Hundreds of Jews and Catholic Christians will march together on the streets of Warsaw to mark the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in which for twenty-seven days Jews armed with pistols, clubs, and broken bottles stood against German tanks, cannon, machine guns, and the Luftwaffe, causing many German deaths and casualties. The anniversary was last Thursday, April 19.
The march, led by Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich ,Catholic Bishop Raphael Markovski, and priest Michael Jablonski of the Evangelical Church, was organized by the Polish Council of Christians and Jews.
The march will begin at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Heroes next to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and from there the marchers will continue on to the Umschlagplatz, where Jews were sent from the ghetto to the various extermination camps.
Participants will stop at a number of sites, including the Tree of the Righteous commemorating Poles who risked their lives to save Jews, along with the memorial to Samuel Zygielbojm, a Polish-Jewish politician who committed suicide in protest of Allied government indifference to the Holocaust.
Participants will then stop near the Jewish Fighting Organization bunker at 18 Mila Street and the memorial to Janusz Korczak, who accompanied 200 of his students on their way to the gas chambers.
Last Thursday Poland marked the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in a series of events, while at the main event at the ghetto heroes monument, Polish President Andrzej Duda claimed that "the Poles helped the Jews and gave them weapons, and that is the only historical truth."
