The world remembers the Warsaw ghetto uprising, 80 years on
On 19 April 1943, several hundred poorly armed inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto began to resist Nazi Germany's efforts to deport Jews to the death camps. The civilian fighters resisted for 27 days. The Germans subsequently burned the ghetto to the ground.
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German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday asked for "forgiveness" for his country's World War II crimes, while marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
"I stand before you today and ask for your forgiveness for the crimes committed by Germans here," Steinmeier told Holocaust survivors and others in the Polish capital, where he became the first ever German head of state to speak at the commemoration.
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, roughly one-third of the capital's 1.3 million population was Jewish.
A year later, the occupiers cordoned off the Jewish district of Warsaw to create the ghetto, effectively imprisoning 450,000 people in an area of three square kilometres.
German brutality and a growing awareness of Nazi plans for those deported to concentration and labour camps further east provoked a number of acts of resistance by ghetto residents.
In January 1943, for example, a handful of young ghetto dwellers armed with hand guns succeeded in driving German soldiers from the ghetto.
Emboldened by that brief success, the population began to dig in, intending to refuse further deportation. And the Polish resistance movement supplied what weapons it could spare to the ghetto defenders.
Marek Edelman, one of the leaders of the Jewish Combat Organisation in Warsaw, admitted they knew they had no hope against 2,000 well-armed, trained soldiers, backed up by 800 SS officers.
We fought, he said, "not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths".
As well as armed resistance, some Jewish families hid rather than show up for deportation as ordered by the Nazis.
"Instead of responding to summons to turn up for transports heading towards imminent death, they remained in hiding. Their silent act of resistance was as important as armed combat," according to the website of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
As many as 7,000 people may have been burned alive or suffocated as the Nazis set fire to ghetto buildings in an effort to flush out those who had taken refuge there.
The determined voices of survivors
Survivor Krystyna Budnicka was 10 when the doomed revolt broke out.
She spent several months living in the bunker built by her brothers beneath a building in the ghetto.
Her entire family of 10 hid there along with others in the hopes of surviving.
"I felt weak, powerless, dejected, dazed," Budnicka said.
"I was holding onto my mother. I was afraid, hungry, weak. It's mostly the hunger that made you weak," she added.
"I sensed burning all around me," said Budnicka, now 90 years old and still living in Warsaw.
"We felt the heat of the walls, which we couldn't touch, as if we were in a bread oven."
Budnicka escaped through the sewer system. But her parents, by that point incapable of walking, did not make it.
"Mom told me to keep going. I consider that her last will and testament: that I must keep going, and live," she said.
Budnika's entire family died in the Holocaust.
"I didn't mourn them because I have no tears left in me," she said.
"Why did I have to go through all that? Because someone like Hitler didn't want Jewish children to live and decided they must die. But I'm still alive, against his wishes," Budnicka added.
War and hatred poison everything
Halina Birenbaum was also living with her family in a bunker at the time, "hopeful that the war would end and we'd be able to leave".
She remained stuck underground for three weeks "with just water, sugar and a bit of jam," the now 93-year-old resident of Israel recalled.
"We were crammed together and had to stay silent. We could smell smoke, as the Germans were burning down the ghetto block by block," she added.
"The revolt was suicide. We couldn't win, but we had to do them harm."
Birenbaum took part in Tuesday's March of the Living, which has been held for years in honour of Holocaust victims.
"It's important to talk about it and to say that war and hatred of others poison everything," she said.
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