THE BOOK FAIR

Ber Mark

Author:      Ber Mark

Published: 1975

Genre:        Holocaust Non-Fiction

Cover:        Paperback

Pages:        200

Review:

Ber Mark’s non-fiction, historical book, “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”, documents the struggle of the starving, Jewish Ghetto fighters, against the German war machine.

The Germans murdered over one-hundred thousand Jews, in the Warsaw Ghetto, from the fall of 1940, through the summer of 1942.

Jewish resistance had long been brewing in the Ghetto.  The resistance had been opposed by the Judenrat, the council imposed on the Ghetto, by the Germans.  There were several resistance movements in the Ghetto:  socialist, communist, Zionist, Bundist (not to be confused with American Bundist, a pro-German party), and individual units, all succeeding in buying small arms, creating spy sources, training fighters.  The two largest resistance groups were the Jewish Fighters Organization, and the Yiddisher Militerisher Farband (the Jewish Military Alliance.)

The JFO was comprised of anti-fascist movements, with socialist and communist workers movements; the Farband was comprised of the Zionist Betar movement, former combatants, and bourgeoisie.

The Resistance carried out revenge attacks on informers.  The Farband eliminated traitors, Gestapo Agents and Jews who collaborated.  This included members of the Zagew, Jews implanted in the Ghetto, by the Nazis, to report on the resistance.   By 1943, the Jews willing to fight, instead of to die formed a standing, in the Ghetto.

The Germans readied to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto.  On April 13, 1943, the German forces marched into the Ghetto; the Ukrainians and Poles led in the troops with patriotic song.  The Resistance answered with a shocking volley of fire, the Nazis witnessed their fellow soldiers die under the hail of bullets.

The first half of the book details the battles between the starved, scantily armed Ghetto fighters of 1000, and the wed fed, heavily armed, 3000 Germans, using heavy artillery and tanks.  The Germans also maintained twice their number in back up troops, outside the Ghetto.

General Juergen Stroop led his German troops alongside the Poles, Latvian, and Ukrainians, eager for a fight against the Jews.

Jewish fighters were led by their individual commanders, most notably, Mordekhai Anielewicz, who perished in the battle for the Ghetto.

The Polish Underground, led by Major Henryk Iwanski, succeeded in acquiring many weapons for the Ghetto fighters.  The People’s Guard also carried out joint operations with Ghetto fighters, and the Land Army, once participated in a joint maneuver.  Fighters from the People’s Guard also saved some few embattled Jewish fighters from the sewers, and then led them to the forests.

Following a skirmish, in which Jewish fighters killed German soldiers, the Germans retaliated by murdering every patient in the Jewish hospital, including infants; pregnant women were bayoneted. 

When the heavily armed Germans could not win against the rag tag army with bullets, the Germans injected gas into the ghetto.

The second half of the book is dedicated to the documentation.  Letters and dispatches from the Ghetto to the Aryan side, including pleas for help.

Also included are communiqués from Stroop, to his headquarters, reporting on his progress.

The Warsaw Ghetto Resistance was the first armed resistance to fight against the Germans, in the midst of WW II; three hundred thousand Jews were murdered in the Ghetto.

The author poetically describes the Jewish fighters using the biblical analogy of the Burning Bush, in that though the Bush burned, it was not consumed, and neither was the morale of the Jewish fighters, or the memory of Jewish resistance.

 

Ber Mark, author and Jewish Historian died in Warsaw Poland in 1966.  He was 58 years old; his work was subsequently translated from Yiddish.