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Boruch Spiegel, Fighter in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Dies at 93

Posted by admin on May 21st, 2013

Boruch Spiegel, one of the last surviving fighters of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943, in which a vastly outgunned band of 750 young Jews held off German soldiers for more than a month with crude arms and Molotov cocktails, died on May 9 in Montreal. He was 93.

His death was confirmed by his son, Julius, a retired parks commissioner of Brooklyn. Mr. Spiegel lived in Montreal.

The Warsaw ghetto uprising has been regarded as the signal episode of resistance to the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum calls it the first armed urban rebellion in German-occupied Europe.

As a young man, Mr. Spiegel was active in the leftist Jewish Labor Bund, and when it became clear that the Germans were not just deporting Jews but systematically killing them in death camps like Treblinka, Bundists joined with other left-wing groups to form the Jewish Combat Organization, known by its Polish acronym ZOB.

In January 1943, when German soldiers entered the ghetto for another deportation — 300,000 Jews had already been sent to Treblinka or otherwise murdered in the summer of 1942 — ZOB fighters fought back for three days and killed or wounded several dozen Germans, seized weapons and forced the stunned Germans to retreat.

“We didn’t have enough weapons, we didn’t have enough bullets,” Mr. Spiegel once told an interviewer. “It was like fighting a well-equipped army with firecrackers.”

In the early morning of April 19, the eve of Passover, a German force, equipped with tanks and artillery, tried again, surrounding the ghetto walls. Mr. Spiegel was on guard duty and, according to his son-in-law, Eugene Orenstein, a retired professor of Jewish history at McGill University, gave the signal to launch the uprising. The scattered ZOB fighters, joined by a right-wing Zionist counterpart, peppered the Germans from attics and underground bunkers, sending the Germans into retreat once more. Changing tactics, the Germans began using flamethrowers to burn down the ghetto house by house and smoke out those in hiding. On May 8, ZOB’s headquarters, at 18 Mila Street, was destroyed. The group’s commander, Mordechai Anielewicz, is believed to have taken his own life, but scattered resistance continued for several more weeks in what was now rubble.

By then, Mr. Spiegel and 60 or so other fighters had spirited their way out of the ghetto through sewers. One was Chaike Belchatowska, whom he would marry. They joined up with Polish partisans in a forest.

“He was very modest, a reluctant hero,” his son Julius said. “He was given an opportunity and he took it. I don’t think he was braver or more resourceful than anyone else.”

Mr. Spiegel was born on Oct. 4, 1919, and reared in Warsaw, the son of an Orthodox woman and a leather worker who ran a small cottage industry that specialized in briefcases and spats. After the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Mr. Spiegel and his brother Beryl made their way to Bialystok, in eastern Poland, which was newly occupied by the Soviets. When Beryl went back to Warsaw to get his parents and two sisters, he became involved in the Bundist underground. Mr. Spiegel joined him. While Jews all around them were taken for deportation, the family held out as long as it did because the Spiegel apartment had a steel door and the German police did not take the trouble to break it down.

Nevertheless, Mr. Spiegel’s father died of malnutrition and his mother, two sisters and Beryl perished in a manner that Mr. Spiegel never learned. Mr. Spiegel nearly died in a slave labor camp and was taken to the staging area for Treblinka, but managed to escape and return to the Warsaw ghetto.

Even after the ghetto uprising was crushed, he fought with partisans and went back to Warsaw for a revolt by Poles in August-September 1944. Warsaw was liberated on Jan. 17, 1945.

Ms. Belchatowska wanted to remain in Poland, but Mr. Orenstein said that Mr. Spiegel had “felt he could not live on the soil of the graves of his dear ones, and he didn’t believe there was a future for Jewish life in Poland.”

The couple went to Sweden, where they married and gave birth to Julius. Mrs. Spiegel died in 2002.

In addition to Julius, Mr. Spiegel is survived by a daughter, Mindy Spiegel, and four grandchildren.

In 1948, the Spiegels went to Montreal, where Mr. Spiegel took up his father’s leather craft, first as a worker making handbags, then establishing his own factory and finally serving as the foreman of a purse factory. In 2003, on the uprising’s 60th anniversary, Mr. Spiegel and the five other living ZOB fighters were honored by the Polish government. Dr. Orenstein said there were only two fighters left, Pnina Greenspan and Simcha Rotem, both in Israel.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/world/europe/boruch-spiegel-who-battled-nazis-in-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-dies-at-93.html?_r=0

President of the Republic of Poland Bronisław Komorowski visited the Auschwtiz Memorial

Posted by admin on May 17th, 2013

On 17th May, the President of the Republic of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the Memorial Site and the Auschwitz Museum. In front of the building of the former camp’s crematorium and gas chamber no. I, he laid a wreath and paid tribute to the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.

