Some Random, Rare Large Pictures From WW2

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A Waffen SS NCO with a sniper somewhere on the Eastern Front during the Second World War

Waffen SS soldiers dig out a Soviet sniper on the Eastern Front. 1942

Men of the 5th SS "Viking" Division manoeuvre a Panther tank over a wooden bridge. Location: Somewhere in the Eastern Front. Time: Unknown.

Trying to make a living in difficult times. A Russian boys cleans the boots of German soldiers at a Russian railway station. 1943.

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Fighting a losing war. 1944. Ukraine. German paratroopers take a break between fighting.

January 1943. The Don Front. This German is the lone survivor of an entire division. CThe fighting was intense on the Don. The Sixth Army was encircled at Stalingrad. The Red Army wanted to reach Rostov and cut off the escaping Germans from the Caucasus.

1942. A station near Budapest. Hungarian soldiers leaving for the Eastern Front.

Somewhere on the Eastern Front. German soldiers ready to fire a 20 mm Flak gun on the edge of a corn field. In the background lies a 37 mm PaK 35/36 gun.

September 23, 1944. Operation Market Garden. A British soldier armed with a M1 carbine shoots at Germans at a ruined Hartenstein hotel in the Netherlands.

Life goes on. A teacher with school children at a destroyed Stalingrad. March 1943.

Germans move into Poland. September, 1939.

A curious Red Army soldiers looks at an abandoned German 1918 model, 210 mm gun. Stalingrad. 1943

Greece. May 1941. An Italian and a German soldier with the Parthenon in the background.

Winston Churchill at the entrance of the Livadia Palace during the Yalta Conference in 1945.

A Soviet sniper with a SVT-40 rifle at the Volkhov Front during the Siege Of Leningrad (1941-43)

September-October, 1939. Polish POW receive soup.

A Soviet T-34 tank on the streets of Prague. May 1945.

1940. Norway. British POW walk on the streets of a Norwegian city.

A German soldier sits atop a house in Stalino (Now Donetsk, Ukraine)

The formidable German fighter Focke-Wulf 190A-0 during test in 1941.

German soldiers near the Austrian town of Auland. May 2, 1945

1944. Two Waffen SS soldiers approach a hut in the Soviet countryside.

American soldiers peer through binoculars as they approach the coast of Iwo Jima. February 20, 1945. The mountain visible is Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano.

Eastern Front. WW2. German soldiers at the graves of fallen comrades.

German propaganda poster in occupied Smolensk, Soviet Union during WW2.

Germans occupied this Soviet government assembly building in Smolensk, Russia.

Smolensk, Russia again. A cemetery for dead German soldiers.

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The man who almost assassinated Adolph Hitler: Claus von Stauffenberg

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.. Count Claus von Stauffenberg was born in one of the oldest aristocratic families in Southern Germany, in the family, closely related to the royal house of Baden-Wurttemberg - father Earl held a high position at the court of the last king of Baden-Württemberg. Klaus was the third child in the family. His elder brothers were Berthold and Alexander. Claus von Stauffenberg was brought up in the spirit of Catholic piety, German patriotism and monarchical conservatism. He received an excellent education, marked his literary talents ... Zeitgeist, education, love of country, all this could not lead him to a military career. Claus Philipp Maria entered military service in 1926. Stauffenberg enthusiastically ... took Hitler's rise to power in 1933, believing in the fact that the Nazi regime would ensure a revival of Germany. Later, however, his attitude to the National Socialist ideas changed. The reason for this was the atrocities committed against the Jews and the persecution of religious ministers in Germany. At the beginning of World War II, Stauffenberg was an officer in the Bavarian Cavalry Regiment, participated in the occupation of the Sudetenland in Polish and French campaigns, was at the German-Soviet front, and in 1943 - in North Africa. Seriously injured in Tunisia (loss of his left eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left hand), Klaus miraculously survived and returned to service. By this time he had realized that Hitler was leading Germany to disaster ...

