Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – coincides with the 27th of Nisan (on the Hebrew calendar) to mark the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, when Jewish resistance fighters defied the Nazis and fought for freedom and dignity.
The Nazis intended to start deportations out of the Warsaw Ghetto on April 19, 1943 – the eve of Passover that year – but instead found a desolate ghetto, as most of the residents were hiding. An armed self-defense unit named the Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB), made up of approximately 200 people, used grenades and pistols to rise up against the Nazis. This was the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The image below is from our collection, donated to us by Aviva F. Blumberg, who resided in an orphanage in Otwock, Poland while waiting to be reunited with her father. The photo shows children in an orphanage marching in Warsaw to commemorate the third anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. One of the signs reads “Dom Dziecka Otwocku” (children’s home of Otwock).
