Born on April 15, 1926, Smuss was the last living member of the World War II-era revolt, in which Jewish fighters took up arms against Nazi Germany’s occupation forces in the Polish capital.
Smuss lived in the Warsaw ghetto with his father from 1940 until the uprising began in 1943, according to The Jerusalem Post. They endured severe hunger and disease.
"In the ghetto, I witnessed the horrors caused by the Nazis to the Jews," he once said. "A few young friends and I joined the underground resistance. The resistance's goal was to stop the Nazis' terrible deeds. I smuggled weapons for the resistance and made Molotov cocktails – a means of preparing for a revolt against the Nazis."
After the uprising, Smuss was sent to several concentration camps—Budzyń, Majdanek, Płaszów, Wieliczka and Flossenbürg in Bavaria—and survived all of them.
In April 1945, he was forced to endure a seven-day “death march” from Flossenbürg to Stamsried. He survived that as well, The Jerusalem Post said.
After the war, Smuss devoted his life to teaching about the Holocaust and combating antisemitism.
The Polish embassy in Tel Aviv said in a tribute that he "lectured youth on the history of Polish Jews" and expressed his memories through art.
"His legacy endures," it added.
Shortly before his death, Germany's ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit, Germany’s highest civilian honour, for his contributions to Holocaust remembrance and German-Israeli dialogue.
"Sad to learn that Michael Smuss has died," Seibert said in an X post on Thursday. "He devoted his life to Holocaust education."
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943, and lasted until May 16, was the first major act of resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe and the largest Jewish armed revolt of World War II.
About 13,000 Jewish fighters are believed to have died in the ghetto during the fighting.
Some surviving Jewish combatants later fought in the Warsaw Uprising, launched by Poland's underground Home Army (AK) on August 1, 1944.
The Warsaw ghetto, established in April 1940, was the largest of the many ghettos which the Germans set up across Poland to isolate the Jewish population after invading the country in September 1939.
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Source: jpost.com