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19.04.2024

A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II

A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II, Warsaw 18 April 2024; Photo: Sławek Kasper, IPN
A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II, Warsaw 18 April 2024; Photo: Sławek Kasper, IPN
A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II, Warsaw 18 April 2024; Photo: Sławek Kasper, IPN
A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II, Warsaw 18 April 2024; Photo: Sławek Kasper, IPN
A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II, Warsaw 18 April 2024; Photo: Sławek Kasper, IPN
A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II, Warsaw 18 April 2024; Photo: Sławek Kasper, IPN
A commemoration of Polish and Jewish victims of World War II, Warsaw 18 April 2024; Photo: Sławek Kasper, IPN

On 18 April 2024, on the eve of the 81st anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a ceremony commemorating Polish and Jewish victims of World War II was held at the Monument to the Joint Martyrdom of Jews and Poles in Warsaw. The ceremony was attended by Mateusz Szpytma, Ph.D., the Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance.

The ceremony was organized by the Ministry of Defense together with the Nissenbaum Family Foundation.

The monument to the Joint Martyrdom of Jews and Poles at 21 Gibalskiego Street was established in 1989 on the initiative of the Foundation and commemorates the victims of Nazism murdered and buried in the area during World War II.

After the ceremony, IPN Deputy President Mateusz Szpytma paid tribute to Pawel Frenkel - one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, commanding the Jewish Military Union - by laying a wreath on his symbolic grave at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw's Wola district.

 

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On 19 April 1943, fighters from the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) put up armed resistance to German troops who were liquidating the ghetto. It was the last act of the tragedy of Warsaw's Jews, who were being transported to Treblinka to be exterminated . The uprising lasted less than a month, and its tragic epilogue was the blowing up of the Great Synagogue in Tłomackie Street by the Germans on 16 May 1943. It was then that SS General Jürgen Stroop, commanding the operation of suppressing the uprising - the author of a report documenting the course of the fighting in the ghetto, was able to announce that "the Jewish quarter in Warsaw no longer exists."


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