The family man: Claus Stauffenberg with wife Nina Baronesse von Lerchenfeld, Baroness von Lerchenfel. They married in 1933.

Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (15 November 1907 – 20 July 1944) was a German army officer and Catholic aristocrat who was one of the leading members of the failed 20 July plot of 1944 to kill German dictator Adolf Hitler (Operation Valkyries) and remove the Nazi Party from power in World War II Germany. Along with Henning von Tresckow and Hans Oster, he was one of the central figures of the German Resistance movement within the Wehrmacht.

Stauffenberg (left) with Hitler at the Wolfsschanze, Rastenburg, five days before the assassination attempt. Alos in the picture with his back is Friedrich Fromm, the commander in chief of the Reserve Army. 

A young von Stauffenberg

KNOW ABOUT VON STAUFFENBERG

Stauffenberg was much more than an action hero driven by the kind of simple moral imperative that suits Hollywood's desire to portray everything in terms of starkly opposed opposites of good and evil. He found moral guidance in a complex mixture of Catholic religious precepts, an aristocratic sense of honour, Ancient Greek ethics, and German Romantic poetry. Above all, perhaps, his sense of morality was formed under the influence of the poet Stefan George, whose ambition is was to revive a "secret Germany" that would sweep away the materialism of the Weimar Republic and restore German life to its true spirituality. Inspired by George, Stauffenberg came to look for a revival of an idealized medieval Reich, in which Europe would attain a new level of culture and civilization under German leadership.

VON STAUFFENBERG: A DESPERATE HERO

Stauffenberg was confident that an anti-Nazi government would be able to work out an arrangement with the Allies and avoid unconditional surrender. Julius Leber sought in vain to disabuse him of this illusion. In a paper apparently written by Stauffenberg himself and left behind in army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse on July 20, the hope was expressed that Germany would remain a "significant factor in the constellation of powers" and that the Wehrmacht would be an "effective instrument" in bringing about negotiations "on an equal footing" with the Allies.

The tenacity with which Stauffenberg clung to this misconception has often been noted. Perhaps, as some commentators have speculated, he needed it as much as he needed his moral outrage in order to take action. After all, any clearheaded assessment of the situation could only have led to the conclusion that events should be allowed to play themselves out to the bitter end. The historian Gordon Craig regards the German conspirators as incurable "romantics," and his characterization is probably apt, even in respect to Stauffenberg. But the critical undertone of that judgment denies them the dignity of their efforts, however desperate, impulsive, and irrational they may have been. The particular heroism of the German resistance resides precisely in the hopelessness of the conspirators' position, in what one historian calls the "last hurrah of a lost cause."

Utterly without support or encouragement from within or without, they carried on the struggle even though, by the end, no national or tangible political interest could be advanced. Thus the assassination attempt of July 20 was launched in the spirit of Tresckow's words to Stauffenberg: "coûte que coûte"-do it "whatever the cost." Stauffenberg surely knew that the political goals he was serving by killing Hitler were now a mere fantasy. To the Allied demand for unconditional surrender he and his friends responded with an equally unconditional determination to act, motivated at this point by only the most abstract and general ideals: the dignity of humankind, justice, responsibility, self-respect. It is revealing that all discussion of the "right psychological moment," which had played so prominent a role in the debates of previous years, had long since ceased.

The dashing Wehrmacht officer in 1936

After several unsuccessful tries by Stauffenberg to meet Hitler, Göring and Himmler when they were together, he went ahead with the attempt at Wolfsschanze on 20 July, 1944. Stauffenberg entered the briefing room carrying a briefcase containing two small bombs. The location had unexpectedly been changed from the subterranean Führerbunker to Speer's wooden barrack/hut. He left the room to arm the first bomb with specially-adapted pliers, a task made difficult because he had lost his right hand and had only three fingers on his left. A guard knocked and opened the door, urging him to hurry as the meeting was about to begin. As a result, Stauffenberg was able to arm only one of the bombs. He left the second bomb with his aide-de-camp, Werner von Haeften, and returned to the briefing room, where he placed the briefcase under the conference table, as close as he could to Hitler. Some minutes later, he excused himself and left the room. After his exit, the briefcase was moved by Colonel Heinz Brandt.

