Eighty years after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish uprising against Nazi occupation during World War II, Poland pays tribute to the heroism of resistance fighters.
In 1940, the Nazis rounded up over 400,000 Jews in a small area of the Polish capital; most of them were later sent to Nazi death camps or died in the ghetto from starvation and disease.
However, on April 19, 1943, hundreds of people driven into the ghetto took up arms.
Their fight against heavily armed German troops ended on May 16, when the Nazis destroyed the ghetto. An estimated 13,000 Jews were killed then.
“All who sow hatred, all who trample (memory) people, trample the graves of heroes of the Warsaw ghetto, trample the graves of murdered Jews and those who helped them,” Polish President Andrzej said. Duda.
Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier took part in the commemorative events, which began with the sound of sirens throughout the Polish capital.
“The heroism of the (heroes) of the resistance and the rebels and the need to remember this terrible chapter of history (…) create a platform for a vital dialogue between Poland and Israel and for the development of friendship between our peoples,” said Yitzhak Herzog.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier stressed that “every crime committed by the Germans must be preserved in our memory”.
As in previous years, volunteers distributed paper daffodils in the streets of Warsaw. The daffodil has become a symbol of the uprising, as Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, received a bouquet of yellow daffodils from a stranger every year on April 19.
He deposited them at the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto.
Organizers of memorial events distribute 450,000 paper daffodils: that was the number of ghetto residents when their numbers were highest.
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