Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 25, 1993 Page: 7 of 43
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PASSOVER ISSUE - IN OUR 47TH YEARI-DALLAS, THURSDA Y, MARCH 25, 1993, TEXAS JEWISH POST 7
A Passover Remembrance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 19,1943
By Zvi Rosenwein
NEW YORK (JTA) - “It
was a day that brought me
down completely,” recalls
Nahum Rembo, secretary of
the Warsaw community, in
his memoirs.
It was a hot day in August
1942 and Rembo had been
told that the Germans were
evacuating schools and or-
phanages, including the one
run by Janusz Korczak.
The Germans began load-
ing the trains that would take
the children to Treblinka
“The death march started by
Korczak with his children—
that, I will never forget,”
wrote Rembo.
“That was not a march to
death, it was a silent orga-
nized protest against the sav-
agery.
“It was surreal. The chil-
dren were lined up in groups
of four, with Korczak lead-
ing them, his eyes lifted sky-
ward, his hands holding those
of two children.
“Atnight, I thought I heard
the marching of the little chil-
dren. They are marching to
the tune of the teachers. I
heard their march without
stop, going in an unknown
direction.”
(Emanuel Ringelblum,
“Notes from the Ghetto,”
Vol. 2, pp. 213-214, trans-
lated from the Yiddish, I.L.
Peretz Publishing, Israel,
1985.)
* * * *
Every year in our home,
we pause in the middle of the
Passover seder to retell
Nahum Rembo’s story —
and the many other stories,
including my own, that made
up the destruction of Euro-
pean Jewry.
We pause at the passage in
the Hagaddah that says, “In
every generation, every in-
dividual must feel as if he (or
she) personally had come out
of Egypt.”
My modem-day Egypt was
World War II Poland, and
not a day goes by without my
thinking of my enslavement
there. On the seder night, I
ask my family, and all Jews,
to think back with me.
Why on the sedernight? In
part, because it was on the
first night of Passover 50
years ago, when the Gennans
had surrounded the Warsaw
Ghetto and were preparing
to destroy it, that the last rem-
nants of the half-million Jews
of Warsaw rose up against
their oppressors and fought
one of the most valiantbatdes
of Jewish history.
The otherreason for choos-
ing the seder is that we are
commanded on Passover to
tell the story of the Exodus
from Egypt, over and over
again. “And the more one
tells the story of the Exodus
from Egypt, the greater one’s
merit,” the Hagaddah says.
And so we are commanded
from the depths of Auschwitz
by those who did not survive
to tell the story of European
Jewry, over and over again.
We who survived consider
the recounting of the tale to
be the fulfillment of a sol-
emn oath made to those who
were killed, “promise us you
will remember,” they said.
“Promise us you will tell.”
And so, on a holiday when
we are gathered with friends
and family to celebrate our
freedom, we tell. We tell not
only of the destruction, but
also of that which was de-
stroyed.
There was, we tell, a great
Jewish people in Europe for
more than 1,000 years. They
formed thousands of com-
munities; they built trade and
commerce and erected
houses of learning and wor-
ship. They created their own
language, their own litera-
ture, their own theatre, their
own music. They spewed
forth into the world some of
the greatest geniuses of the
last centuries.
And then we must tell of
the destruction, of the me-
thodical dehumanization of
the Jews first in ghettos and
then in concentration camps,
of the torture and the starva-
tion, of the carefully orches-
trated murder of millions.
We tell Nahum Rembo’s
story, of children being led
to their deaths in Treblinka,
and in that we tell the end of
a civilization.
And then, after we have
recited all this, we can tell of
the young heroes who rose
up on the first seder night in
1943, who lashed out against
these murderers of children
and gave expression to the
bitter outcry of a people in
their darkest hour.
The struggle of a small and
virtually unarmed group of
young Jews, led by the likes
of 24-year-old Mordechai
Anilevitch and 28-year-old
TziviaLubetkin, was the first
uprising in occupied Europe
and lasted longer than the
German invasion of Poland.
We must continue to give
life to these unlived lives and
some meaning to their hor-
rible deaths.
On the seder night, let us
tell their stories and give
voice to their cries.
Here is the text that my
family reads at the seder, as
reprinted from the Jewish
Spectator, April 1960:
Perform this ritual after
the third of the Four Cer-
emonial Cups, just before the
door is opened for the sym-
bolic entrance of the Prophet
Elijah. All rise, and the
leader of the seder recites
the following:
On this night of the seder
we remember with reverence
and love the six millions of
our people of the European
exile who perished at the
hands of a tyrant more wicked
then the Pharaoh who en-
slaved our fathers in Egypt
Come, said he to his min-
ions, let us cut them off from
being a people, that the name
of Israel may be remembered
no more. And they slew the
blameless and pure, men and
women and little ones, with
vapors of poison an burned
them with fire.
But we abstain from dwell-
ing on the deeds of the evil
ones lest we defame the im-
see WARSAW p. 8
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 25, 1993, newspaper, March 25, 1993; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth754866/m1/7/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .