#33 - The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Heroic, Rash Act, or Justified ?

In this episode we look at the Yom Ha-Shoah and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Why did the Knesset establish Yom Ha-Shoah on the 27th of Nisan? Is this the best time to remember the Holocaust? Was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising historically justified? What was the Historical footprint of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising? Did the Germans react to it? Did it make any change in how the Poles interacted with the Jews? 

 Research notes:

  The best one volume book on the Holocaust is Martin Gilbert’s famed volume, The Holocaust https://www.amazon.com/dp/0006371949/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_XGSZNQTJE7NN9HAFHKF3, weaves narrative and has an incredible amount of very important information.  His narrative on The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is only based on Zuckerman’s narrative and makes no mention of ZZW. 

  Saul Freidlander’s The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000UZQH8E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_7VZ62R64562HH89CPRGM is another very important one volume work on the Holocaust that was consulted. 

  In terms of understanding the general attitude in Germany at the time Goldhagen’s somewhat controversial book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679772685/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_SG1BJQR7SS2JW8EH98SS, is very key. Similarly, Lawrence Rees, Auschwitz: A New History https://www.amazon.com/dp/1586483579/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_98YXQ14TSASRW4VDB01S, is outstanding and has many unique interviews that a Jewish Historian would never get. 

 

  One of the most important digests of general information that I use on the Warsaw Ghetto pre uprising is, Kiddush Hashem: Jewish Religious and Cultural Life in Poland During the Holocaust (English and Yiddish Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881251186/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_MR266PFSBV6RZMCYHN5W. 

 

   In terms of the basic story of the Great Deportation of summer 42, The Warsaw Ghetto Diaries by Hillel Seidman (1997-12-04) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FIZQO9M/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_MH06VM2CX040AG2P2T2Q

 

  Moshe Arens carefully and relatively objectively examines the ZOB vs ZZW issues and also most of the basic story from before the Great Deportation through the Revolt in his monumental Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto https://www.amazon.com/dp/1094763284/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_SNN0RM9WXAJWBBV0EQ9E  

  The information about the Sobibor revolt and about Toibi Thomas Blatt’s experiences is from the standard work on Sobibor, Escape from Sobibor: Revised and Updated Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1480458511/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_1X0J722H02NFM19J0BQ4, which also is full of very important interviews of most of the Sobibor survivors. 

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Rabbi Arnie Wittenstein is a well known Torah scholar, Tanach expert, and Historian. He has lectured in the Mir Yeshiva, Torat Shraga, and and many Shuls internationally.

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