A programme of events online over April 18 and 19 has been prepared by POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews for the 78th anniversary of the outbreak of the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.
This year's focus is on the women ghetto fighters.
POLIN will be retelling their stories among others during a recorded guided tour "Wearing a Dress, Wearing a Uniform" and during a debate titled "If It Goes Off, I Will Go With It".
The Uprising erupted on April 19 and was the biggest Jewish military revolt during World War II, and the first urban insurgency in occupied Europe.
For the second time now, because of COVID-19, commemorative events have needed to be taken online due to the pandemic and restriction measures in place in Poland.
Notwithstanding, the POLIN Museum has launched the 9th edition of its Daffodil Campaign. Due to the restrictions, it is not possible for the daffodils to be handed out by POLIN volunteers on city streets, but the museum has provided an origami pattern and instructions online for anyone wishing to make their own daffodil, and so participate in the remembrance campaign.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which broke out on April 19, 1943 and lasted until May 16, was the first uprising in German Nazi-occupied Europe and the largest act of armed resistance by Jews in World War II. It is estimated that about 13,000 insurgents died in the ghetto during the revolt.
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.
The daffodils, which for some years now have been a symbol of remembrance of the uprising, were associated with noted ghetto fighter Marek Edelman, who before his death in 2009 placed daffodils at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes each year on the anniversary.
The flowers are a poignant echo of the yellow stars that Jews were made to wear during the Nazi German occupation.
Source: PAP/IAR/polin.pl