Children…

Revolt in the ghetto
In spite of inhumane living conditions and hopeless odds,
attempts to resist were made in ghettos. In the Warsaw ghetto
there were two revolts. The picture shows captured resistance
fighters being taken away. Others managed to escape. Simcha
Rotem, who survived, describes the second revolt in spring 1943
and his escape from the ghetto:
”During the first three days of fighting, the Jews had the upper
hand. The Germans retreated at once to the ghetto entrance, carrying
dozens of wounded with them. From then on, their onslaught
came entirely from the outside, through air attack and artillery.
We couldn’t resist the bombing, especially their method of setting
fire to the ghetto. The whole ghetto was ablaze (…) I don’t think
the human tongue can describe the horror we went through in the
ghetto. In the streets, if you can call them that, for nothing was
left of the streets, we had to step over heaps of corpses. There
was no room to get around them. Besides fighting the Germans,
we fought hunger, and thirst. We had no contact with the outside
world; we were completely isolated, cut off from the world. We
were in such a state that we could no longer understand the very
meaning of why we went on fighting. We thought of attempting a
breakout to the Aryan part of Warsaw, outside the ghetto. (…)
Early in the morning we suddenly emerged into a street in
broad daylight. Imagine us on that sunny May 1, stunned to find
ourselves in the street, among normal people. We’d come from
another planet. (…) Around the ghetto, there were always suspicious
Poles who grabbed Jews. By a miracle, we escaped them.
In Aryan Warsaw, life went on as naturally and normally as before.
The cafés operated normally, the restaurants, buses, streetcars,
and movies were open. The ghetto was an isolated island amid
normal life.”
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