Warsaw, April 19, 1943

“I can't say if I heard or dreamt it, but early in the morning, I woke up drenched in sweat from the thunder of cannons. When I opened my eyes, I saw the sunshine and didn't hear a thing. Everything was quiet. Did I hear cannons or was I dreaming? I don't know.” That is how Yitzkhak Zuckerman recalled the beginning of the day, Passover eve, which happened to fall on April 19 that year, just as in this Jewish leap year, when a whole extra month of Adar is added. But it was 1943, exactly 65 years ago, and Yitzkhak was on the “Aryan” side of the wall that had been built to separate the Jewish ghetto from the rest of Warsaw, the occupied capital of Poland.

"I washed and dressed and waited for Franya Beatus to come back to know if she had arranged my passage. She did come back to my room but, instead of talking, she began weeping: 'They shelled the ghetto. The ghetto is surrounded, she said. Early in the morning, she heard that the army entered the ghetto; the cannons hadn't yet been placed at the ghetto walls, but she heard the Poles saying that you couldn't get into the ghetto, because it was completely surrounded .......”.

Franya was supposed to arrange with the Polish resistance to have Zuckerman, whom they knew as "Antek" smuggled into the ghetto. He wanted to meet, and celebrate Passover with, his comrades of the ZOB (Polish initials for Jewish Fighting Organization), of which he was deputy commander at this stage; since nothing unusual had been expected to occur. She was his courier, my age (about 17 at the time).

He had only come to the “Aryan” side a few days earlier on his assignment to maintain contact with the Polish underground (thus also the outside world) and try to obtain some effective arms (like rifles). Franya, who had found a room for him to stay was waiting near the ghetto gate when he was smuggled out. As he recalled later, “About 100 to 150 meters from the gate, I saw Franya Beatus, the courier who always made me smile. She was a member of Dror .....,blonde, pretty. As I recall, she came from Konin, where there was once a branch of He-Halutz Ha-tza'ir” (i.e. Antek's organization, which had merged with Dror just before the war and corresponds to the “Habonim” in Western Europe and America).

“I didn't know her before the war, when she was probably 13 years old. When the Jews were expelled from Konin, she went to Ostrowiec; where she joined the branch of Dror...” and was later recruited for the ZOB. I don't know where Konin is, but I recall that we passed near Ostrowiec on our march through Poland at the war's beginning 3-1/2 years earlier; and one of the two who couldn't continue and had to be left behind there was Erika, on whom I had an adolescent crush. I found out later that she died at the hospital there. She was 15 or 16.

The Nazis had established the ghetto, into which Jews not only from Warsaw were forced, soon after they occupied the city. Many of the 500 000 or so people in the overcrowded area died from hunger and epidemics before July 1942, but in some respects a very active community life was still possible, taken ample advantage of by the prewar youth organizations. when a big Aktion was started on July 22 in which Jews were taken away, an "anti-fascist" committee, comprising most of the youth outfits , failed to take action , because most preferred to believe the German assurances passed through the Judenrat that people were being resettled in labour camps; although emissaries from Vilna had already warned that the "inconceivable" aim was total extermination of all Jews.

When it was confirmed with the help of Polish railway workers that trains entered the Treblinka camp full with people, but nobody ever left on the empty trains, the Jewish combat organization (ZOB) was formed and tried to train and obtain some arms. By September,when the big Aktion ended, about 300 000 people had been taken. When the Nazis resumed a new wave of deportations in January 1943, they first encountered resistance and interrupted the Aktion. The resistance now effectively took control of the ghetto from the Judenrat.

On April 19, a day before Hitler's birthday, the SS and quisling forces entered in force to liquidate the ghetto, but were driven out after suffering real losses. That is what Antek had heard and Franya reported on. After being driven out a second day, SS Oberfuehrer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg , who had been in charge, was replaced. That was more of a success than the relatively unarmed ghetto fighters could have hoped for.