Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Disputes Over the Attitude of Poles toward Jews

One of Hitler’s important goals, as stated in “Mein Kampf”, was the destruction of the Jews. He began implementing this plan with the outbreak of World War II. In the occupied Polish territories and as his conquests in subsequent European countries progressed, he ordered first the concentration of Jews in ghettos and their annihilation through progressive starvation, and from the spring of 1942 through their mass annihilation in special extermination camps. Those in Warsaw, Poland – they constituted some 3 million – in 1943 made a desperate attempt, with no real chance of success to resist, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This resulted in the destruction by arson of some 50,000 Jews who remained there. This event and its aftermath provoke passionate disputes as to whether Poles provided, and to what extent, assistance to the murdered Jews. This sketch will show the disputes, and within the Poles, waged on the 80th anniversary of these events related to this. This is the aftermath of contemporary Polish “historical politics”.