Background
Anielewicz was born in the slums of Warsaw in 1919 or 1920.
Anielewicz was born in the slums of Warsaw in 1919 or 1920.
While still a youth, he joined the Hashomer Hatsair Socialist Zionist movement and became one of its leading figures.
On September 7, 1939, less than a week after the Germans invaded Poland, Anielewicz, like many of the leaders of the Zionist youth movements, fled Warsaw. He reached the Soviet-occupied area of Poland and attempted to go to Romania, hoping from there to find his way to Palestine. Caught by the Soviet authorities, he was jailed for a short time.
After his release Anielewicz visited a number of Jewish communities in Warsaw to gain an impression of their situation. After a short stay in Warsaw, he went to Vilna, where many Zionist youth had concentrated. There some of them decided to return to German-occupied Poland to lead the movement’s activities surreptitiously.
Anielewicz volunteered to go back to Poland. In Warsaw he organized clandestine cells, held seminars, and aided the development of an underground press, to which he contributed articles.
Upon receiving reports of the murder of Jews in the German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, in the summer of 1941, Anielewicz pushed for the creation of an armed Jewish underground. The first such organization, the Antifascist Bloc, was never really established and, following a wave of arrests of some of its Communist members, was dissolved.
Anielewicz went to Bedzin to help establish an armed underground, shortly before the mass deportations in Warsaw began in the summer of 1942. He returned to Warsaw to discover that only about 60,000 Jews remained and that the new armed underground organization, the Jewish Fighting Organization, was still quite weak. He set about restructuring and adding life to the organization, and in November 1942, became its commander.
The first armed clashes between the Jews and the Germans occurred during the deportation drive of January 18. 1943. In a brief battle, in which many Jewish fighters fell, Anielewicz was saved by his men. The deportation ended rather quickly, and the Jews of Warsaw believed it was Anielewicz’s fighters who caused the Germans to abandon their operation. Anielewicz and the armed underground’s prestige rose to such a degree in the ghetto that they became its de facto leaders. Now the Jews of Warsaw feverishly built bunkers and readied themselves for a armed resistance.
On the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, the Germans began their final deportation drive in Warsaw. The armed underground reacted with all the weapons it had managed to obtain. Anielewicz commanded the fighting which at first took place in the streets and then was confined to the bunkers. With most of his staff, he entered a bunker on 18 Mila Street. On May 8, amid the burning ruins of the ghetto, Anielewicz was killed when the bunker fell to the Germans.
Quotations:
ANIELEWICZ’S LAST LETTER, APRIL 23, 1943
What happened is beyond our wildest dreams. Twice the Germans fled from our ghetto. One of our companies held out for forty minutes and the other, for over six hours.... I have no words to describe to you the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a few chosen ones will hold out; all the rest will perish sooner or later. The die is cast. In the bunkers in which our comrades are hiding, no candle can be lit for lack of air.... The main thing is; My life’s dream has come true; I have lived to see Jewish resistance in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.