Translator name :bette
During the nighttime between 15th and 16th August, German soldiers and the SS divisions supported by Ukrainian divisions surrounded the ghetto. On 16th August, upon the announcement that an order had been issued for the immediate deportation of 30,000 people from the Białystok ghetto, the resistance movement called for the uprising to begin. The main aim of the action was to break the German defense line, which would have allowed the maximum number of people to escape the ghetto and head for the neighboring forests. Under the leadership of Mordechaj Tenenbaum and Daniel Moszkowicz, a small group – of about 300 to 500 insurgents armed mainly with handguns and home-made grenades fought against about 3,000 German soldiers, their tanks, bullet-proof cars and airplanes. Many lives were lost during the battle; leaders of the uprising - Tenenbaum and Moszkowicz, recognizing that their rebellion was doomed, committed suicide. About 150 combatants managed to run away to the Knyszyńska Forest where they joined the active guerrilla groups. Soon, they formed the Jewish guerrilla group “Kadimah”, which in turn, was incorporated into a Soviet guerrilla movement at the end of 1943. Today, historians refer to the uprising in the Białystok ghetto as the second greatest Jewish uprising directed against Germans, in terms of both size and importance.
After the uprising had been suppressed, deportations continued on between 18th and 20th August. Jews capable of working were sent to labor camps, such as the one in Poniatowa, in the Lubelskie district. Also then, some 12,000 people from the Białystok ghetto were sent to the extermination camp in Treblinka (10 transportations) and to Auschwitz (2 transportations). Around 1,200 Jewish children from Białystok were sent to the ghetto in Terezin (Theresienstadt), in the Czech Republic, where they were kept for about six weeks. In the mean time, Germans took up negotiations concerning the possibility of exchanging Jewish children for German citizens who had been imprisoned by the British. When the talks resulted in a lack of consensus, on 5th October 1943, 1,196 children and their 53 caretakers were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp; two days later all of them were killed in gas chambers.
As a result of these actions, there were only about 1,000 to 2,000 people remaining in the Białystok ghetto. They were placed in the “little ghetto” and employed in cleaning and manual work. The “little ghetto” was dissolved on 8th October 1943, and its inhabitants were sent to the labor camp in Poniatowa, in the Lubelskie district, or to extermination camps in Bełżec, Auschwitz, or to the Majdanek concentration camp. Some of them died on 3rd November 1943, during the “Ernfest” (harvest) action when Germans murdered about 42,000 Jews. It is estimated that of more or less 50,000 to 60,000 ghetto citizens, only 260 survived the war, mainly in camps and guerrilla divisions, some hidden away on the “Aryan side” [9.1] .
After the war ended, about 1,085 Jews returned to Białystok from the city and the surrounding areas. Despite the difficult situation and devastations caused by the war, the Jewish Diaspora begun to revive. The Cytron Synagogue (Cytron Bejs-medresz), which managed to avoid destruction, took on the role of the community’s main synagogue, while in 1948 the Socio-Cultural Jewish Society was given a location for its headquarters in the former building of Piaskower Bejs-Medresz. On 16th August 1945, on the second anniversary of the ghetto’s dissolution, thanks to the initiative of the surviving Białystok citizens, a stone obelisk was erected at the cemetery at Żabia Street, bearing the inscription: “In memory of 60,000 Jewish Brothers from the Białystok ghetto murdered by the Germans – who will live in the hearts of the few Jews who survived. The nation of Israel lives on.” (Pamięci 60.000 żydowskich Braci z getta białostockiego zamordowanych przez Niemców – poświęca resztka pozostałych przy życiu Żydów. Naród Izraela żyje.). In 1946, another monument was founded in memory of the combatants in the ghetto, and two years later, at the Jewish cemetery a mausoleum was constructed in memory of the Jewish insurgents. As a result of anti-Semitic attacks that took place in the 1960s, and directly due to events that took place on March 1968, a large group of Białystok Diaspora members emigrated from Poland in the years 1967-1972.
Auschwitz
The most important Nazi concentration and death camp, seen after the war as a symbol of the entire Holocaust machine.
Auschwitz was established in mid-1940. Its first commandant (April 1940 - November 1943) was Rudolf Hoess, its second (November 1943 - May 1944) was Liebehenschel, and its last (May 1944 - January 1945) was Richard Baer.
Its oldest part-the main camp-was created in(...)
Auschwitz
The most important Nazi concentration and death camp, seen after the war as a symbol of the entire Holocaust machine.
