Now, There's One More Location in Warsaw

I posted here this picture of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center employees, during our rectn trip in the footsteps of Menachem Begin, at the site where the Warsaw Ghetto battle at Muranowska Square took place:

I have now been informed that a new memorial site has been fixed at the site where Pawel Frank(i)el, ZZW commander, was killed at Grzybowska Street 5a while attempting to elude the Germans and reach the forests.  His small force managed to kill four Germans before they were killed in the firefight.

Wojciech Pluciński writes

On Sunday was 73 death anniversary of Paweł Frenkel and at the ceremony were

Mr. Paweł Szrot - Secretary of State in the Polish Prime Minister's Office - Represented by Mrs. Beata Szydło - Polish Prime Minister,
Mr. Jan Dziedziczak - Secretary of State in Polish Ministry of Forgein Affairs - Represented by Mr. Witold Waszczykowski - Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs (on behalf of the Polish Government),
Mr. Jacek Polańczyk - Director of the Cabinet Head of the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression - Represented by Mr. Jan Józef Kasprzyk - Head of the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression (during the ceremony read the letter of the Head of Office)
Colonel Joachim Franke - Defence Attache at the Embassy of Germany in Poland,
Mr. Piotr Olejniak - Representative of Mazowieckie Province Governor,
Representatives of the Mayor of Warsaw,
Representatives of the Mayor of Downtown district in Warsaw,
Rabbi Jehoshua Ellis - Representing the Chief Rabbi of Poland,

Photographs:

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The New Tombstone of Stefan Wladyslaw, Warsaw

Stefan Wladyslaw was a member of the Revisionist ZZW militia fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis.

Yesterday was the ceremony of the unveiling of a new gravestone marker at his burial site which is also the symbolic grave of all the soldiers of the Jewish Military Union, members of Betar and the Revisionist Movement who were not allowed to join the rest of the left-wing figthing groups.  It took place at the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw at Okopowa Street yesterday.  Prominent on the new marker is the name of Pawel Frenkel, the ZZW commander.

Pictures I received via Moshe Arens and Wojciech Pluciński, the latter of the Komitet Hadar there in Poland:

Stefan's importance is that on May 17, 1942, disguised as an Aryan, he crossed over from the ghetto and sent a telegram to Hillel Tzur, an Irgun emissary to the Irgun cells organizing in Poland, who had returned to Netanya in Mandate Palestine only in September 1939.  It was hoped that the telegram would, however innocuously worded it was because of the Nazi censor, would alert Jews outside as to the terrible reality.

The telegram indeed was sent from the Red Cross offices although part of it indeed was crossed out on May 17, 1942.  It actually reachyed Tzur on August 31, 1942 but its cryptic message was not understood.

On February 4, 1943, Stefan was again outside the ghetto attempting to purchase weapons for the ZZW.

Upon finishing his task, he began his return but was accosted by German soldiers.

He pulled out his own pistol and engaged the Nazis in battle, killing two before being killed.

His comrades recovered his body and buried him in the Jewish cemetery.  The original tombstone noting his ZZW membership and his nom de gurre, Nesher (Eagle):

Please read Moshe Arens' "Flags Over the Ghetto".

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Strange Sounds and Other Bizarre Occurrences

I try to pay attention when I am reading to the little details.  They usually hide a big story.

For example, this extract from a Haaretz profile on the Polish film on a Holocaust theme, "Demon":-

The dybbuk that takes hold of Itay Tiran in “Demon” is a metaphor for the dybbuk that has taken hold of Polish society in recent decades. Jews have almost completely disappeared from there, but the country’s Jewish past continues to haunt it.

A tangible example of this surfaced last week when infrastructure work in Warsaw uncovered a Torah scroll and other Jewish artifacts that had been buried for dozens of years...There are other, even more surreal examples. In the Warsaw neighborhood of Muranow, erected on the ruins of the ghetto, residents talk from time to time about objects in their homes moving around, strange sounds and other bizarre occurrences; some have even been documented in YouTube clips.

For someone like me, 'Muranow' recalls Muranowska Square.

I first heard about that location from my Betar madrichim and then read "מצדה של ורשה" whose third edition appeared in 2013 and which appeared in English as "Muranowska 7".

And now we have Moshe Arens' magnificent study, "Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto".

In an earlier 2003 op-ed, we read that of the two fighting organizations: -

...ZZW [was] headed by Frenkel, Apfelbaum, and Rodal at Muranowski Street 7. They were prepared to meet the German assault...On the morning of April 19, 1943, Sammern-Frankenberg led his force into the central ghetto area. Ambushed by ZOB fighters as they entered the ghetto, the Germans fled in panic. Sammern-Frankenbergg was promptly removed and the following day, SS Gen. Stroop was in charge of the German attack on the ghetto.

The most important of the German documents regarding the revolt are the reports of SS Brigadefuehrer Juergen Stroop, that were written at the time of the events themselves...Stroop was awarded the Iron Cross first class, for his suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt.

Stroop sent daily reports on the action in the ghetto to Krueger...In examining Stroop's reports one's attention is drawn to the following statement that appears in his report: "The main Jewish combat group in which participated also Polish bandits, retreated already on the first or second day to a place called Muranowska Square. There it was reinforced by a significant number of Polish bandits. The group wanted to fortify itself in every way possible in order to prevent us from penetrating. On the roof of a concrete building they raised the Jewish flag and the Polish flag, as a signal of war against us. In this firefight with the bandits fell SS Untersturmfuehrere Demke."

