Johannesburg - This year is the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, when unarmed Jews corralled into a 3.4 sq km ghetto in the Polish capital held off the might of the Nazi army for four weeks, often with nothing more than lead pipes and their bare fists.
By the time the German soldiers had finally razed the ghetto to the ground, 56 065 people had either been killed on the spot or deported to the Nazi death camps of Madjanek and Treblinka.
On Tuesday next week (April 19, 2023), one of the few survivors, Ella Blumenthal, will be the virtual guest of honour at this year’s Yom Hashoah (Remembrance Day) commemoration between 11.45am and 1 pm at the Martyr’s Monument at Johannesburg’s Westpark Jewish Cemetery.
Blumenthal is 101 years old. She was 19 when she went into the ghetto, with her parents and six siblings. After the ghetto was destroyed, only she and her eldest niece were still alive. For the next two years, she would survive three of Nazi Germany’s most notorious death camps; Madjanek, Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, along with her niece.
Together, they lost 23 relatives in the Holocaust.
In 1947, Blumenthal married a South African after a lightning romance and lived for the rest of her life in Brakpan before moving to Cape Town, where she lives today.
The heroism and symbolism of the uprising was such that in 1951, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) declared that the Holocaust Remembrance Day would be commemorated on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan which in 1943 corresponded with April 19 ‒ the day the final razing of the Warsaw Ghetto took place and the day the uprising began.
It is incredibly poignant, says Mary Kluk, who is the director and chair of the Durban Holocaust Centre as well as the current vice-president of the South African Jewish board of Deputies, to have a day of such tragedy forever linked to a period of such joy in the Jewish religion.
“The Passover signifies the community’s march to freedom from oppression, while the Holocaust was a catastrophic tragedy. The Warsaw Uprising was a momentous time for the Jewish people. It was the first time that a civilian population stood up and said ‘we will not be massacred, we will not be sent to the gas chambers’.”
But the story of the Warsaw Ghetto extends far beyond its final destruction, she says. The increasingly oppressive and inhumane conditions in the ghetto, which at one time numbered almost half a million people from its inception in 1940 by the Nazis to its final destruction in 1943, are an enduring symbol of a people’s resistance and indeed resilience.
“It’s an example of all the different forms of resistance: from stealing a piece of bread to stay alive, to educating children in dark underground chambers at a time when they were not allowed to have any form of education. It’s about observing religious rituals and festivals secretly and defiantly and, when they were ultimately taken to the concentration camps it’s about pinching your cheeks to appear healthy enough to work to avoid being sent to certain death in the gas chambers.”
The community in the Warsaw ghetto did everything they could to keep to a semblance of normality in an extremely abnormal time in their determination to survive, defying the might of the Nazi war machine, at the time the most powerful military in Europe, and when the time came to actively resist and fight back, they were led by the youth themselves.
The uprising leader was 24-year-old Mordechai Anielewicz, who died from his own hand, as the Nazis were going from house to house, blowing up the last outposts of resistance and pumping in toxic gases to the sewers and cellars to flush out anyone hiding within.
“I was struck several years ago by something I read – ‘people imagined the worst, they never imagined the unthinkable’,” says Kluk. “We all say, what’s the worst? In the face of the unthinkable, the people in the ghetto and in the concentration camps were able to find a way to deal with that on a daily basis and do whatever it took to resist. They are an inspiration for us.
“For me personally, as part of that collective, I feel an enormous sense of awe. These were young people with their entire lives ahead of them and they found the courage to take this evil on and live (and die) on their own terms.”
Blumenthal was the subject of an award winning South African documentary in 2021, titled “I Am Here”, and on Monday, her memoir titled “I am Ella”, co-written by Joanne Jowell, will be released.
“This year’s theme for us as a community,” says Kluk, “is We are Here. Ella’s story is remarkable and we as a community are here as a result of her survival.”
The Day of Remembrance (Yom Hashoah) ceremony to commemorate the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust will take place at the Martyr’s Monument at the Westpark Jewish Cemetery on Tuesday, April 18 from 11.45am until 1pm.
“I am Ella” is published by Kwela Books at a recommended retail price of R320 and available from all good book stores.