Uprising in the ghetto • Warsaw Gaon not ashamed to say: 'I made a mistake!'

These days, exactly seventy years ago, was the largest cut down on Jewish communities in Eastern Europe: Warsaw community.

It was a great community and most important of her generation, which centered gaonim of the generation, especially, senior rabbis of Warsaw, member of Council of Torah Sages, Rabbi Menachem Zamba hy"d.

On the eve of the Holocaust it did not occur to anyone of the danger of extinction which hovers over such a large community and vibrant.

From the day that Nazi persecution began mainly Orthodox Jewish leaders prevented from any action that could be interpreted as resistance to the Germans, and prevented any acts of violence against them, for fear that these will worsen the situation, and the belief that cooperation will save the lives of millions of Polish Jews.

But on the eve of Tisha B'Av of תש"ב, the Germans operated their extermination program.

Within two days, they destroyed over a quarter of a million Jews of Warsaw and Treblinka incinerators in smoke. Only a few survived in the ghetto. One of them was Rabbi Menachem Zamba.
Ghetto remains realized too late that despite the failure of resistance to the Nazi regime, all their friends and their associates were taken to the death camps.

Some of the ghetto members decided that never again will Germans lead them to extermination and they must resist this force.

Slowly, they managed to collect some poor weapons. On Erev Pesach seventy years ago, the Germans erupted into the ghetto again but this time was resisted.

Rabbi Yitzchak Soloveitzchik

Is not ashamed to say I was mistaken
Four weeks the ghetto held out until he fell. Four weeks it took them to conquer the hungry Jewish community remains, at a time that it took 28 days to conquer Poland.

At the same time came to Israel reports on the rebellion, as well as information on the support of Rabbi Zamba in the revolt.

Hagodai activist Moshe Blau from his perch at newspaper Kol Israel in Jerusalem said that it cannot be that Reb Moshe supported the uprising. His pupil, HaGaon Albarg who fled to the United States, also stated that he could not have supported the rebellion. They stated this despite his being in that awful place.

Perhaps these relied on Hr"m's opposition to the first ghetto uprises. But it turns out that after most of the Jews of the ghetto were destroyed, he changed his mind, he admitted his mistake and supported an armed rebellion.

According to the testimony of those who visited the sukkah in the ghetto, Yehuda Aryeh Finegold, Rabbi Zemba called for a revolt.

According to the testimony of Hillel Seidman who was with him in the bunker he said: "We were wrong. We should have resisted. We should have understood from the beginning, that evil seeks to eradicate it all, and we should use every means and to alert the world. And now we must resist, we must not give ourselves over to the enemy. "And further declared: "Today, the only way to sanctify His name is actually armed resistance."

His nephew Rabbi Avraham Zamba indicates that he donated money to the defense committee. They were there and saw it with their own eyes.

But somehow the Haredi press has a puzzling position that the interpretation is controversial, and never took place - there's not any debate or doubt. It is obvious at first that he opposed and later supported.

Sometimes it is hard to understand how the Gedolei Yisrael are wrong. But they themselves are higher than that and are willing to admit their mistake.
Moreover, it is known, on the eve of the Holocaust, while a man was not afraid of destruction, there was only one person who warned of the future and warned that destruction is floating on Polish Jewry. This man was Zev Jabotinsky. Who arrived in Poland in תרצ"ט and called to escape and take up arms. Gedolei Yisrael of Poland including Reb Moshe Zamba mocked him.

But as another ghetto survivor testified to the journalist Shlomo Nicodemus, in the bunker in the last days Reb Moshe said: "When Jabotinsky warned of the danger of Polish Jewry and to teach the Jewish children to shoot, I attacked him sharply. But he was right and I was wrong, indeed we should have done what he said."

In the end he was killed.


On Shabbos Chol Hamoed Pesach on 19th Nissan, in the midst of rebellion, his house was set on fire and he tried to cross the street to the house across the street, when suddenly Germans shot and killed him.

A few days later his family was murdered, too. These days are seventy years of his death – it is the right time to learn his ways and to remember his name, with all the saints of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust Martyrs hy"d.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!