According to historians, the Białystok Ghetto Uprising was the second-biggest Jewish revolt against the Nazi Germans during World War II, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of the same year, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The commemoration ceremony took place at the city’s Ghetto Defenders’ Memorial. The monument sits in a square named after the leader of the uprising, Mordechai Tenenbaum-Tamaroff.
Those gathered included Polish local and central government officials, the Israeli and German ambassadors to Poland, and representatives from Białystok’s Israeli partner city of Yehud-Monosson, the PAP news agency reported.
'Act of opposition to barbarism'
After tribute speeches and prayers, officials laid flowers and wreaths at the memorial.
Białystok Mayor Tadeusz Truskolaski lauded the Jewish insurgents for their “act of opposition to barbarism,” which “continues to inspire to this day.”
Israel’s envoy to Poland, Yacov Livne, thanked Białystok’s authorities and residents “for keeping alive the memory of the insurgents” and of the city’s Jewish community, "which formed the majority of the Białystok population before the war."
Livne added he was “pleased that the dialogue between Jews and Poles is better now and many Jewish citizens are visiting Poland.”
“This is the best route for us: to meet and talk, in order to understand the past and crucially, to plan the future,” the Israeli ambassador said.
Meanwhile, the German ambassador to Poland, Thomas Bagger, hailed the Białystok insurgents’ opposition to Nazi German barbarism, saying he hoped that “our memory of the past will make societies impervious to such evil.”
Bagger added: "I can’t fathom how my ancestors could have done such things."
City authorities marked the occasion with a host of cultural events, including an open-air exhibition about some 1,200 children who were sent from the Białystok Ghetto to the death camp in Auschwitz.
1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising
The Białystok Ghetto Uprising broke out on August 16, 1943, as the Nazi Germans prepared to exterminate its inhabitants.
In an act of defiance, some 300 poorly armed insurgents attempted to fight their way through to a nearby forest. Fierce battles ensued. Soon, however, the Nazi Germans’ tenfold numerical advantage began to tell, as tanks and planes also entered the fray.
Within days, only small pockets of resistance remained and the revolt was suppressed, the PAP news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, bialystok.pl