Identifer: CJF-RFC2015060

Medium
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Description
In the summer of 1942, from July 22nd through September 12th, in what came to be known as the Great Deportation, approximately 300,000 Jewish residents of the Warsaw Ghetto were deported from Warsaw to the gas chambers at Treblinka.  As the reports of these German atrocities filtered back to the remaining residents of the Warsaw Ghetto, a small group of mostly young Jews decided to fight rather than be deported to what they had realized would be their death. 
 
While several different resistance groups were formed, based mainly on the political parties to which the Jews belonged, the largest and most effective organization was known as the ZOB, for the Polish name Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, which means, Jewish Fighting Organization.  The ZOB was led by the youthful Mordechai Anielewicz.  It issued a proclamation calling for the Jewish residents of the Ghetto to resist going to the railroad cars that would deport them to Treblinka, and to their deaths. 
 
In January of 1943, members of the ZOB went beyond simply encouraging Jewish residents of the Ghetto to not turn up for deportation, as was required by the Germans.  The ZOB began attacking German troops as they attempted to round up Ghetto inhabitants for deportation.  The fighters used their small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the Ghetto at great cost, or that had been homemade in the Ghetto itself.  After a few days of the unexpected resistance, the German troops retreated. 
 
Zivia Lubetkin, one of the founders of the ZOB and a participant in the Warsaw Ghetto’s January uprising recalled in her book, In the Days of Destruction and Revolt, “We fought with grenades, guns, iron rods and light bulbs filled with sulphuric acid. . . For a few minutes we were intoxicated by the thrill of the battle. We had actually witnessed the German conquerors of the world retreat in fright from a handful of young Jews equipped only with a few pistols and hand grenades.”
 
The ZOB knew the Germans would return. The only question was when. For the 50,000 Jews who remained in the Ghetto, the decisive answer came on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover. This time, German General Jürgen Stroop, who had been ordered by Hitler to liquidate the Ghetto, returned with well-equipped German troops, expecting armed resistance upon entering the ghetto.  The ZOB provided just such resistance. 
 
Outgunned by the Germans, the poorly armed Jewish fighters--about 700 to 750 strong--had no illusions about defeating Stroop.  Amazingly, the Germans once again fell back at first as the limited store of Jewish guns, grenades, and Molotov cocktails brought fear and death to the German invaders.
 
Unfortunately, once again, the reprieve was temporary.  The Germans then set fire to the Ghetto.  Despite the Ghetto burning all around them, still the ghetto fighters resisted. Not until May 16 could Stroop report that “the Jewish Quarter of Warsaw no longer exists”.  Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured by the Germans, approximately 7,000 were shot and the remainder were deported to killing centers or concentration camps across Europe. 

Mordechai Anielewicz was one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). Hewas born into a poor family in Warsaw in 1919. After finishing secondary school he became an active Zionist (in Hashomer Hatzaír), and from 1940, an underground activist. He fled Warsaw in September 1939 and was briefly imprisoned by the Soviets before returning to the capital. Increasingly he concentrated on turning youth movements in the Ghetto into an armed resistance movement.Because his underground work involved his visiting groups in various Polish cities, he was absent from the Ghetto during the Great Deportation. This gave him a more positive outlook than his ZOB colleagues, who had seen much of the Ghetto's population murdered without being able to do anything to intervene. 
Anielewicz was appointed commander of the ZOB in November 1942. He played a dynamic part in preparing for the Ghetto Uprising.  Emanuel Ringelblum (the noted Ghetto historian) described him as “the soul of the organization, one of its most devoted workers.”  Anielewicz committed suicide at the young age of 24, along with his wife and many of his staff, in the besieged ZOB headquarters bunker at 18 Mila Street on May 8th 1943, when the Germans had begun burning the buildings located on top of the bunker.  By early 1944 he had been posthumously awarded the Virtuti Militari, the Polish military cross, by the Polish government-in-exile in London.

This medal was issued in 1993 in Poland to commemorate Mordechai Anielewicz, one of the commanders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  It was issued in bronze and is 70 mm in diameter.