...IT WAS in Muranowska Square and the neighboring houses on Muranowski Street that ZZW fighters armed with rifles, sub-machine guns, machine guns, and Molotov cocktails, had established fortified positions and succeeded in holding up the advance of the German forces during an entire day's fighting on the second day of the revolt, April 20, 1943. It was the scene of recurrent fierce battles between ZZW and Stroop's forces. This is corroborated by testimony given after the war by a number of Iwanski's men who participated in these battles.

Here heavy casualties were sustained by the ZZW, losing many of its leading fighters. Apfelbaum and Rodal were mortally wounded in fighting that raged on April 27 and 28. Iwanski's brother, Edvard, fell in Muranowska Square, his son, Roman was mortally wounded, and Iwanski himself was wounded during those days.

Many years later, in 1993, a Polish woman, Alicja Kaczynska, who had lived during the war on the even-numbered side of Muranowski Street outside the ghetto, opposite ZZW headquarters, published a book of war-time reminiscences, At The Gates Of Hell. In it she recalls the flags the ZZW had raised over the ghetto.

"On the roof opposite we could see people coming and going, and we could see that each of them was armed with some kind of weapon. At one moment we witnessed an exceptional sight on that roof - a blue-and-white flag and a red-and-white flag were raised. We all cheered. Look! Look! The Jewish flag! The Jews have taken Muranowska Square! Our voices echoed on the stairs. We hugged each other, hugged and kissed."

Those "strange sounds and other bizarre occurrences" recall even stranger and more bizarre events and more evil and immoral.

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A Revolting Approach to the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt

Sharon Geva had something published in Haaretz recently (and here at her blog).

She teaches history at Seminar Hakibbutzim College and is the author of To the Unknown Sister: Holocaust Heroines in Israeli Society (here, in Hebrew).

 

Her op-ed is entitled: "Pulling the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the right".

It's theme:

Could it be that current political perceptions influence Israelis' Holocaust narrative?
 

Excerpts:-

...The 27th of the Hebrew month of Sivan, the official Holocaust Remembrance Day determined by the Knesset in a special law in 1959, is linked to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an uplifting event that featured young heroes and heroines led by the Jewish Combat Organization that united most of the youth movements in the ghetto. In the first years of the state of Israel there were arguments as to the uprising's leaders' political affiliation, which can be found in the Knesset's minutes and the press at the time. The Zionist left adopted the event and stressed the political affiliation of the uprising's leaders to contemporary political parties. Still, even when the arguments took place, the right-wing parties did not question Lubetkin and Zuckerman's role in the events. Even the mouthpiece of Menachem Begin's Herut party hailed Lubetkin as a national heroine.

Still, in later years the arguments took a twist. The role of the revisionists began to assume a central part in the story of the uprising. One of the major players in promoting this concept is former minister and MK Moshe Arens, who wrote a book on the uprising and published numerous articles claiming, among other things, that Lubetkin and Zuckerman told only "half the tale,"...

Several years ago, Arens initiated the production of a reconstructed portrait of the leader of the Revisionist Jewish Military Union (ZZW), Pawel Frenkel, with the assistance of ZZW veteran Fella Finkelstein. Slowly but surely, the story of the right wing in the uprising is moving to the center.
 
Lately it seems that correcting a possible injustice might have gone a step too far: In the Knesset's website, the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Union are presented as two equal underground movements, with both due equal credit, and on the Hebrew Wikipedia entry "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising", ZZW precedes ZOB. Hard to believe, but Pawel Frenkel precedes Mordechai Anielewicz.

This move has been encouraged in recent years by the government as a whole and the Education Ministry in particular. One can already assume who will star in Holocaust memorial speeches of right-wing leaders such as the prime minister and Knesset speaker. Still, to regain some optimism, one cannot be blamed for hoping that they won't forget the most important fact, and hopefully learn something from their political forefathers.

This is the letter-to-the-editor that I sent but that wasn't published:

Dr Sharon Geva is uncomfortable in inflicting a new injustice on our collective memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  At least she admits, by implication, that there was an old injustice, even if she was not able to write about it explicitly.

The personal experience of leaders and representatives of the Revisionist movement to save the part of Betar and the Revisionists in the Revolt preceded long before the blessed efforts of Moshe Arens. Chaim Lazar's book, "Masada of Warsaw," was published back in 1963, but even though it was based on documents, testimonies and documents, including, for example, the diary of the commander of the operation to put down the uprising which explicitly noted the fighting of Betar members and also the impressions of Emmanuel Ringlbaum's visit to the arsenals of the ZZW, the previous generation of the same type of researchers were able to virtually banish the book and ostracize its message and Dr. Geva's actions continues that. 

There are those for whom the main thing is that Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the ZOB, was in Betar in his youth and perhaps the claim that angered Sharon, that there is a "half-and-half" narrative is correct. The division of the responsibility for the revolt which was actually a little closer to a balance more than what was portrayed, if not in terms of the number of troops, for sure in terms of the initiative and the demand of the Jabotinsky camp that military action was necessary long before the outbreak of the revolt.  But this is still not the main thing. The truly important thing is why there was no was no unity amongst the ghetto fighters and why the left rejected it.
 

 
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It was 1943

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on Tuesday said Israel and the IDF are the answer to the Holocaust, speaking next to the Warsaw bunker where Mordechai Anielewicz and his men led the 1944 uprising against the Nazis, according to Israel Radio.

Sorry but it was in 1943.

In 1944 was the August Uprising of the Poles.