Rabbi's Message

The Eternal Inspiration of Warsaw's Ghetto

We are currently celebrating our festival of Passover. Of course, it is the season when we recall the epochal liberation from bondage in Egypt. But, interestingly, out of the tumultuous World War II years, there is another crucial anniversary that Jews recall at Passover time, which for us, as it should be for all freedom-loving people, is every bit as compelling as the Passover itself.

This is the anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw, Poland, Ghetto uprising which took place on April 19, 1943, the first night of Passover. On that night, Warsaw's Jews, confined by the Nazis in the ghetto - with smuggled and homemade weapons - rose up against the German army, the greatest machine of destruction ever assembled. Then, there were only about 40,000 Jews left in Warsaw of an original 300,000 before the war. For 33 days, they battled the Nazis until the ghetto and all Jews in it were totally destroyed in flames. It was only then that the German commander, SS General Jurgen Stroop, wrote in his report to Adolph Hitler: "There is no Jewish quarter in Warsaw anymore."

There is an incredibly important lesson from this event. In an immediate sense, the Warsaw fighters were defeated. Indeed, they knew what the momentary result would be. But their struggle for freedom and human dignity had a far-reaching effect that was so powerful. Ghetto commander Mordecai Anckiwicz sensed this when he wrote his final letter to a comrade: "The dream of my life has already been realized ... I have seen Jewish self-defense in the Ghetto in its full glory and grandeur."

Five years later, facing tremendous opposition, Jews in Israel fought in their War of Independence to secure a Jewish state. They remembered the Warsaw Ghetto, and that struggle for Jewish dignity and self-determination was fulfilled in them. Furthermore, the Warsaw Ghetto spirit inspired other difficult, successful fights for human worth into the future, including the workers in Poland itself under Lech Walesa in our own time.

In remembering the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, as well other heroes of the human spirit throughout the ages, know of a certainty that good works in the community - regardless of the present - will eventually flower in the future far beyond our imagination. As at Warsaw, so with us, this is part of the faith of our ancestor Job: "I will trust in the Lord."