In April 1943, at the height of the Final Solution, with the sounds of tank rounds and gunfire around them, the last remaining Jews of Warsaw huddled together in bunkers under their besieged ghetto to live their final hours as proud Jews, reading the Passover Haggadah. In the hours that followed, they would rise up in one of history’s most iconic feats of resistance.
The handful of Jews who survived the Nazi’s final onslaught on Warsaw, once a major center of Jewish life, have this Seder night more than any other etched in the memories as a testament to Passover’s powerful calling to connect to family, history, tradition and hope.
The Jewish Capital of Europe
Every Passover during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, which began in October 1939, the Jewish community did its best to celebrate the holiday. Even after being forced into a ghetto measuring just 2.5% of the city, subject to terrible starvation and disease, additional non-leavened foods were smuggled into the ghetto in the weeks before Passover. Several matzah factories were set up, ensuring the community, at its height numbering almost half a million, could eat the bread of freedom Seder night. Despite the hunger, typhus and dysentery, Jewish life in the ghetto continued.
Matzah being distributed in the Warsaw Ghetto
Passover in April 1943 would be the last for the Jews of Warsaw Ghetto, although by then the community was already unrecognizable. Almost a year earlier Adam Czierniakow, the Head of the Judenrat, the Jewish council appointed by the Nazis, had committed suicide after hearing of the Nazis plans, leaving a note to his wife that he “Would not be the hangman of Israel’s children.” The Nazis had since begun a terrifying program of ‘liquidation’ deporting between 5,000 and 6,000 Jews daily to the Treblinka death camp where they were murdered within an hour of their arrival.
On January 18 1943, the Nazis attempted to take another 8,000 Jews but this time members of a newly formed Jewish resistance fired shots at the SS guards and the Nazis rethought their plans, bolstering their military presence, delaying the final liquidation of ghetto to Passover which would fall in three months’ time.
“That’s what we felt in our hearts”
On the 18th of April 1943, when news arrived that the Germans had stationed an army in Warsaw ready to empty the ghetto, members of the underground resistance movements went into high alert. While the rooftops were stationed with Jews keeping track of the enemy’s every move, below the ghetto, Jews were busy embracing the story of the exodus from Egypt as a symbol of their own fight for dignity, pride and hope.
Roma Frey was 24 that Passover, recalling how she and her family had tried their best to make the basement as nice as possible for the holiday, “We tried to put the candles on the table, and a white table cloth,” she adds, “the table was made of a wooden board resting on a few things underneath.”
A hidden matzah factory
Surviving the Holocaust and moving to Melbourne Australia after the war she added. “We acknowledged to ourselves and to God and to ourselves that we want to keep the traditions. That’s what we felt in our hearts, we remembered our grandfathers, the hard times, slavery and our slavery, and here we have, hardly a hope to survive even just one day or night.”
Seder Night with Rabbi Meisel
With families decimated by the deportations, the remnant Jews came together, relying on those who knew the Haggadah by heart to lead them. Many flocked to the home of the 60-year-old venerated Rabbi Eliezer Yitzchak Meisel, who had left his hometown of Lodz along with his followers years earlier when the Nazis invaded. In Warsaw he had become immediately involved in maintaining religious life amid the hardships; it was in his basement that many of the Jews active in the resistance joined for the Passover Seder.
Tuvia Borzykowski was 29 at the time. “No one slept that night,” he recalled. “The moon was full and the night was unusually bright.” Along with the other fighters he joined Rabbi Meisels for the Seder.
Tuvia Borzykowski
“Amidst this destruction, the table in the center of the room looked incongruous with glasses filled with wine, with the family seated around, the rabbi reading the Haggadah.” Throughout the night, despite the increasing sounds of enemy fire, Tuvia and the other fighters held fast, engrossed in the retelling of the Jewish people’s redemption from Egypt. He recalled, “The Rabbi’s reading was punctuated by explosions and the rattling of machine-guns; the faces of the family around the table were lit by the red light from the burning buildings nearby.”
“Now is a good time to die,” Rabbi Meisels said, buoyed by the feeling of pride, courage and faith, as he blessed one of the fighters who came to deliver a report. He died later that night in the flames of the ghetto. Tuvia Borzykowski survived the war and helped establish Kibbutz of Ghetto Fighters near Akko. He is one of several fighters who testified about the Passover Seder they took part in as the uprising began.