It was in this place in August 1940, two months after the opening of the camp by the Germans, intended at first for Polish political prisoners, that the burning of the corpses of the victims began. It was also here, less than two years later, that the killing of Jews at Auschwitz on a massive scale began before the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau were built.

Bronisław Komorowski wrote an inscription in the guestbook of the Museum. Photo: Bartosz BartyzelBronisław Komorowski also wrote an inscription in the guestbook of the Museum. “The enclosure of the former camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau has been designated a place on Earth where those who visit should say out loud: ‘This shall not be repeated!’ Our common goal is to make this symbol to the fall of humanity a warning for all time, a sign of opposition against evil, crime and the destruction of human dignity. At the same time, it would be a cry to take care of the most important values and human rights” — wrote the President of the RP.

During the President’s visit, he met with the director of the Museum, Dr Piotr M.A. Cywiński, and familiarised himself with the concept of the forthcoming new main exhibition.

A new exhibition presenting the main functions and the history of the Auschwitz concentration will be ready to open in the coming years, in a six camp buildings, and will replace the current exhibition that has been in that place since 1955.

President Bronisław Komorowski in the building of the former camp’s crematorium and gas chamber no. 1 where he laid a wreath and paid tribute to the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. Photo: Tomasz Pielesz “The scenario of the new main exhibition is now ready. At the moment, we have begun work on the design of the project. The works will last nearly ten years, due to the need for comprehensive repair and maintenance on the six blocks that will encompass all three parts of the new exhibition” — said Cywiński.

This is not the first visit by President Bronisław Komorowski to the Auschwitz Memorial Site. In 2011, he took part in the celebration of the 66th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He said, among other things: “Here in Auschwitz-Birkenau, as perhaps nowhere else, we are painfully confronted with the nightmare of war and with the memory of the nightmare of war—the war that cost the lives of many millions of people. Yet here in Auschwitz the knowledge and memory of all the horrific crimes are focused as if by a lens. This place is one of the symbols of the tragedy that the world lived through, that Europe lived through, and that the nations that had to grapple with the great challenge of the wave of hatred, the wave of Nazism, lived through.”

Source: http://en.auschwitz.org/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1103&Itemid=7

German police arrest 93-year-old ‘Auschwitz guard’

Posted by admin on May 6th, 2013

A 93-year-old man who was deported from the US for lying about his Nazi past was arrested by German authorities on Monday on allegations he served as an Auschwitz death camp guard, Stuttgart prosecutors said.

Hans Lipschis was taken into custody after authorities concluded there was “compelling evidence” he was involved in crimes at Auschwitz while posted there from 1941 to 1945, prosecutor Claudia Krauth said.

Lipschis has acknowledged being assigned to an SS guard unit at Auschwitz but maintains he only served as a cook and was not involved in any war crimes.

Krauth said, however, that a judge upheld her office’s request for an arrest warrant after concluding there was enough evidence to hold him before charges on accessory to murder are brought. Bringing formal charges would take a further two months, she said.

In the meantime, Krauth said a doctor has confirmed Lipschis’ health remains good enough for him to be kept in detention.

Lipschis does not currently have a lawyer, and a public defender has not yet been appointed, she said.

Lipschis was deported from the US in 1983 for lying about his Nazi past when he emigrated to Chicago in the 1950s. With no evidence linking him to specific war crimes, however, it was impossible under previous German law to bring charges against him in Germany.

But the case is now being pursued on the same legal theory used to prosecute former Ohio carworker John Demjanjuk, who died last year while appealing against his 2011 conviction in Germany for accessory to murder on the grounds that he was a guard at the Sobibor death camp.

Under the new line of thinking, even without proof of participation in a specific crime, a person who served at a death camp can be charged with accessory to murder because the camp’s sole function was to kill people.

Even though the Demjanjuk conviction is not considered legally binding because he died before his appeals were exhausted, the special German prosecutors’ office that deals with Nazi crimes has said about 50 other people in the same category are being investigated.

Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called the Lipschis arrest a good start.

“This is a very positive step, we welcome the arrest,” he said in a telephone interview from Israel. “I hope this will only be the first of many arrests, trials and convictions of death camp guards.”

In an interview last month with Die Welt newspaper at his home in south-west Germany, Lipschis said he spent his entire time as a cook and had witnessed none of the atrocities. He did say, however, that he “heard about” what was going on.

