In the summer of 1942, more than a quarter of a million Jewish people were forcibly deported from the Warsaw ghetto to be murdered in the Nazi German extermination camp in Treblinka. To find out more about the concentration camp in English, see the Treblinka Museum's website.
Those Jews who remained in the ghetto started building bunkers and smuggling weapons in preparation for armed resistance. Left- and right-wing Jewish resistance organisations were formed. The uprising proper began on 19 April when the resistance organisations refused to surrender to the German authorities. The Polish Press Agency (PAP) has today republished several historical photographs of the Uprising which can be viewed in its Polish section.
The German Police Commander of SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop ordered the ghetto to be burnt to the ground. To find out more about the course of the Uprising, see the Polin Museum's website section dedicated to the Uprising.
Today, exactly eighty years have passed since the beginning of the Uprising. To read an overview of tributes from several Polish dignitaries, read our article.
Sources: POLIN website (Museum of the History of Polish Jews), Radio Poland, PAP
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