“I had never missed a Seder”
Born in Warsaw, Itzchak Milchberg was the leader of a group of Jewish boys posing as non-Jews outside the Ghetto walls, selling cigarettes on the black market to survive. On the eve of Passover in 1943 he was just 12 years old but wise beyond his years. He had seen his father shot before his eyes, his mother and two sisters had already been deported and the only family he had left was an uncle named Fievel who was still in the ghetto.
Itzchak Milchberg , age 13, a year after the uprising
When rumors spread that the Nazis were planning their final deportations, he returned to the ghetto to be with his uncle for Passover. “I had never missed a Seder,” he said. “It was in my blood.”
With the sound of shooting around him, he entered his uncle’s candle lit bunker where 60 people were crowded. “The building was shaking,” he said, “People were crying.” His uncle Feivel embraced him in Yiddish, “Ir vet firn di seder mit mir - You’ll perform the Seder with me.” However some were too distressed to think about running a Seder. He recalls people crying, “God led us out of Egypt. Nobody killed us. Here, they are murdering us.”
Pulling him close, whispering into his ear, Feivel told his nephew, “You may die, but if you die, you’ll die as a Jew. If we live, we live as Jews.” He added, “If you live, you’ll tell your children and grandchildren about this.”
The Seder began. Feivel Milchberg had managed to organize matzah, “I don’t know how he got it,” Itzchak recalls, although he remembers there were no bitter herbs, “There was plenty of bitterness already,” he says.
Together with his uncle he read the Haggadah from memory and soon most of the bunker joined in. “We did most of the prayers by heart,” he says. “The Seder went very, very late.”
He left the ghetto in the early hours of the morning through the sewer system, risking his life as he had done to be there in the first place. In the days that followed he worked as a runner, smuggling arms through the sewers to the Jewish fighters until he was caught on the sixth day of the Uprising. He would later jump from a train taking him to Treblinka and survive the Holocaust thanks to a Catholic family in Warsaw. After the war, he moved to Canada, raised a family of his own and made good in his promise to his uncle to tell his children and grandchildren about that Seder night he had led with his uncle in 1943.
The Uprising
As promised a large SS unit entered the ghetto attempting to deport the remaining Jews to their deaths. But they were met instead by fierce fighting from the Jewish resistance and a barrage of Molotov cocktails, grenades and gun-fire. With renewed strength and pride, this fledgling Jewish fighting force killed 13 Nazis, wounded many more and sent them panicked, retreating out of the ghetto. They held out for almost a month as the Germans set to work painstakingly burning each building in the ghetto to the ground. 13,000 Jews died in the fighting and the flames while thousands more were arrested and deported to the east.
The last Jews leaving the ghetto after the uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising will always be remembered as the greatest physical resistance throughout the Second World War, inspiring underground movements and partisan units across Nazi occupied Europe. Spiritually, the Seder service that took place below its charred streets that night can continue to inspire generations of Jews who refused to be broken even at the darkest of times.
(16) Tom N-Smith, September 29, 2019 1:49 PM
Brilliant Article, is there any available references?
Love the article but is there any references for the images used. Are they from the USHMM, Yad Vashem or the Jewish Historical Institute. They are intriguing images that I would love to use as part of my dissertation but I need their orginal source. Would love to know, if this info is available.
(15) miriam yunis, August 23, 2019 2:20 AM
photo of hidden matzah factory in the Warsaw ghetto
Incredibly, the man in the long coat, foreground, in the hidden matzah factory
is my Uncle Martin Frenkel (z'l). This photo was probably taken in either 1941 or 1942 because the family escaped the ghetto in February 1943, 2 months before the uprising. I would like to know who was in possession of this photo and is it archived somewhere?
(14) E Wilson, Leeds England, July 4, 2019 2:46 PM
Adam Czierniakow, An Heroic Figure Forever.
I do hope somewhere in Israel there is a city square or park, called the Adam Czierniakow Square. And if not - Why Not?
(13) Bobby5000, April 27, 2019 3:48 AM
Lessons
One reads this with immense sorrow about this suffering of so many and no one can easily say he would have done differently. Yet it is important to accurately describe events to understand today's Israel, the lessons it learned and its survival. For the Jewish state learned that one cannot rely upon the concern or morality of bystanders, that if Jews are unarmed and trust those who have echoed words of murder may do what they say.
Israel today chooses firm military defense rather than blind trust, intense investigation rather than taking its apparent enemies at their word, early attack rather than belated defense as in the Warsaw ghetto, inflicting penalties upon those who seek to destroy it rather than hope their humanity will act as a brake on their behavior, for these are what is meant by Never Again.
