Warsaw at the Start of World War II: Before the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Jewish population in Poland was about 3.5 million. Approximately 350,000 Jews lived in the country's capital city, Warsaw alone constituting 30% of its total population.1 When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, it not only signaled the start of the Second World War, it also sealed the fate of the Warsaw Jews. The Poli

The First Confrontation: In January 1943, after a visit of Henreich Himmler himself to the ghetto, the Germans decided to carry out the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. On January 18, the Germans began another action to round up the remaining Jews still in the Ghetto. This time, the ZOB under the command of Anielewicz confronted the Germans in the streets. Although surprised at the affront of the Jews, the Germans slaughtered most of the ill-armed ZOB fighters in a firefight, while Anielewicz escaped miraculously. The Jews were exhilarated at their "success" in inflicting actual casualties on the Germans and the ZOB fighters now harassed the Germans regularly by directing sniper fire from ghetto buildings. The Germans retaliated by rounding up between 6,500 and 8,000 Jews but faced resistance and some casualties while doing so. (Bell, 170-172) During February and March there was sporadic fighting between the German SS troops and the Jewish fighters including a major fire fight on March 13 in which 400 Jews were killed but the Germans had to withdraw in the battle and were now reluctant to move about freely in the Ghetto.

Those who resisted, fearing the worst, were hunted down mercilessly and the Jewish Police, which rounded up the required numbers with ruthless efficiency, made the Germans' task easier. When the first phase of deportations finally ended on September 12, 1942, the population of Warsaw Ghetto had officially dwindled to just 37,0004; in reality the numbers were closer to 70,000 as thousands of people had hidden in secret bunkers or secret rooms. (Bell 169)

Survival Becomes the Priority: In order to keep the Jews in line, the Germans resorted to terror tactics and applied the principle of "collective punishment" if any Jew dared to disobey the rules. For example, as early as November 1939, even before the official proclamation of the ghetto, 53 Jews in an apartment building were summarily shot for the beating of a Polish policeman by one of the tenants. (Edelman, para 5) When a radio transmitting station of the Polish Underground was found by the Germans in January 1940, the Germans arrested and executed over 300 Jewish social leaders, intelligentsia and professionals in a single night. (Ibid, para 9) Apart from the physical travails of the ghetto inhabitants, the Germans also subjected the Jews to psychological torture in order to break their spirit of resistance. A survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and a resistance fighter who was involved in the Ghetto uprising, Mared Edelman, later noted that the complete segregation of the ghetto from the outside world had "a very definite purpose"; it was intended to foster a special way of thinking among the ghetto inhabitants so that the only thing they would be worried about was simply to remain alive. In such an environment many of the Jews themselves turned collaborators2 and informants in order to be able to survive or resorted to smuggling and black-marketing even if it was at the expense of their own people.

More disturbing news of the "final solution" for Jews arrived at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. Germans were reported to have killed thousands of Jews in the Western Ukrainian and White Russian territories. Most of the Ghetto Jews still refused to believe the stories and theorized that even if such killings did take place they were not the result of a plan to exterminate the Jews but may have been spontaneous acts on the part of isolated German troops in the first flush of victory.

Within one month all non-Jews were shifted out of the ghetto and ten-foot high walls were built around it to seal the Jews off from the outside world. During the next year and a half, Jews from smaller cities and villages in the country were brought into the ghetto swelling its population to 400,000. Each room in the overcrowded ghetto held an average of twelve occupants. The Germans systematically closed-off labor opportunities

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Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)