KNOW THE REAL VON STAUFFENBERG

But even in the late 1930s, he was markedly more sympathetic to National Socialism than were many more senior officers. His relatives were wont to describe him as the only "brown" member of the family. While he was later to lose altogether his enthusiasm for National Socialism, he never lost his contempt for parliamentary democracy. This alone would make him ill-fitted to serve as a model for the conduct and ideas of future generations.

Goering inspects the room after the explosion

When the explosion tore through the hut, Stauffenberg was convinced that no one in the room could have survived. Although four people were killed and almost all survivors were injured, Hitler himself was shielded from the blast by the heavy, solid-oak conference table and was only slightly wounded.

Stauffenberg and Haeften quickly left and drove to the nearby airfield. After his return to Berlin, Stauffenberg immediately began to motivate his friends to initiate the second phase: the military coup against the Nazi leaders. When Joseph Goebbels announced by radio that Hitler had survived and later, after Hitler himself personally spoke on the state radio, the conspirators realized that the coup had failed. They were tracked to their Bendlerstrasse offices and overpowered after a brief shoot-out, during which Stauffenberg was wounded in the shoulder.

THE REAL VON STAUFFENBERG

The over-ambitious military strategy adopted by Hitler in 1941, which led to disaster at Moscow in January 1942, was repeated on an even greater scale in the following year, and it became clear to Stauffenberg that it was overstretching Germany's resources to such an extent that failure was becoming inevitable. Even more important, the mass killings of Soviet civilians behind the Eastern Front, the murder of three and a half million Soviet prisoners of war, the looting and destruction of Soviet property, above all, the shooting of hundreds of thousands of Jews, convinced Stauffenberg that the National Socialist regime was recklessly squandering the goodwill that it had initially met among the peoples it had freed from Stalin's yoke. It was betraying his idea of a new Europe under the benevolent rule of the Reich. Indeed, Stauffenberg thought it was betraying the ideals of National Socialism itself.

The death sentence for Stauffenberg

STAUFFENBERG SHOT

In the courtyard outside, several military vehicles pulled up, their headlights glaring. Along all the sides of the square, groups of curious onlookers gathered. In the middle stood an execution squad consisting of Lieutenant Werner Schady and ten noncommissioned officers. As the prisoners emerged from the staircase, they were positioned in front of a small pile of sand. Olbricht was the first to be shot. Next it was Stauffenberg's turn, but just as the squad fired, Haeften, in a defiant gesture, threw himself into the hail of bullets. When the squad again took aim at Stauffenberg, he shouted, "Long live sacred Cermany." Before the sound of his voice died away, shots resounded. 

In what turned out to be a futile attempt to save his own life, co-conspirator General Oberst Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army present in the Bendlerblock (Headquarters of the Army), charged other conspirators in an impromptu court martial and condemned the ringleaders of the conspiracy to death. Stauffenberg and fellow officers Colonel General Olbricht, Lieutenant von Haeften, and Oberst (Colonel) Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim were shot before 1:00 a.m. that night (21 July 1944) by a makeshift firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which was lit by the headlights of a truck.

As his turn came, Stauffenberg spoke his last words, "Es lebe unser heiliges Deutschland!" ("Long live our sacred Germany!") Others say the last words were: "Es lebe das geheime Deutschland"("Long live the secret Germany!") Fromm ordered that the executed officers (his former co-conspirators) receive an immediate burial with military honors in the Matthäus Churchyard in Berlin's Schöneberg district. The next day, however, Stauffenberg's body was exhumed by the SS, stripped of his medals, and cremated.

