It Was On This Day

April 19

It was on this day in 1943 that an uprising began in the Warsaw ghetto. 

There were about 300,000 Jews in Warsaw and thousands more refugees streamed in from smaller towns. In 1940 the Nazis built a wall around a small section of the city and forced all the Jews into it. 

Conditions were horrible. In the winter there were fuel shortages and people succumbed to influenza. A small resistance movement began to organize. Then, in 1942, the Nazis deported more than 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the concentration camp in Treblinka.

Reports of mass murder leaked back to the ghetto and the resistance movement gained momentum.

It was on this day in 1943 that hundreds of German soldiers entered the ghetto in rows of tanks. It was the first day of Passover. The Nazis expected to destroy the ghetto in three days, but resistance fighters held on for almost a month.

On April 19 of the following year, Anne Frank wrote in her diary: 

"Is there anything more beautiful in the world than to sit before an open window and enjoy nature, to listen to the birds singing, feel the sun on your cheeks and have a darling boy in your arms?"

In three months, Anne, her family, and several others who hid from the Nazis with them would be found, arrested, and taken to concentration camps. 

Had Anne survived, she would be 93 this year.

Anne leans over the balcony of her family's
apartment in a photo taken by her father,
at Merwedeplein, Amsterdam, May 1941

 

Source: The Writer's Almanac