The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943

It took the Nazis longer to quell the Warsaw ghetto uprising than it had taken them to defeat entire countries. How could the Jews of Warsaw -- starved and persecuted, their numbers decimated by mass deportations to concentration camps, with few weapons and no aid from outside the ghetto walls -- stand up to the might of the Third Reich? To address this question, the author of The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943 looks beyond the ghetto uprising itself to consider the broader character of Jewish public life as it took shape during the occupation and ghettoization of what had been Europe's greatest Jewish urban center. The book describes the growth and development of the resistance movement and armed struggle against the wider historical background and the development of clandestine communal activiies in the ghetto. It makes use of extensive primary and secondary materials from Jewish, German, and Polish sources to throw light on critical events. The Jews of Warsawy, 1939-1943 is a massive scholarly undertaking, at once authentic, scrupulously objective, and deeply moving.

PrefaceIntroductionPart One: Ghetto1. The First Months of the Nazi Occupation2. The Establishment of the Ghetto3. The Warsaw GhettoPart Two: Underground4. The Political Underground in the Warsaw Ghetto5. Prelude to the Mass Deportation6. The Fateful Deportation7. The Ghetto Underground during the Deportation and the Establishment of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Z.O.B.)8. The Polish Response to the Liquidation of Warsaw Jewry9. The Remnant of the Ghetto until January 1943Part Three: Revolt10. The Movement toward Combar: Mid-September 1942-January 17, 194311. The Second Aktion: January 18-22, 194312. The Remnant of teh Ghetto from January to April 194313. The Jewish Fighting Organization Prepares for the Revolt14. Days of Battle15. Repercussions of the RevoltNotesSourcesBibliographyIndex