(12) Shmuel Leib, April 23, 2019 9:46 PM
My father was there
My late father, of blessed memory, was in the Warsaw ghetto at that time. In his words [approximate]: "The big strong, brave Nazis, who could kill innocent women, children and the elderly. ran like rabbits when they were shot at."
He miraculously escaped.
I am named after one of his brothers, who survived the war only to be killed by the Soviet secret police.
[My brother was named after another brother who disappeared while fighting the Nazis during the initial blilzkrieg.
It was a myth that all Jews went like sheep to the slaughter.
Many fought back when they were able to do so.T
The Nazis diabolical scheme included deceiving the Jews into thinking they were going to work camps, etc, until they were surrounded and unable to resist.
(11) Anonymous, April 22, 2019 10:21 AM
in our minyan here in Melbourne Australia we have a survivor
in our minyan here in Melbourne Australia we have a survivor who was in the Warsaw Ghetto and was saved by a Polish policeman (not Jewish) who smuggled him out of the Ghetto in 1943 just before the Uprising began. He is aged in his late 90's and tells us some incredible stories about Jewish life pre World war 2 in Poland.
(10) Jerry 1800, April 21, 2019 10:56 AM
They
Niemcy to zasrany narod Am Yisroel Chai.
Grazyna, May 3, 2019 8:10 PM
Your comment in Polish- I was born 15 years after war near Watsaw.Never in my life ( till I was 55) learnt about Grrat Synagogue in Tlomacke ...Total silence at school.Now I attend lectures about Jewish history and culture in Centre of Jidish Culture.The memory will never die .We the Poles remember and respect and will always do.Visited Israel and studied hebrew a bit at Ulpan. Shalom
(9) Ilana Hotz, April 20, 2019 1:54 AM
What a nation....these Warsaw Jews are a historic testimony of our strength in bad times
Makes me want to observe Pesach in their memory
(8) Sandra, London, April 19, 2019 11:11 AM
Never to be forgotten
The story of that Seder should be told and retold, never ever to be forgotten. It is inspiration to us all.
(7) Nancy Tromblee, April 19, 2019 1:12 AM
Both a horrifying and a unifying seder evening!
May the essence of that horrendous night create a deep imprint on everyone, Jew or non-Jew, who reads this true, dramatic retelling of that Pesach night!
(6) Brian cohen, April 18, 2019 7:58 PM
April 19 1943
19 April 1943 .exactly 76 years ago to the day. .what a Seder. The one that took place in the ghetto as the Germans began the destruction of the occupants.
(5) Abbe Pierce, April 18, 2019 2:33 PM
L'Chaim
So thankful that you shared this story.It's wonderful for the lone survivor making it to Canada. Did he ever write a book?
Adam Ross, April 18, 2019 7:17 PM
Abbe, thank you for your comment. He took on the name Irving after moving to Canada and died in 2014 aged 86. As far as I'm aware, he didn't write a book, but he did have his incredible testimony recorded. Many newspapers wrote obituaries about him, hope that helps. Chag sameach
Mollie Milchberg, April 18, 2019 10:17 PM
Hi—I’m Irving Milchberg’s granddaughter—thanks for the great article! There is, in fact, a book about my grandfather and his gang of kids—it’s called “The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square”…..
Klaudya, May 3, 2019 3:29 AM
Thank you
Thank you Mollie for the book name! Blessed be the memory of your grandfather!
(4) Jeffrey Burt, April 18, 2019 12:30 PM
Always remember!
The courage of these Jews when confronted with unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity must be remembered at every Seder table forever.
(3) Reuven Frank, April 17, 2019 5:03 PM
Longer than Poland!
The Accursed Nazi Germans conquered the entire COUNTRY of Poland
in just 18 days.
The Saintly Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto held out for 30 days.
Never again!
(Here's a sentiment I'm not sure I share:
Outside a former concentration camp, on German soil,
I think it might be Bergen-Belsen,
is a sign that reads: "Forgive, but never Forget".
My actual opinion is that the only ones who can forgive are the ones whose bodies went up the chimneys there.)
(2) MESA, April 17, 2019 2:16 PM
I love the idea that every time we do a mitzvah, we're thumbing our noses at our enemies. This is one more thing we can take with us to the Pesach Seder. Proof that our enemies will never destroy us. Am Yisrael Chai V'Kayam.
(1) Shosh, April 15, 2019 5:47 PM
Germany
This why I despise Germans and their collaborators. How a Jew can buy a Mercedes or bmw beats me