HIMMLER WANTED TO KILL STAUFFENBERG'S FAMILY

 Himmler discussed the failed coup at length at a meeting of gauleiters in Posen two weeks after the event, declaring that he would "introduce absolute responsibility of kin ... a very old custom practiced among our forefathers." One had only to read the Teutonic sagas, he said: "When they placed a family under the ban and declared it outlawed or when there was a blood feud in a family, they were utterly consistent. . . . This man has committed treason; his blood is bad; there is traitor's blood in him, that must be wiped out. And in the blood feud the entire clan was wiped out down to the last member. And so, too, will Count Stauffenberg's family be wiped out down to the last member.

Accordingly, Himmler ordered relatives of the Stauffenberg brothers arrested, from their wives all the way to a three-year-old child and the eighty-five-year-old father of a cousin. A third Stauffenberg brother, Alexander, was not involved in the plot but was nevertheless returned from Athens to Berlin, interrogated at length, and dispatched to a concentration camp. The property of all relatives was seized. After an interrogation that yielded nothing of interest, Countess Stauffenberg was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, as was her mother. Her children were placed in an orphanage.

IF STAUFFENBERG HAD SUCCEEDED.....

Had Stauffenberg's bomb succeeded in killing Hitler, it is unlikely that the military coup planned to follow it would have moved the leading conspirators smoothly into power. Large parts of the army, the SS and the NSDAP would have resisted by force of arms, and a civil war would have been the most probable result. There can be little doubt, however, that this would have brought huge military advantages to the Allies, and that the war would have come to an end several months sooner than it did, with the consequent saving of millions of lives.

Stauffenberg's resting place

Today, there is a stone in memorial of this event.

Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg (Stauffenberg's wife he had married in 1933) and others were awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Honorary Medal of the City of Bamberg for their commitment to the preservation of the old town of Bamberg.

FROM THE BBC
The following day Adolf Hitler made a radio broadcast to the German nation detailing the failed assassination and thanked fate for allowing him to continue his "work".

The planned coup, known as the July plot, was led by senior military leaders like Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben and General Ludwig Beck.

After Claus von Stauffenberg had placed the briefcase under the table next to Hitler, he left the building, heard the bomb explode and assumed Hitler was dead.

He flew to Berlin to join Von Witzleben and Beck and take over using the German Home Army. But through a series of lucky circumstances Hitler was only slightly injured, though three
other people were killed.

Von Stauffenberg was arrested the same day and shot. The rest of the conspirators were tried and hanged or offered the chance to commit suicide.

Eight of those executed were hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks and their executions filmed and shown to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.

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Suggested Reading

Countdown to Valkyrie: THE JULY PLOT TO ASSASSINATE HITLER

By

NIGEL JONES

This book is vastly superior to the recent movie. Author Nigel Jones initially covers some of the previous assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler. Hitler always credited "Providence" for his survival, and confirmation that he was to continue with his plan for Germany. The book really picks up its interest when Count Claus von Stauffenberg and his cohorts realized the war was lost with the D-Day invasion at Normandy, and put together their plan to show the world they wanted to save Germany before it was totally destroyed.

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Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie

By

MICHAEL BAIGENT and RICHARD LEIGH

Overall I found this book a good history of Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators. It tells the Valkyrie story not only in an exciting way, but with keen psychological insights that do not assume to know more about the characters and their motivation than the authors possibly could. What I found most fascinating was its exploration of the national psyche of the German nation -- the authors make the reader understand how German "volk" character, mysticism, the defeat of WWI, the Treaty of Versailles, and the Teutonic need for order and a leader all conspired to make Hitler not only a predictable leader growing out of the Weimar Republic, but an almost inevitable one.

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Stauffenberg: A Family History, 1905-1944 
By

PETER HOFFMAN

 Stauffenberg is not only a hero of Germany, but of anyone on earth who loves freedom and respects the laws of God and humanity. Stauffenberg was Germany's guardian angel, who attempted to save his nation and slay the man he deemed "the antichrist." Doctor Hoffmann paints a wonderful picture of Stauffenberg's early life and military career. He then moves into minute detail of the plot to kill Hitler and the man whom fate had chosen to lead it.