About 1.5 million people, primarily Jews, were killed at the Auschwitz camp complex between 1940 and 1945.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/06/german-police-arrest-auschwitz-guard

Natalie Weiss, Shalhevet High School, USA

Posted by admin on April 28th, 2013

I highly recommend Lukasz Lipinski as a guide for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Lukasz is knowledgeable, professional, passionate and sensitive. He responded immediately to my email inquiry and arranged my car transport to and from my hotel in Krakow to Auschwitz. He guided me through every part of the camps, sharing historical facts and stories that made my tour an eye-opening and meaningful experience. I had studied the Holocaust and knew a lot about the subject and found I had so much more to learn, thanks to Lukasz. Without hesitation, I whole-heartedly recommend Lukasz for anyone making this important visit.

To sirens and church bells, Poland marks 70th anniversary of Warsaw ghetto uprising

Posted by admin on April 19th, 2013

Sirens wailed and church bells tolled in Warsaw as largely Roman Catholic Poland paid homage Friday to the Jewish fighters who rose up 70 years ago against German Nazi forces in the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

The mournful sounds marked the start of state ceremonies that were led by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski at the iconic Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. The president was joined by officials from Poland, Israel and beyond as well as a survivor of the fighting, Simha Rotem, to honour the first large-scale rebellion against the Germans during World War II.

About 750 Jews with few arms and no military training attacked a much larger and well-equipped German force that was about to send the remaining residents of the ghetto to death camps. The revolt was crushed the following month, and the ghetto was razed to the ground, most of its residents killed.

“We knew that the end would be the same for everyone. The thought of waging an uprising was dictated by our determination. We wanted to choose the kind of death we would die,”said Rotem, an 88-year-old who is among a tiny number of surviving fighters and was the key figure at the ceremony. “But to this day I have doubts as to whether we had the right to carry out the uprising and shorten the lives of people by a day, a week, or two weeks. No one gave us that right and I have to live with my doubts.”

Rotem’s uncertainty is in stark contrast to how the world remembers the revolt. Though a clear military defeat, it is hailed as a moral victory for the Jewish fighters, who refused to go without a fight to the gas chambers. It is widely viewed as a model of resistance against the odds and is often celebrated in Israel, part of a never-again ethos that stresses the importance of self-defence.

“The Nazi Germans made a hell on earth of the ghetto,” Komorowski said in a speech. “Persecuting the Jews appealed to the lowest of human instincts.”

During the ceremonies, Komorowski bestowed one of the country’s highest honours on Rotem — the Grand Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland. Later the two of them, along with Israeli Education Minister Shai Piron and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a Polish Auschwitz survivor who helped rescue Jews during the war, walked side-by-side to the monument and bowed before it as soldiers laid a wreath for them.

To a military drum, other dignitaries followed them in paying their respects at the memorial to suffering and struggle, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, members of Poland’s Jewish community and U.S. Ambassador Stephen Mull along with an American survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, Estelle Laughlin.

Rabbis also recited mournful Hebrew prayers as they were joined by three Polish army chaplains, one Catholic, one Eastern Orthodox and one Protestant. Psalm 130, which starts, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! …” was recited in Hebrew and Polish.

Officials had announced that a second surviving fighter, Havka Folman Raban, would also participate, but she was not featured in television coverage and it was unclear if she actually was there.

Throughout Warsaw, national and city flags fluttered from city buses, trams and public buildings as authorities made an unprecedented effort to encourage Poles to remember the ghetto fighters and Jewish suffering during the war. Warsaw city hall said it is the first time that churches in the capital rang their bells to mark the anniversary of the uprising.

Though the Warsaw ghetto uprising is well-known worldwide, it hasn’t received the same level of attention among Poles, for whom a separate city-wide revolt in 1944 plays a much more critical role to national identity.

Authorities, however, have been trying to change this and to convince Poles that the Warsaw ghetto uprising is a key moment not just in Jewish but also in broader Polish history.

Newspaper articles in recent days have stressed the Polishness of the Jewish revolt, while officials have encouraged Warsaw residents to get involved in a month of commemorations that ends on May 16. That is the day in 1943 when the Nazis blew up the Great Synagogue, a jewel of 19th-century architecture, to symbolize their crushing of the revolt.

The events Friday followed an evening of commemorations on Thursday featuring the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Israel also marked the anniversary of the uprising on its Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 7, which coincided with the Hebrew date of the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/to-sirens-and-church-bells-poland-marks-70th-anniversary-of-warsaw-ghetto-uprising/article11402922/comments/