The main ceremony took place at Białystok’s Memorial to the Defenders of the Białystok Ghetto, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The monument sits at a square dedicated to the leader of the Białystok Ghetto Uprising, Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamaroff.
In attendance were Polish central and local government officials, the US ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, Israel's Ambassador Yacov Livne, and the descendants of Białystok’s Jews, now living abroad.
Earlier on Wednesday, mourners lit candles at the Great Synagogue Memorial, which commemorates the victims of a 1941 fire, when Poland's Nazi German occupiers gathered Białystok’s Jews in the city’s biggest Jewish temple and set them ablaze, the PAP news agency reported.
The date marks the beginning of the extermination of Białystok’s Jewish community, according to historians.
At noon on Wednesday, sirens sounded in tribute to the 1943 insurgents, and officials stressed the importance of keeping the memory of the Białystok Ghetto Uprising alive, the PAP news agency reported.
Speakers also emphasised the contribution of the Jewish community to the development of Białystok.
America’s top diplomat sends video message to mark anniversary
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent a video message to mark the occasion, describing the Białystok Ghetto Uprising as an act of “bravery” that reaffirmed the dignity of Jews during the Holocaust, US broadcaster ABC News reported.
Blinken’s late stepfather Samuel Pisar was one of the survivors of the ghetto, the PAP news agency reported.
Blinken’s mother and Samuel Pisar’s widow, Judith Pisar, took part in Wednesday’s anniversary ceremony in Białystok.
It featured the unveiling of five memorial stepping stones in tribute to Pisar’s family outside a house in Białystok where Samuel was born, according to officials.
Blinken said the 1943 revolt had been an act “not of futility, but of bravery,” for although “survival was not on the cards,” the 300 insurgents rose up to “determine how, not whether they would die.”
1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising
Jews had comprised 43 percent of Białystok’s population of 100,000 before World War II, and some 60,000 had gone through the ghetto set up by the Nazi Germans before the revolt broke out on August 16, 1943, ABC News reported.
Not more than 200 Jews escaped from the Białystok ghetto, including Samuel Pisar, who was 13 at the time; the rest of his family was killed in the Holocaust, according to historians.
Pisar, an internationally recognised author and lawyer, died in 2015 in New York.
The Białystok Ghetto Uprising, which pitted 300 Jewish insurgents against 10 times as many German troops equipped with tanks and aircraft, is regarded as the second-biggest single act of Jewish resistance against the Nazi Germans, after the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the PAP news agency reported.
Both revolts were brutally crushed, and survivors were sent to death camps, ABC News noted.
Blinken said in his message: “As we lose more and more survivors, the responsibility to relay and grapple with the history passes to all of us.”
He added that for Samuel Pisar, the words “never again” were not enough of a protection against war and violence.
Blinken also thanked the residents and authorities of Białystok for commemorating the ghetto uprising, for teaching about the Holocaust in local schools, for inviting survivors to share their experience and for honouring the memory of Samuel Pisar’s family, the PAP news agency reported.
The US secretary of state declared: “The United States will always be your partner in keeping this history alive. We’re taking another step in that effort by working with our Congress to invest USD 1 million to help create a virtual tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau so that more people who can’t visit can experience the indelible impact of seeing that site.”
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, ABC News, state.gov