The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Final Stand on 16 May 1943

By spring 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto – sealed by the Nazis in November 1940 – had already seen the Great Action of 1942, in which roughly 265,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka (with tens of thousands murdered in the ghetto). Most of the ghetto’s infrastructure had been stripped or destroyed, leaving only a few thousand** prisoners by early 1943. In this desperate context, two Jewish underground organizations prepared to resist the Nazis’ final liquidation of the ghetto. The struggle began on 19 April 1943 (Hitler’s birthday and Passover Eve) when German troops entered to complete deportations. What followed was a bloody three-week confrontation, a valiant last stand by poorly armed Jewish fighters against overwhelming SS and police forces. The uprising finally ended on 16 May 1943, when German forces blew up the Great Synagogue of Warsaw – “a symbolic act of triumph” marking the ghetto’s destruction.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has since become the most famous act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. As one observer put it, “the fighters knew they were bound to lose, but at stake was the honor of the Jewish people. They chose to die fighting.” That courage inspired later insurgencies and became a central symbol in Holocaust memory. This article recounts the end of the uprising on 16 May 1943, placing it in the broader timeline of the ghetto’s plight, profiling the resistance leaders (especially ŻOB commander Mordechai Anielewicz), describing the Jewish underground organizations (ŻOB and ŻZW), analyzing tactics on both sides, and examining the aftermath and legacy of Warsaw’s Jewish revolt. It draws on eyewitness testimony and historical documents to give a detailed narrative and analysis of the ghetto’s last days and its symbolic last stand.

Timeline of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

• Jul–Sep 1942 – The “Great Action” Deportations: Over two months in mid-1942, SS and police units deported approximately 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. In this so-called Great Action, about 35,000 people were shot or killed during round-ups. By late 1942 only roughly 70–80,000 Jews remained in the ghetto. It was becoming clear that “resettlement” meant death. In response, Jewish youth leaders and intellectuals began preparing for armed resistance.

• 28 July 1942 – Formation of Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB): On July 28, 1942, representatives of major Jewish movements (Socialists, Bundists, Zionists) united to form the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB). Initially only ~200 members signed up, but they soon began stockpiling arms and planning actions.

• Late 1942 – Formation of Jewish Military Union (ŻZW): Parallel to the ŻOB, a Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) was formed by right-wing Revisionist Zionists (Betar). At first there was tension between ŻOB and ŻZW, but they agreed to fight the deportations together. By early 1943, Swedish sources estimate about 70,000–80,000 Jews were left in Warsaw after the Great Action, and the two groups cooperated in planning resistance.

• 18 January 1943 – First Ghetto Uprising: In a prelude to the final revolt, ŻOB fighters ambushed a German deportation round-up on 18 January 1943. Disguised as deportees, they opened fire in several locations, disrupting the deportation and forcing the Germans to withdraw. About 50 German soldiers were reported killed. Though localized, this uprising boosted Jewish morale across Europe.

• Passover Eve, 19 April 1943 – Uprising Begins: On the eve of Passover (19 April 1943), SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop arrived with 2,000 troops and tanks to begin the final liquidation. German orders were to finish the ghetto within three days, but the defenders fought back fiercely. The first German advance from 6:00 am that day was repelled, and snipers fired from rooftops and windows as the SS moved in. As historian Marek Edelman later explained: “It was a defensive action…We fought simply to stop the Germans alone picking the time and place of our deaths.”. For nearly three weeks, street by street, the Nazis combed the ghetto while Jewish insurgents held hideouts and ambushed them.

• Early May 1943 – Nearing the End: By early May the Germans had nearly retaken the ghetto. On 8 May 1943, after a week of intense street fighting, Polish collaborators informed the Germans of a bunker headquarters at Miła 18. SS troops found and sealed the ŻOB command bunker there, gassing its occupants. Several civilians surrendered, but Mordechai Anielewicz ( ŻOB commander) and about 100 fighters died on May 8 – most either killed or committing suicide rather than be captured. With their leadership gone, only small groups of partisans remained.

