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Poland marks 82nd anniversary of Białystok Ghetto Uprising

14.08.2025 21:00
Officials and residents have commemorated the 82nd anniversary of the Białystok Ghetto Uprising, a Jewish revolt against the Nazi Germans in the northeastern Polish city during World War II.
A monument honouring fighters in the 1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising in Białystok, northeastern Poland.
A monument honouring fighters in the 1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising in Białystok, northeastern Poland.Photo: PAP/Michał Zieliński

The main ceremony took place at Białystok’s Memorial to the Defenders of the Białystok Ghetto on Thursday, Poland's PAP news agency reported.

The monument sits at a square dedicated to the leader of the Białystok Ghetto Uprising, Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamaroff.

In attendance were diplomats from the Israeli and German embassies in Poland, a delegation from the Israeli city of Yehud-Monosson—a partner city of Białystok—and members of various Jewish organisations, the Polish state news agency said.

Israel's ambassador to Poland, Yaakov Finkelstein, speaks at an event commemorating the 82nd anniversary of 1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025. Israel's ambassador to Poland, Yaakov Finkelstein, speaks at an event commemorating the 82nd anniversary of 1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025. Photo: PAP/Michał Zieliński

During a day of tributes, mourners lit candles at the Great Synagogue Memorial, which commemorates the victims of a 1941 fire, when Poland's Nazi German occupiers gathered Białystok’s Jews in the city’s biggest Jewish temple and set them ablaze, local media reported.

The atrocity marked the beginning of the extermination of Białystok’s Jewish community, according to historians.

The Białystok Ghetto Uprising, which pitted 300 Jewish insurgents against 10 times as many German troops equipped with tanks and aircraft, is regarded as the second-biggest single act of Jewish resistance against the Nazi Germans, after the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the PAP news agency reported

Both revolts were brutally crushed, and survivors were sent to death camps.

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Source: PAP