The
right to go on living an ordinary life
The
largest ghetto uprising of World War II took place on April 19, 1943.
Hitler’s
army had invaded Poland in the fall of 1939 and, after three weeks of
resistance, Warsaw surrendered. There were about 300,000 Jews in
Warsaw to begin with, but thousands more Jewish refugees soon came in
from smaller towns. In October of 1940, the Nazis announced the
establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto.
A wall was
built around a section of the city, twenty blocks by six blocks. All
Jews in the city were given a month to move into the ghetto, while
all non-Jews were ordered to leave. Conditions were horrible. The
elderly and the children died first.
Eventually,
small resistance groups began to pop up in the ghetto. In the summer
of 1942, the Nazis began deporting Jews from the ghetto to the
concentration camp in Treblinka. From July to September, more that
300,000 Jews were deported, leaving about 50,000 people in the
ghetto. When news leaked back to the ghetto of the mass murders, the
resistance groups became better organized, making grenades, bombs,
and mines, and creating a chain of tunnels and bunkers for the people
to hide in.
In January
of 1943, ghetto fighters opened fire on German troops as they tried
to round up more people for deportation. The Nazis were forced to
retreat. Then on April 19, 1943, the first day of Passover, hundreds
of German soldiers entered the ghetto in rows of tanks, planning to
destroy the ghetto in three days. The resistance held on for almost a
month, but the revolt ended on May 16 and the remaining Jews were
either shot or sent off to concentration camps.
Irena
Klepfisz (1941- ), author and teacher, was two years old during the
Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Her father was killed on the second day. On
the forty-fifth anniversary of the uprising, Irena Klepfisz said,
“What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather
the loss of common things, . . . the right to go on living . . . an
ordinary life.”
To live an
ordinary life is all that most people ask. There are the tyrants and
the bullies, the narcissists and the greedy who must be denied, but
most of God’s children ask only the right to go on living with a
sense of purpose and self-worth. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God.
To have some understanding of how it works and how it feels, hold a
baby in your arms.
Gary
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