The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Wasn’t Always Celebrated
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Wasn’t Always Celebrated
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began 82 years ago today, is now universally hailed as a bold act of Jewish resistance against the Nazis. But at the time, many Poles watched — or cheered — as the ghetto burned. The parallels with Gaza are hard to ignore.
Bluma Altmed, a Polish Jew disguised as a Gentile outside the ghetto, recalled a conversation with a Catholic woman who was upset with Jewish resistance fighters for disturbing her sleep: “I have a constant headache because I can’t sleep in such conditions. All night long, I hear machine guns. . . . The explosions and shootings never end. What are those Yids thinking, anyway? They have to die, one way or the other. The least they could do is to give up.”
s Israel continues its onslaught on Gaza, indiscriminately killing men, women, and children, many are appalled by the indifference or support from Israeli society. An October 2024 poll shows that the majority of Israeli Jews either think the war in Gaza should continue or feel indifferent.
Among those who think the war should end, only 6 percent cite “great cost in human life” as the primary motivator; instead, the majority are concerned with the twenty-four remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Furthermore, despite ample documentation of war crimes and the International Criminal Court’s issuing of a warrant for the arrest of Israel’s top leaders, 83 percent of Israeli Jews believe the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has conducted itself with “good or excellent ethical conduct during the war.”