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Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of German Resistance 
by
JOACHIM FEST

The author of this book, Joachim Fest, is one of the better know of the German World War 2 historians so I was expecting a well researched and factual book. What I found was just that. Fest first takes us through a history of a number of the failed plots and people responsible before sending the second half of the book on the plot that actually got the closest with a bomb blast injuring Hitler. Fest describes the set up of the plot, what was to take place after the assassination in regards to taking control of the German government and the assumptions of what would happen with the war. We also get a chapter on what happened to the members of the plot once it failed.

Overall this is an interesting and well-constructed book. 

Uprising at the Warsaw Ghetto during WW 2. April 1943

SS assault troops capture two Jewish resistance fighters pulled from a bunker during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The original German caption reads alternately: "Pulled from a bunker" or "Bandits."

THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING 1943

The Warsaw insurgency started in January, 1943 with sporadic fighting by barely armed Jews. By the end of January the Ghetto was actually controlled by two armed Jewish organizations, one led by Mordechai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair, and Zivia Lubetkin (who survived the uprising) and the other led by Dawid Mordechaj Apfelbaum, a former officer in the Polish army. As Passover began on April 19th, Himmler's birthday present to Hitler also began, with thousands of German, Polish and Ukrainian forces attacking the Ghetto in force. The Nazis moved in at 4 a.m. spreading throughout the Ghetto. They occupied the entire Ghetto within 4 hours, believing that their extermination of the Jews could begin with ease. One can imagine their anticipation of a massacre of helpless Jews. Then, at the intersection of Mila and Zamenhofa Streets, the insurgents struck with a single captured machine gun, ample small arms fire, and many Molotov cocktails. The Germans were completely routed by the Jewish insurgents by 2 P.M., providing Hitler with a major embarrassment for his birthday.

The next day the German, Polish and Ukrainian forces moved in again and took part of the Ghetto, taking their revenge on those left behind in the Jewish hospital. I guess if they can't beat armed insurgents, they needed to make themselves feel manly by murdering infirm hospital patients. Shows how cowardly Nazis are.

The Jews counter attacked and drove the Nazis back once again. The next day the German general decidded to set fire to the Ghetto in an attempt to burn the problem. But the uprising continued, though more as a guerilla war rather than the pitched battles of the first two days of Passover. Mordechai Anielewicz was killed by a German assault on May 8. On May 16th the Germans declared victory over the now completely destroyed Ghetto. But attacks and assassinations continued as the Jews refused to give up. Fighters continued to exchange gunfire with Germans all the way into September. In October the rubble of the Ghetto was removed, leaving nothing behind.

But even after that, Jewish survivors of the 1943 Warsaw uprising, including Zivia Lubetkin, participated in the wider, predominantly Polish uprising in August 1944.

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The bodies of Jewish resisters lie in front of the ruins of a building where they were were shot by the SS during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The original German caption reads: "Bandits killed in battle."

THE UPRISING IN BRIEF

On April 19, 1943 the Nazis decided to wipe out the ghetto completely.

The move sparked an uprising by hundreds of young Jews who decided to fight rather than face near-certain death in the Nazis "Final Solution".

The revolt lasted for almost a month, as 3,000 Nazi troops battled the insurgents and burned down the ghetto.

The Nazis marked their "victory over the Jews" by blowing up Warsaw's main synagogue on May 16.

Around 7,000 Jews died in the revolt, most of them burned alive, and more than 50,000 were deported to the death camps.

Estimated Nazi losses were 300, dead and injured combined.

Source

A German gun crew in action during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

HOW THE BBC REPORTED IT

1943: Germans crush Jewish uprising

All resistance in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw has ended after 28 days of fighting.

In his operational report, the local SS commander, Brigadier Juergen Stroop, said the uprising began on 19 April when SS, police and Wehrmacht units using tanks and other armoured vehicles entered the ghetto to take Jews to the railway station for transportation to concentration camps.

They were repelled by Jews using homemade explosives, rifles, small arms and "in one case a light machine-gun".

He said his troops were involved in pitched battles day and night with groups of about 20 or 30 Jews - both men and women.