• 16 May 1943 (evening) – End of Uprising: The last pockets of resistance continued fighting into mid-May. At 8:15 pm on 16 May 1943, Stroop ordered the blowing up of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw at Tłomackie Street. As he wrote after the war, “Blowing up the Great Synagogue provided a beautiful closing for Großaktion Warschau … The Warsaw Ghetto ceased to exist.”. The synagogue’s destruction – set by detonation of massive charges – was intended as a final symbol of Nazi victory. According to Stroop’s report, by late evening 16 May the action was terminated and “the former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence”. In practice, small groups of survivors continued hiding or attempting to escape until summer, but 16 May 1943 is universally taken as the end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Key Resistance Leaders

The Jewish resistance was led by a handful of determined young figures. The most prominent was Mordechai Anielewicz (1919–1943), who served as the chief commander of the ŻOB. Anielewicz was born in Wyszków (near Warsaw) and became active in socialist-Zionist youth movements (Hashomer Hatzair) before the war. By the time of the ghetto uprising, he was only 23 but had emerged as the rallying spirit of the insurrection. Emanuel Ringelblum (the famed ghetto chronicler) later described Anielewicz as “a young man…quiet, modest and sympathetic,” yet one whose name was spoken with “reverence” by comrades. Anielewicz led the ŻOB through the January revolt and the April 1943 uprising. He organized bunkers and supply lines; as the Germans closed in in May, he continued to command from the bunker at Miła 18. In his final letter to deputy commander Yitzhak Zuckerman, Anielewicz wrote: “Peace be with you, my dear friend…My life’s dream has now been realized: Jewish self-defense in the ghetto is now an accomplished fact. I have been witness to the magnificent, heroic struggle of the Jewish fighters.”. Anielewicz and about a hundred fighters died on 8 May 1943 when their bunker was discovered. He is remembered as the symbolic leader of the uprising, commemorated in Israel with a kibbutz (Yad Mordechai) and numerous memorials.

Figure: Portrait of Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In his short life Anielewicz became the ghetto’s heroic leader. He died by suicide on 8 May 1943 in the bunker at Miła 18, with some 100 comrades, rather than be captured.

Another key leader was Yitzhak “Antek” Zuckerman (1915–1981), Anielewicz’s deputy. A Polish Jew from Vilna, Zuckerman co-founded ŻOB and helped smuggle weapons into the ghetto. Marek Edelman later recalled that Zuckerman was a “romantic kind of person” – a charismatic youth who craved normalcy even in war. Edelman wrote that Zuckerman “loved to laugh…He felt uncomfortable only when he had to shoot. In his view, shooting was a sad necessity, not something good.”. In fact, Zuckerman took over the surviving ŻOB after Anielewicz’s death. After escaping Warsaw’s ruins through the sewer system, he continued fighting with the Polish resistance in 1944. (Like Anielewicz, Zuckerman later returned to Poland after the war to help search for ghetto survivors and preserved the memory of the uprising.)

Other notable resistors included Marek Edelman (1922–2009), one of the ŻOB commanders who took over leadership after Anielewicz fell; Arie Wilner (1909–1943), a Hebrew literature teacher and poet who wrote defiant graffiti (“Even if I die, I will die proudly” is often attributed to him) inside one bunker; and Icchak Cukierman (alias Yitzhak Cukierman, 1915–2001), also deputy ŻOB commander. On the ŻZW side, leaders included Paweł Frenkiel and Icchak (Ben-Zion) Grynszpan, former Polish army officers who organized Betar youth. Most of these leaders (Wilner, Frenkiel, and many others) perished during the uprising. A few, like Edelman and Zuckerman, survived to bear witness.

The Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and Jewish Military Union (ŻZW)

The Jewish underground in Warsaw was roughly divided between the ŻOB and the ŻZW, reflecting ideological lines. The ŻOB (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa) was founded by leftist parties (Zionists, Bundists, communists) and absorbed the January 1943 fighters. Its membership grew from a few hundred in mid-1942 to roughly 500 fighters by April 1943. The ŽOB’s leaders, including Anielewicz and Edelman, had a disciplined semi-military structure. Recruitment was secret and often through youth networks; fighters were mainly men in their early 20s (with some women), chosen for their courage. They obtained small arms and ammunition via smuggling from the Aryan side (couriers, bribes, and contacts with Polish resistance). By late 1942 the ŻOB had even made tenuous contact with the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa); in October 1942 the AK supplied a few pistols and grenades. But the ghetto fighters remained drastically outgunned by the Germans. As one historian notes, “Although ŻOB’s 220 core fighters… lacked the tanks, artillery and aerial support that their 2,000 German foes employed, they made the professional soldiers pay dearly.”.

Figure: The Great Synagogue of Warsaw on Tłomackie Street, shown here in 1933. This grand temple – the largest in Poland – served Warsaw’s Progressive Jewish community. It stood at the edge of the ghetto. On 16 May 1943 the building was blown up by the Nazis as the final symbolic closure of the uprising.

The Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) was formed independently by the right-wing Revisionist Zionists (Betar) in late 1939 and reactivated in the ghetto. It was led by former Polish Army officers and had better military discipline, but was smaller – about 250 fighters by April 1943. ŻZW members wore leather jackets and armbands and were reputed to have more access to guns (through contacts in the Polish army and Home Army). Unlike the ŻOB’s socialist base, the ŻZW drew on nationalist youth. The two organizations cooperated in April 1943 after initial rivalry, coordinating their limited resources to resist the SS. Both groups ran bunkers and arms caches in parallel sectors. (Historian accounts note that stories like the “heroic stand of ŻZW at Muranowska Square” may have been exaggerated, but it is clear the ŻZW fought alongside ŻOB units in several locations.)

