Upon the formation of the Warsaw Ghetto, many Jews believed this would be the last phase of the increasing antisemitism in Europe. They believed the Warsaw ghetto and others were created to group all the Jews into a few concise areas so that the Nazis could focus on the war. Some rumors about concentration camps spread around the ghetto, but many people refused to believe them. A main reason for the disbelief was, that focusing on the extermination of Jews, it would take away resources from the Nazi war effort. In the words of a Holocaust survivor, Marek Edelman, “Germans need a big labor force. Jews are a free labor force. There is no reason to kill them” (Edelman). Although the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were initially unaware of the Nazis’ actions, coded mail, couriers, and underground newspapers effectively helped them to prepare and initiate resistance to the Nazi regime.
A critical issue for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto was that there was heavy censorship, limiting communication to the outside world. There was no access to radios or newspapers, and even personal mail had many restrictions. Since the Jews were in the dark about the Nazis’ evil plans, they needed to find ways to circumvent the censorship and obtain critical information. One way Jews received information was through couriers who secretly traveled in and out of ghettos. They were Jewish people, mostly women due to men being easily identifiable due their circumcisions. They shared and confirmed information with other Jewish communities, as well as smuggled in documents, letters, identity cards, money, and weapons. Although while World War Two raged on and the Final Solution was implemented in 1941, their role changed into educating Jewish communities about the Nazis’ intentions of wiping out the Jewish religion. The warnings enabled the Jewish communities to prepare to take action.
Another method of combating censorship was through the use of coded mail. Although most mail was checked by the S.S. officers, adept codes in mail often slipped through censorship checks, allowing information to move within the walls. There are examples of this as we later learned in the book, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, by Emmanuel Ringelblum. The historian put together a collection of notes and letters to document daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto. In his letters, he frequently used secret codes such as in this excerpt, “The situation in Cracow is very grave. Jews are being constantly deported, particularly toward western Galicia. Every day they catch Jews lacking identification cards, who are sent to 5 Mogilsko Street.” Here the code is hidden within the street name “Mogilsko”, as Mogila means “grave” in Polish. Emmanuel also uses code to represent incidents between countries such as the sentence: “Bronek has married Helena.” In this case, the sentence is referring to a battle between Germany and England with “Bronek” constituting “England”, “has married” constituting “defeated”, and “Helena” constituting “Germany”. Additionally, the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto also set up an underground press. Secretly, Jews put together newspapers and magazines full of information. They were then circulated among families and friends to spread awareness towards the hidden issues. For example, this was how the ghetto Jews learned of the Nazis using concentration camps. Since many in the ghetto did not believe these rumors to be true, activist Zygmunt Frydrych attempted to get proof. With connections to people working on the railroad, he went to Treblinka to witness the horrific concentration camp. There, he was horrified to see cattle cars entering, overloaded with Jews, and then leaving empty. He circled the perimeter of the camp to see starving people wearing nothing but underwear. One of whom happened to be his friend, who told him all about Treblinka and the gas chambers. After smelling the horrible stench of the burning of human flesh, he secretly returned to the ghetto to report the facts which were spread through the underground press.
Methods such as these were vital to the Jews and provided them time to plan ways to escape and fight back. The Jewish fighters were able to resist Nazi attempts at deportation and ultimately this culminated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jews had time to create bunkers and shelters where they could hide and fight when the Nazis attempted to deport them to the Treblinka death camp. A letter from ghetto revolt commander Mordecai Anielewicz states: “It is impossible to put into words what we have been through. One thing is clear, what happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans ran twice from the ghetto. One of our companies held out for 40 minutes and another for more than 6 hours” (Anielewicz). The Jews held off the Nazi attempts to deport them for nearly a month, with limited automatic weapons and homemade grenades. Eventually, the Nazis resorted to setting the ghetto ablaze. They spread the fire block by block, many Jews eventually died or were deported as a result. However, as many as twenty-thousand survived due to this uprising. Some continued to hide in their bunkers while others managed to make it to the Aryan part of Warsaw. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was such a impactful event, that would have been impossible without the intel from methods like coded letters. The few letters that made it out of the ghetto help tell truths of the horrifying actions by the Nazis, that otherwise would have been forgotten.
Works Cited
“Emanuel Ringelblum and the Creation of the Oneg Shabbat Archive.” Encyclopedia.ushmm.org, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/emanuel-ringelblum-and-the-creation-of-the-oneg-shabbat-archive.
“Holocaust Timeline: 1933 to 1945 | St. Louis Holocaust Museum.” St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, stlholocaustmuseum.org/learn/timeline/.
“The Female Couriers during the Holocaust | Www.yadvashem.org.” Yadvashem.org, 2010, www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/couriers.html.
“The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw.” Www.yadvashem.org, www.yadvashem.org/blog/the-jewish-underground-press-in-warsaw-part-i.html.
The Last Letter from Ghetto Revolt Commander Mordecai Anielewicz, Warsaw. 1943.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The SS.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2019, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss.
—. “Warsaw.” Ushmm.org, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 22 Feb. 2023, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw.
—. “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” Ushmm.org, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2014, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising.
“What Did Jews in the Ghettos Know? | Facing History and Ourselves.” Www.facinghistory.org, 12 May 2020, www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/what-did-jews-ghettos-know.
www.getto.pl. “Online Warsaw Ghetto Map and Database – People – F – Frydrych Zygmunt.” Getto.pl, 2024, getto.pl/en/People/F/Frydrych-Zygmunt. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.