"On April 23 Himmler issued his order to complete the combing out of the Warsaw ghetto with the greatest severity and relentless tenacity. I therefore decided to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire."

The last battle ended with the destruction of the Great Synagogue today.

Jewish leaders had sent their own reports of the situation during the fighting.

On 28 April the Central Committee of Jewish Labour and the Jewish National Committee in Poland sent a desperate message to the National Council of Poland in London.

It said the SS and German Army have laid siege to the ghetto, attacking the 40,000 remaining Jews with artillery, flame-throwers, high explosive and incendiary bombs.

They have also planted mines in buildings known to harbouring Jewish fighters, while German guards block large drain pipes that have served as escape routes.

"The ghetto is burning," read the message, "and smoke covers the whole city of Warsaw.

"Men, women and children who are not burnt alive are murdered en masse." It said the Jews managed to kill or wound about 1,000 of the enemy and burned down factories and warehouses.

There was an appeal for an immediate response from the Allies. "It is imperative that the powerful retaliation of the United Nations shall fall upon the bloodthirsty enemy immediately and not in some distant future, in a way which will make it quite clear what the retaliation is for."

A second message sent on 11 May said the resistance was nearly over.

Jews captured during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are led by the SS to the Umschlagplatz for deportation. The original German caption reads alternately: "To the Umschlagplatz" or "Deportation of Jews."

AN PERSONAL ACCOUNT

 The endgame of the Nazi soldiers in Warsaw was brutally clear: "By 1945, there will not be one Jew left in Europe." Yet, as the residents of the city's Jewish Ghetto began their desperate, doomed 27-day uprising against systematic slaugher, one young woman hiding in a lice-infested, bomb-blasted bunker bagan to record a diary of the last days.

The fate of the woman, thought to have been in her late teens or early twenties, remains unknown. This is her account.

Day 6

Saturday, April 24, 1943

Quiet until 12 o'clock. "Alert", the Germans are inside our house. It went peacefully. We continue sleeping. Our daily schedule is backwards. We sleep during the day, and cook and eat at night. We're in an air-raid shelter. A deep silence prevails within. It's 8 o'clock. Steps are heard outside. Someone knocks on the judasz [camouflaged opening]. For several moments, there is enormous apprehension.

The people knocking are Mr Rosenheim and Miss Sonia, who warn us that the building is going up in flames. We open the tanks of water and pour it on the apartments above us. We look out the window and see how the ghetto is burning, enveloped in flames.

Day 8

Monday, April 26, 1943

The house on the Zamenhof Street side, where people were hiding, is also burning. People are escaping and coming to us. It looks like the disaster is drawing near. The shelter is crowded, and many more want to get in. They bang on the door. The people shout and argue. Everyone wants to get into the hiding place. It's hard to give permission to enter.

Because of the smoke and stench, staying in the basement becomes almost impossible. We seal cracks in the door with strips of paper.

I want to go to my brother, who is in another bunker in the second yard, but it's too far and too dangerous.

The air in the basement is terrible. People are nearly choking. Many faint, lose consciousness. The situation is dire. Sleep is not feasible because of the danger of choking.

Day 9

Tuesday, April 27, 1943

The people who came from other bunkers have no food. They quarrel a lot and make noise. The following decision was made: each day a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee will be distributed to each person. The portions will be distributed by the oldest, those who cook the food.

At 6am everyone lay down in the beds, if you can call them beds. A small boy was put into my bed. He was very restless, throwing himself around in his sleep, to the point that I had pains in my side but, thank God, the day passed quietly.

Suddenly, a bang, an uproar, terrible noise. A hand grenade exploded nearby. The people rise but a deep silence prevails. The enemy is surrounding our house, searching for us.

Day 10 (evening)

Wednesday, April 28, 1943

This is our 10th day in the bunker, 10 days of struggling with our blood-thirsty enemy who intends to annihilate us. [The enemy] started the fighting with grenades and tanks and is finishing it by torching houses. We must survive and hope that we will survive. We are fighting for justice and for the right to live.

