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