Remembering....

"There was never a rebellion like it. They were so few and their bravery remained as a model for so many."
"A clear line exists between the resistance in the ghettos, in the camps and in the forests and the rebirth and bravery of the state of Israel. It is a line of dignity, of renewed independence, of mutual responsibility, of exalting God's name as a ray of hope which was not extinguished even during terrible anguish. The ghetto fighters sought life even when circumstances screamed danger."
President Shimon Peres

A last desperate attempt at defending themselves by the youth of the Warsaw Ghetto, which the Nazis were slowly emptying of desperately starving residents. The youth who had used the tunnels of sanitary sewers to break out into the larger city in an effort to find food and medicine to take back to the ghetto, to make contact with Polish resistance fighters, and whose surreptitious activities marked them as resistance fighters, took their last stand, resisting the might of the Nazi war machine enlisted to destroy Jews.

Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem, Hall of Names

Between July 22 and September 12, 1941, 300,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were deported or murdered, perished from privation, disease and starvation, while the Ghetto was being emptied of its inhabitants with an eventual order to liquidate the ghetto. Jewish fighters began an uprising, armed with pistols grenades (homemade), a few automatic weapons that had been bought and smuggled into the ghetto for just this purpose and the Jewish fighters surprised the Germans, forcing their retreat.

The German commander reported the loss of a dozen men during the first assault; on the third day of the uprising, the SS and police forces began the physical destruction of the ghetto, building by building to force resisters out of hiding, eventually reducing the ghetto to rubble. Individuals and small groups hid and fought the Nazis for nearly a month.

The Germans captured over 56,000 Jews and destroyed 631 bunkers, killing 7,000 Jews during the uprising. The Warsaw Jews were sent to Treblinka where they died in the gas chambers. Some were sent to forced-labour camps. But the ghetto fighters had held out for over a month. Their courage inspired resistance in other ghettos and killing centres, like Bialystok and Minsk, Treblinka and Sobibor.

German soldiers direct artillery against a pocket of resistance during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Warsaw, Poland, April 19-May 16, 1943.

— US Holocaust Memorial Museum

From the Nazis' first day in power to the day in April 1945 when with Berlin ablaze, Hitler shot himself through the mouth, the Germans exterminated with systematized murder 12 million men, women, and children, in concentration camps, by firing squads and in gas chambers. Of these 12 million victims, 7 million were Christians and 6 million were Jews -- 1.4 Christians for every Jew. But because the Nazis shouted "Kill the Jews", the world blinded itself to the murder of Christians. The irony is that, in spite of all the murder and the bloodshed, it did not impede the march of Jewish history. The Third Reich, which Hitler boasted would endure for a thousand years, perished after twelve. The Jews, whom Hitler boasted he would eradicate, survived to create a new, independent Jewish state.
From: Jews, God and History, Max I. Dimont