Day 11

Thursday, April 29, 1943

It was a dangerous night. At 4pm, the enemy threw a grenade into our basement. The results were grave. A hole gaped in the front wall. They say that the enemy has buried a bomb. Our neighbour, Sowa, had the same kind of night. At his place, the hand grenade lifted the roof. Thank God, everything ended all right. Today was ordinary [normal]. The level of hygiene is "extremely high".

It won't be possible to exist for a long time in our basement. The air is terrible, lice and overcrowding dominate everything. What else can be done? To leave and risk our lives? Or perhaps die here?

Day 12

Friday, April 30, 1943

The day passed as usual. There was great apprehension during the night. The enemy is searching for us everywhere. Listening, knocking, circling around us. Our main defence – deepest silence.

Day 14 (morning)

Sunday, May 2, 1943

Our activities begin with cleaning the blood in front of our hiding place. The Germans found people who were living in our house and demanded that they reveal the entrances to the bunkers. Happily, these people knew nothing about it.

I am on guard duty. I have two hours ahead of me. I'll sketch the layout of our bunker, with all the entrances. The idea of building the bunker came up only after the action in January.

We always thought that we had to be well hidden. Even those with papers and authorisations [Ausweis] who appeared on the street during an action, were taken. Only those who hid remained. For this reason, the building of bunkers became common.

The work continued day and night with great fervour. Bunks, floors and stairs were made. A well was dug. The wood needed for building was taken from the [abandoned] apartments. The building continued for six weeks. During the construction, food stores were also prepared for the future. We paid for all this with our health and our nerves, but it's not worth elaborating on that.

To reach our bunker, a hidden aperture must be opened, and this is located in the left wall of the building. The dimensions of the aperture are 30cm x 45cm. After it is opened, you must descend to a depth of 90cm, pass through half a metre in a stooped position and descend several steps, and then you are in our hiding place.

Day 19

Friday, May 7, 1943

Five difficult and tragic days have passed. In this short time, we have had many experiences. Our living conditions were difficult from the moment we entered our hideaway and they became worse since we have taken in 45 people. Most of them had no food.

At midnight on Monday, the electricity was cut off. We are now faced with a serious problem: how will we cook? We do not have stoves connected to a chimney. The bunker leaders deliberated this problem for three days and, in the meantime, arguments broke out. Brother fought with sister, friend fought with friend and they all fought among themselves. Hunger skipped no one.

The quarrelling was so loud that the echoes were probably heard outside the bunker. The situation was terrible, and dangerous as well.

The emotional state of the people is dreadful. Some of them lie on the ground unconscious. The most vulnerable are the children. We have already been through three days without hot food.

In the end, the problem of the kitchen was solved. But it is preferable to avoid addressing someone in order to maintain the silence because every question brings offensive and coarse replies. The people in the bunker are behaving without courtesy and consideration.

The night was horrific. There was terrible irritability. I witnessed a shocking event when Jews were removed from the bunker in a neighbouring house.

During my night guard duty I lay next to the judasz and listened to conversations going on outside. The conversation between the Germans, full of irony and sadism, made my body go cold and my blood boil. Yes, the Germans are certain that they are justified. We are considered murderers and they want to present themselves as the epitome of morality and humanity. Descriptions of the blind hatred towards us, the persecuted and tortured, made me feel as though salt was being spread on my open wounds. Their words always ended with coarse laughter.

Wham! Boom! The enemy is shooting machine guns and throwing grenades into the bunker. The bunker is partially covered with an avalanche of rubble. The people inside are acting courageously. With complete serenity, they look death in the face.

In silence, we honour the death of the people who are burning in the flames. The Germans are shooting every Jew that they find or taking and burning the bodies on the bonfire in the community courtyard at 19 Zamenhof Street. Hitler's devotees, his dedicated servants and hangmen, who obey their leader's orders, execute everything in accordance with the order which states that in 1945 there will not be a single Jew left in Europe.

Today, silence reigned for a long time. We lay on the bunks until late in the evening after four days of hunger. Everyone was satisfied because we ate something and went to sleep in a better mood.

