Posted on 04/19/2007 3:58:22 PM PDT by lizol
Thanks for posting those.
Lest any forget, the Warsaw heroes tied up several German units that were badly needed by the Germans to fight in North Africa and the on Russian front.
The people of the Warsaw Ghetto made it their business to smuggle in arms and hide them. When the time came, they used them.
Had the Jews of Europe been armed, does anyone believe they would have been led like lambs to the slaughter?
Non-Germans were not in the SS Einsatzgruppen, but they could be in the Waffen SS. Anyway, the so-called “Ukrainian” troops at Warsaw were actually Russians who were part of the Vlasov Russian Liberation Army, if I remember correctly. There may have been some Ukrainians among them, but it wasn't a “Ukrainian” unit.
The Bravest Battle: The Twenty-Eight Days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - nonfiction account by Dan Kurzman
Incredible, heatbreaking, inspiring, amazing story.
Wajda’s “Holy Week” was better.
Now, Vlasov’s units (ROA) did not participate in that battle. An excerpt from THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING AND THE POLES by Marek Edelman (November, 2006):
“SS Reischsführer Heinrich Himmler ordered the total liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. On April 19, 1943,
2,000 SS men and German army troops marched into the ghetto with tanks, rapid-fire artillery, and
ammunition trailers. They were pitted against approximately 750 organized Jewish fighters—500 in the
ranks of the ZOB and 250 in the ZZW—and an undetermined number of unaffiliated “wildcat” groups.
(Some estimates run lower, stating there may have been only 300–400 ZOB fighters.) All of the ZOB
fighters were armed with revolvers, hand grenades, and Molotov cocktails, and two-three rifles were
assigned to each area.167 When the Germans entered the ghetto, the streets were completely empty “except
for a small Jewish police unit and a handful of Judenrat members.”168 Among those who marched into the
ghetto on April 19th there were Jewish ghetto police who headed the column of collaborators, a small
group of Polish police, who were withdrawn once fighting erupted, followed by Latvian, Lithuanian, and
Ukrainian troops. While most of the Jews hid in bunkers, pockets of Jewish resistance fighters opened
fire from sheltered locations”.
http://www.kpk.org/english/toronto/ghetto_revolt.pdf
As far as I remember from Moczarski’s “Talks with the hangman” (”Rozmowy z katem” - specific inteview with SS commander Jurgen Stroop) Ukrainian troops were participating in the battle... I will have to check this...
Have you seen the drama based on Moczarki’s book on TVP last week?
Excellent.
Unfortunately I haven’t. I hope there will be a rerun.
Hmm, I must have remembered incorrectly. Thanks for the reference. Obviously I need to do more research. ;-)
I think there's been some confusion over whether the troops were ethnic Ukrainian or just so happened to be Russians from the Ukraine or some irregulars or ...
I had thought it was elements of Vlasov Russian Liberation Army (see post #45), but that has been called into question. I also need to do a bunch more research (and post some references). ;-)
Amen!
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