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on this day in 1943. The Jews fighting mainly with rifles, pistols and Molotov cocktails, held out for nearly a month against vastly superior German forces.

I read about the Uprising, first in Mila 18, when I was quite young. Quoting from a post soon after I began this blog:

What struck me, most of all, was that the Jews in the Ghetto took on the German Army and the SS with very few weapons at the beginning. Some handguns, a few rifles and mainly Molotov cocktails. With that and what they could capture, they held off the Germans for about six weeks, with little if any support from anyone. At one point, they raised their flag and the flag of pre-war Poland high over the Ghetto and those flags flew for days, despite the efforts of the Germans to take them down and much to the displeasure of Himmler.

Six weeks. How long did France last against the Germans? How long did Poland, Denmark, Belgium, or Norway last against the Germans? It wasn’t six weeks. Days, a few weeks at best. Not a month and a half.

The lesson I took away: Having an education is a good thing. Having an education and weapons is better.

And never go quietly.

Amen to that.
on or about

1 comment:

  1. dan gerene4/20/2023 6:40 AM

    While this was going on the Russians just held back any aid because it wouldn't be bad in their eyes to let the Germans eliminate many potential resisters to their eventual taking over all of Poland. They had their pact with Hitler in 1939 and ignored the uprising in 1944 too. Russian leadership policies haven't changed much over the years, just the names.

    ReplyDelete

House Rules #1, #2 and #6 apply to all comments. Rule #3 also applies to political comments.

In short, don't be a jackass. THIS MEANS YOU!
If you never see your comments posted, see Rule #7.

All comments must be on point and address either the points raised in the blog post or points raised by commenters in response.
Any comments that drift off onto other topics are subject to deletion.

(Please don't feed the trolls.)

中國詞不評論，冒抹除的風險。僅英語。

COMMENT MODERATION IS IN EFFECT UFN. This means that if you are an insulting dick, nobody will ever see it.