Status: 04/20/2023 11:55 a.m
The Bundestag remembered the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. Bundestag President Bas described the uprising 80 years ago as a struggle in which “dignity and courage faced the deepest contempt for human beings and cruelty.”
The Bundestag commemorated the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 80 years ago with a minute’s silence. Bundestag President Bärbel Bas paid tribute to the courage of the people. “Today we bow to the Jewish insurgents and all the victims of the Warsaw ghetto,” said the SPD politician. “We bow to the murdered, abducted, tortured, disenfranchised, humiliated and robbed Jews of Europe.”
“The Jewish fighters had no hope of victory,” said Bas. Nevertheless, they saw it as their duty “to die publicly in battle to make the world aware of their situation,” Bas quoted one of the commanders of the uprising, Marek Edelman. It was a hopeless fight, “in which dignity and courage competed against the deepest contempt for human beings and cruelty.” After her speech and before entering the agenda, she asked those present to stand up for a minute’s silence.
Jews fought back against the National Socialists
In November 1940, the Germans had set up the ghetto in the occupied Polish capital because of the alleged risk of epidemics and crammed Jews from all over Poland there. About 445,000 people were trapped in the downtown area.
When the National Socialists wanted to deport the last people from the Jewish ghetto to the extermination camps on April 19, 1943, an uprising broke out. It was almost four weeks before the SS finally violently crushed the protest. A total of 12,000 people died in the fighting. More than 30,000 more were then shot and 7,000 transported to extermination camps. The ghetto was burned down, only a few people survived.
Yesterday, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier took part in a commemoration event in front of the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto in Warsaw to mark the anniversary. There he asked forgiveness for the crimes of the German occupiers in World War II.