Auschwitz was established in mid-1940. Its first commandant (April 1940 - November 1943) was Rudolf Hoess, its second (November 1943 - May 1944) was Liebehenschel, and its last (May 1944 - January 1945) was Richard Baer.
Its oldest part-the main camp-was created in(...)
Deportations
Forced resettlement actions carried out during the Second World War by the German authorities. They affected various ethnic groups, but above all it was Jews who were moved to the ghettos, from one province to another, and then from the ghettos to the concentration and death camps. Two phases are discernable in the Polish lands: the first took place from October 1939 to mid-1941, with the second(...)
Diaspora
Greek, "scattering", galut (Hebrew), golus (Yiddish, "exile")] - A term used to describe the groups of Jews who live outside the Holy Land.
The diaspora began in the sixth century B.C., when Jews were sent into exile in Babylon. After the fall of the Second Temple (first century A.D.), the Jews lived throughout the Roman Empire-in Rome, the Iberian Peninsula, southern(...)
Diaspora
Greek, "scattering", galut (Hebrew), golus (Yiddish, "exile")] - A term used to describe the groups of Jews who live outside the Holy Land.
The diaspora began in the sixth century B.C., when Jews were sent into exile in Babylon. After the fall of the Second Temple (first century A.D.), the Jews lived throughout the Roman Empire-in Rome, the Iberian Peninsula, southern(...)
Extermination
Shoah [Hebrew]
The planned genocide of European Jewry perpetrated by the Nazis and based on the racist doctrine was one of the pillars of German fascism. This ideology proclaimed the need to remove Jews and other "lower" races from the German Lebensraum.
The history of the Holocaust may be broken down into three phases: 1933-39, 1939-41 and 1941-44. After Hitler came(...)
Extermination
Shoah [Hebrew]
The planned genocide of European Jewry perpetrated by the Nazis and based on the racist doctrine was one of the pillars of German fascism. This ideology proclaimed the need to remove Jews and other "lower" races from the German Lebensraum.
The history of the Holocaust may be broken down into three phases: 1933-39, 1939-41 and 1941-44. After Hitler came(...)
Ghetto
A designated area of a city in which Jews were permitted to live. Ghettos were sometimes surrounded by a wall and had gates that would be closed for the night, and were sometimes called "Jewish cities" or "Jewish quarters". The term "ghetto" probably was probably first used in the sixteenth century, though its origins are unclear. The most popular theory speculates(...)
Ghetto
A designated area of a city in which Jews were permitted to live. Ghettos were sometimes surrounded by a wall and had gates that would be closed for the night, and were sometimes called "Jewish cities" or "Jewish quarters". The term "ghetto" probably was probably first used in the sixteenth century, though its origins are unclear. The most popular theory speculates(...)
Ghetto
A designated area of a city in which Jews were permitted to live. Ghettos were sometimes surrounded by a wall and had gates that would be closed for the night, and were sometimes called "Jewish cities" or "Jewish quarters". The term "ghetto" probably was probably first used in the sixteenth century, though its origins are unclear. The most popular theory speculates(...)
Ghetto
A designated area of a city in which Jews were permitted to live. Ghettos were sometimes surrounded by a wall and had gates that would be closed for the night, and were sometimes called "Jewish cities" or "Jewish quarters". The term "ghetto" probably was probably first used in the sixteenth century, though its origins are unclear. The most popular theory speculates(...)
Majdanek
The camp was founded in the second half of 1941 on orders from Heinrich Himmler. It was to be an enormous camp, covering 516 hectares and having a total of 250,000 prisoners. In the end, however, the camp only represented twenty percent of those original plans. It was nevertheless a large camp, with 144 barracks for prisoners, workshops, warehouses, quarters for the SS-men, the commandant's office,(...)
Synagogue
[Greek, synagogé = assembly], beit kneset [Hebrew, house of assemblies]
The building in which Jews pray, known in Polish as boznica.
The synagogue is the focus of religious life, and to some extent also for the social life in traditional Jewish communities. Its institutional origins reach back to antiquity, most probably to the period of the Babylonian captivity, when the(...)
Treblinka
Treblinka I
The labor camp Treblinka I was founded in 1941 in the forests along the Bug River, to the east of Warsaw on the rail line from Malkinia to Kosow Lacki. The prisoners were put to work in the gravel pit and the forest, and on a farm. They were primarily Poles, and also Polish Jews. During the period when Treblinka was a death camp, the percentage of Jewish prisoners in the labor(...)
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