Salvete Omnes,
on April 19 several anniversaries meet -
today is the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, one of the final chapters of the Polish Jewry and their perhaps 800 years long history in Poland.
It was a desperate struggle of a tiny minority of the Polish Warsaw Jews who took up arms against the Germans, not unlike the zealots and sicarii (the last name, plural Latin, is a bit weird but what do we know - dagger men might have been their name, since it was later used by the Romans to denote an assassin/murderer or sicarius) who defended
Masada against the Roman Empire - whether the story told by Josephus the traitor/turncoat Flavius is true or myth is another matter.
One thing that always returns with each anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is the issue of falsifying history for idealogical propaganda and short-time goals.
Namely, the Jewish fighters who fought as the main and most significant group of resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto -in terms of numbers, equipment and military potential & achievements - was the Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy (
Jewish Military Union) or ZZW . Zionist and
Polish Underground State-affiliated it was strong and numerous, led by experienced former (pre-1939) Polish military officers and soldiers, it could offered leadership and means of resistance. The ZZW fighters mostly perished during the war and very few remained to tell their story.
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| Pawel Frenkel |
- here one of ZZW fighters, heroic
Pawel Frenkel, is celebrated on this stamp.
However, in the post-World War Two research and publications the other organization received the honor of being the leading resistance group during the Ghetto Uprising, the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa ( Jewish Combat Organization), and ZZW was forgotten almost completely .
ZOB was a Communist organization and since the Soviet Union took over the Polish Republic after Jalta at al - thank you President D. Roosevelt, then they put the heavy hand on the narrative and suppressed the facts in their fine way and fashion.
Since 1945 the Communist Poland, home to a ZOB survivor
Marek Edelman, had started perpetrating the myth of the exclusively communist resistance to the Nazi Germany and its allies during the war. Right-wing groups like ZZW were discarded to the history wastelands and ought to have been forgotten.
Since 1990s both in Poland (about
Betar &
ZZW) and Israel the idea of ZZW being the primary resistance group have been slowly breaking the wall of silence and resistance to the official Communist narrative.
One of the ZZW fighters dr
Dawid Wdowinski survived the Ghetto Uprising and while living in NYC wrote a book about this experiences during the terrible times of Holocaust that can be had from
Amazon.
One may say that in historical research in the end the truth will always win... or so it is hoped.
Today is also the 209th anniversary of the battle of
Raszyn 1809, fought by the young army of Duchy of Warsaw under prince Jozef Poniatowski against the Austrian invading army. The battle marked the beginning of reconquest of parts of the partitioned Poland (including Krakow but they were denied already liberated Lwow by the Russians) by the Polish army during the
1809 campaign. Polish writer
Waclaw Gasiorowski immortalized this battle in his novel aptly named '
1809' (part of his Trilogy).
In English you can read Roman Soltyk account, translated by Nafziger, from Winged Hussar Publishing (on
Amazon).
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| January Suchodolski, The Death of colonel Cyprian Godebski |
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| Juliusz Kossak, Prince Jozef Poniatowski at Raszyn |
Pacem Aeternam to all heroes!
Valete!
