page_title: The Holocaust in Poland
section_title: Armed resistance and ghetto uprisings
hierarchical_section_title: The Holocaust in Poland / Armed resistance and ghetto uprisings
caption_attribution_description: Original or archival image caption, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. German&#58; Mit Waffen gefangene Weiber der HaluzzenbewegungHehalutz women captured with weapons Deutsch: Niederschlagung des Aufstandes im Warschauer Ghetto. Foto von Jürgen Stroop in einem Bericht an Heinrich Himmler vom Mai 1943. English: Stroop Report: a report written by Jürgen Stroop for Heinrich Himmler about liquidation of Warsaw Ghetto in May 1943. Polski: Raport Stroopa: raport z maja 1943, napisany przez Jürgena Stroopa do Heinricha Himmlera na temat likwidacji getta warszawskiego. עברית: דו"ח סטרופ, נכתב על ידי יורגן סטרופ להיינריך הימלר על דיכוי המרד בגטו ורשה במאי 1943
context_page_description: The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust and took place within the September 1, 1939, boundaries of Poland, which ceased to exist as a territorial entity after the German and Soviet invasion of Poland. The genocide took the lives of three million Polish Jews, half of all Jews killed during the Holocaust.
  The Holocaust in Poland was marked by the construction of death camps by Nazi Germany, German use of gas vans, and mass shootings by German troops and their Ukrainian and Lithuanian auxiliaries. The extermination camps played a central role in Germany's systematic murder of over 90% of Poland's Jewish population, and of Jews whom Germany transported to their deaths from western and southern Europe.
  Every branch of the sophisticated German bureaucracy was involved in the killing process, from the interior and finance ministries to German firms and state-run railroads. German companies bid for contracts to build crematoria in concentration camps run by Germany in the General Government and in other areas of occupied Poland and beyond. A small percentage of Polish Jews survived World War II within German-occupied Poland or in the Soviet Union.
context_section_description: There is a popular misconception among the general public that most Jews went to their deaths passively. 10% of the Polish Army which fought alone against the Nazi-Soviet Invasion of Poland were Jewish Poles, some 100,000 troops. Of these, the Germans took 50,000 prisoner-of-war and did not treat them according to the Geneva Convention; most were sent to concentration camps and then extermination in camps. As Poland continued to fight an insurgency war against the occupying powers, other Jews joined the Polish Resistance, sometimes forming exclusively Jewish units.
  Jewish resistance to the Nazis comprised not only their armed struggle but also spiritual and cultural opposition which brought dignity despite the inhumane conditions of life in the ghettos. Many forms of resistance were present, even though the elders were terrified by the prospect of mass retaliation against the women and children in the case of anti-Nazi revolt. As the German authorities undertook to liquidate the ghettos, armed resistance was offered in over 100 locations on either side of Polish-Soviet border of 1939, overwhelmingly in eastern Poland. The uprisings erupted in 5 major cities, 45 provincial towns, 5 major concentration and extermination camps, as well as in at least 18 forced labor camps. Notably, the only rebellions in Nazi camps were Jewish.
  The Nieśwież Ghetto insurgents in eastern Poland fought back on July 22, 1942. The Łachwa Ghetto revolt erupted on September 3. On October 14, 1942, the Mizocz Ghetto followed suit. The Warsaw Ghetto firefight of January 18, 1943, led to the largest Jewish uprising of World War II launched on April 19, 1943. On June 25, the Jews of the Częstochowa Ghetto rose up. At Treblinka, the Sonderkommando prisoners armed with stolen weapons attacked the guards on August 2, 1943. A day later, the Będzin and Sosnowiec ghetto revolts broke out. On August 16, the Białystok Ghetto uprising erupted. The revolt in Sobibór extermination camp occurred on October 14, 1943. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the insurgents blew up one of Birkenau's crematoria on October 7, 1944. Similar resistance was offered in Łuck, Mińsk Mazowiecki, Pińsk, Poniatowa, and in Wilno.
caption: Photograph of Jewish women insurgents captured by the SS during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, from the Stroop Report.
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