The appearance of these people, whose cheeks were already sunken, improved, their eyes brightened and a spark of life was once again discernible within them. Now everyone believes that he will be able to hold on.

Surprisingly, we have light again, the electricity is back. Maybe the sun will also shine for us. It's really about time. We are cut off from the entire world, helpless and relying only on our own powers. No one talks about rescue. We are extending our existence with great effort.

Our lives are extremely threatened now, the danger is constant. The living standard is very low. The people are half-naked, dressed in rags, running around morosely on the stone floor. They can't live and they can't die.

I am amazed that in such conditions we have succeeded in surviving for three weeks. We know very well what kind of action this is because they announced it in advance. This is the extermination of Warsaw Jewry and, afterwards, our end.

The Germans usually attacked us at night. Now they are expanding their attacks to the daytime as well. We must maintain absolute silence on our bunks so that the enemy will not discover us.

I am going out into the street. The streets – Mila, Zamenhof, Kurza, Nalewki, Lubecki – all are on fire. Workshops, apartments, stores, entire houses are burning. The ghetto is nothing more than a sea of flames.

A very strong wind is blowing, which fans the fire and carries the sparks from the burning houses to those that have not yet caught fire.

The fire destroys everything. The sight is horrifying, shocking. The fire spreads so quickly that people cannot escape from the buildings and they perish tragically.

People with bundles run from house to house, from street to street. There is no salvation; no one knows where to hide. They search in desperation but there is no deliverance, no refuge, death rules everything.

The walls of the ghetto are surrounded. No one goes out and no one comes in. Clothing is burning on people's bodies. Screams of pain, sobbing. Everyone wants to be saved, everyone tries to save his own life.

People are choking from the smoke. All are begging for help. Most of them, almost all of them, cry out to God: "God, show your power, have mercy on us." God is as silent as a Sphinx and does not answer. And you, the nations, why are you silent? Don't you see that they want to annihilate us? Why are you silent?

Despite the danger, Jews are running through the streets just to save their lives. Everything is engulfed in fire. It looks like the end of the world has come. "Save yourselves if you can!" The situation is horrifying, terrible. Everyone wants to be saved. Hell has come to earth. Dante's Inferno – it cannot be believed and it cannot be described.

A new day is beginning. With the new day, there is a deathly silence. People are in their corners without food or water. A cemetery in flames. The sound of metal falling and of burning walls collapsing is heard.

The ghetto is burning for the fourth day. All we see are chimneys standing and the frames of the houses that burned down. In the first moment, this spectacle arouses a shudder of horror: yes, this is the work of Hitler's vandals, who hope that the entire world will look this way. There is no doubt that they will not succeed in this.

In our thoughts, we return to the past. We've lost many things. The only thing left to us is our hiding place. Of course, it is not a safe place.

We live the day, the hour, the moment.

Source

A woman hangs from a balcony, preparing to drop to the street and the waiting SS.

The SS-men lay in wait for the fighters and civilians forced out of their bunkers by fire, gas, and a lack of water.

SS troops wait at the end of a smoke-filled street for Jewish resistance fighters to exit apartment buildings set on fire on the fourth day of the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

A German gun crew prepares to shell the ruins of a building during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Jews are found in a bunker during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in May 1943.

Nazis guard an opening in the ghetto wall with a machine gun during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943.

The April 28 edition of the Voice of Warsaw (a publication of the Warsaw Committee of the Polish Workers' Party) reported, "The SS thugs set ablaze entire blocks of flats in order to force the population to come out of hiding...the water, gas, and electric supplies were cut off...."

One of the most famous pictures of the Holocaust. German storm troopers force Warsaw ghetto dwellers of all ages to move, hands up, during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April-May 1943.

Jews captured during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are led by German soldiers to the assembly point for deportation.

SS officers interrogate a captured resistance fighter during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943, and ended on May 16, 1943. SS troops suppressed the uprising under the command of General Jürgen Stroop.

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