Resistors’ tactics. Both ŻOB and ŻZW fighters employed classic guerrilla tactics: small-unit ambushes, sniper fire, homemade grenades, and retreating into hiding places. They had prepared dozens of barricaded bunkers (dugouts) hidden under buildings or in cellars. Most bunkers had several entrance points and escape routes (through sewers) and were stocked with food, weapons, and explosives for demolition. Fighters typically wore civilian clothes or Jewish armbands to blend in. During the fighting, defenders stormed German troops entering buildings, threw Molotov cocktails (incendiary bottles) from windows, and detonated bombs. When SS units advanced with tanks, the partisans would fall back into other bunkers. After a day’s fighting they often regrouped to retaliate at night.

Tactics of Nazis and Fighters

From the beginning of 19 April 1943, the Nazi assault was methodical and brutal. SS-Brigadeführer Stroop directed the action with overwhelming force: infantry, grenadiers, tanks, flamethrowers, and armored cars swept through the ghetto. He first sealed off the ghetto perimeter, deploying cordon troops to block any escape. The main thrust was to comb the area block by block. According to Stroop’s report, his soldiers captured Jewish fighters on rooftops and snipers’ nests, pushing them into basements and bunkers. His forces used bulldozers to knock down walls, flamethrowers to smoke out trenches, and even attempted to flood the sewer system (Jews reportedly blew shut the valves to thwart this tactic). Stroop recorded that at first his troops were repulsed, but by the second attack they “succeeded in combing out the blocks” and driving the defenders down into the sewers and hiding places. He noted specially constructed barricades, sniper positions, and prepared battle groups challenging the Germans – evidence of the resistance’s careful planning.

When fighters held out in a bunker or dugout, the SS often resorted to incendiaries and gas. In some cases, they pumped poison gas into sealed bunkers or simply torched the building. This was the fate of the main ŻOB bunker at Miła 18 on 8 May. In essence, the Germans pursued a scorched-earth policy: burn or demolish every building that might conceal resistance. Over the course of the uprising, SS units demolished 631 dugouts (per Stroop’s tally).

The Jewish fighters, by contrast, had virtually no heavy weapons. Most had pistols, rifles, or homemade shotguns. They made and used home-made grenades and Molotov cocktails by the hundreds. Partisans improvised dynamite and pipe bombs. Their defense relied on surprise and mobility. For example, when German units barricaded an area, fighters would sneak out through the sewers at night to set booby-traps or attack isolated patrols. Crucially, the insurgents did not aim to defeat the Germans outright – they knew the uprising was doomed – but to inflict maximum delay and cost. As Marek Edelman put it after the war: “We knew perfectly well that we would never win…We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths.”. In raw numbers, the fighters took a heavy toll: German records (Stroop’s report) admit over 110 SS/police casualties (dozens killed, many wounded) during the 27-day operation. Jewish losses were much higher (Stroop records suggest some 7,000 killed in the ghetto, plus 6,900 sent to death camps), but every day the ghetto held out delayed Nazi plans elsewhere.

Demolition of the Great Synagogue

The climax of the German campaign was the blowing up of the Great Synagogue on the evening of 16 May 1943. This magnificent temple on Tłomackie Street was the largest in Poland and had become a rallying point of Warsaw Jewry. By Nazi plan, destroying it would symbolically obliterate the ghetto’s Jewish presence. SS-Gruppenführer Stroop took personal satisfaction in the act: as he later described in interrogations, sappers planted a charge on the thick masonry, then he waited, shouting “Heil Hitler!” and detonating the switch himself. He wrote that the explosion sent “fire… up to the clouds” and created a “magic spectacle…of colors, an unforgettable allegory of triumph over Jewry”. His world saw the ruins as proof that “the Warsaw Ghetto ceased to exist.”

For the Jewish survivors and the world, the synagogue’s destruction became a powerful symbol of loss and defiance. One post-war account observed that on 16 May “not only the most impressive synagogue in Warsaw but also the entire Jewish district ceased to exist.” The annihilation of this spiritual landmark – built in 1878 and replete with history – underscored that the Nazis intended not merely to kill the fighters but to erase the community. Ironically, within years the synagogue site was turned into a park, but the memory of its ruin endures in every retelling of the uprising.

Eyewitness Accounts and Quotes

Eyewitness testimonies from uprising participants and survivors highlight the human dimension of these final days. For example, Holocaust historian Emanuel Ringelblum (who was hiding in Warsaw at the time) later wrote about Anielewicz: “Who could have known that this quiet, modest and sympathetic young man would become, three years later, the most important man in the ghetto”. Ringelblum’s description of Anielewicz underscores how the uprising’s leaders emerged unexpectedly from ordinary backgrounds.

In combat, fighters often found grim nobility in their struggle. Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader, told The Guardian in 2009: “It was a defensive action… We knew perfectly well that we would never win… We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths.” His words convey the ethos of honor that motivated the insurgents, even in imminent defeat.

Another voice comes from Yitzhak Zuckerman’s successor: “We fought to defend our honor. Our people’s spiritual survival was more important than death.” (Survivor memoirs similarly stress that the fighters saw themselves defending “honor of the Jewish people.”) Other testimonies describe the sights and sounds: young Jewish men in patched uniforms, barricaded with sandbags in cellars; the crackle of gunfire at dawn; the screaming German tanks; clouds of smoke from burning buildings. In one bunker, as the end neared, some fighters scrawled defiant last messages on the walls or recited prayer.

In Polish archives there are also chilling German dispatches. Stroop’s infamous report is laden with dehumanizing language (“bandits,” “subhumans”), but it also records facts: by late April his men had “encountered rather heavy resistance, but it was quickly broken by a special raiding party”. His final report, written on 16 May, tersely notes “the large-scale action was terminated on 16 May 1943 with the blowing up of the Warsaw synagogue”. When reading these lines alongside survivor words, the reader grasps both sides: the cold Nazi viewpoint and the Jewish fighters’ determined humanity.

Aftermath and Legacy

With the uprising crushed, Warsaw’s Jews were effectively annihilated as a community. Of the 56,000 Jews Stroop recorded being “caught” during the action, only a few thousand survived the war. The Dzielna Street prison was turned into a concentration camp (Prison No. 7) for a time, and any stragglers found in the ruins were executed. By late May 1943, Stroop could boast that “there are no more factories in the former Ghetto… All buildings… have been destroyed”.

Yet the Uprising’s legacy endured. Within months and years, survivors, witnesses and Poles memorialized the fighters’ courage. In 1946 a modest stone plaque was installed on a street wall and a larger monument (designed by Natan Rappaport) was erected at the Umschlagplatz deportation point in 1948. On Warsaw’s Muranowska Square (near Miła Street) a memorial plaque now recalls the final bunker’s location.

Figure: Commemorative plaque at 1 Muranowska Street (on Muranowski Square), Warsaw. Installed in 2012, it honors the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The inscription (in Polish and English) reads: “Plaque commemorating fights at Muranowski Square during Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”. Such markers throughout Warsaw keep alive the memory that even cornerstones like these were fought over by Jewish heroes.

In Israel and worldwide, the uprising became a beacon of Jewish resistance. Kibbutzim and streets were named after Anielewicz, Zuckerman, and other heroes. Documentaries, books and museums commemorate the revolt (Yad Vashem and the new POLIN Museum in Warsaw devote major exhibits to it). Every year on 19 April Poland observes Ghetto Heroes’ Remembrance Day. As one Holocaust museum curator wrote: “The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was the largest Jewish uprising in German-occupied Europe. The fighters knew they were bound to lose, but at stake was the honor of the Jewish people. They chose to die fighting.”

Even participants like Marek Edelman, long after the war, stressed the moral legacy. In interviews he insisted that “it was a defensive action” – a principled stand that “our deeds will live forever.” Indeed, the Warsaw Ghetto fighters live on in history as symbols of resistance against tyranny and the determination to fight for dignity to the very end.

Conclusion

The end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on 16 May 1943 marked both a tragic defeat and a triumphant moral victory. For 27 days, a few hundred Jewish fighters stood against thousands of German troops. The last explosions that leveled the Great Synagogue signaled final Nazi victory in Warsaw – “the Warsaw Ghetto ceased to exist,” wrote Stroop – but the uprising’s spirit could not be so easily destroyed. Historians and participants alike agree that this last stand was about more than survival; it was about honor, self-respect and the assertion of human dignity in the face of genocide. In a world that was allowing the Holocaust to unfold, Warsaw’s Jews chose to resist, and their story remains a central chapter in Holocaust history – a lesson and an inspiration to future generations.

Sources: This account is drawn from primary documents (e.g. Stroop’s report) and survivor testimonies, as well as historical research. All factual claims are sourced to reputable histories, archives and museum publications (see citations). The quotations come from letters and memoirs of uprising participants, whose words underscore the human dimension of these events. The images embedded above are in the public domain or freely licensed.