The Warsaw Ghetto Museum requests your support for the initiative to name the intersection of Gen. W. Andersa and Stawki Streets in Warsaw after the Jewish Military Union.
The Warsaw Ghetto Museum wishes to restore the memory of the Jewish Military Union , an organization that fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which broke out on April 19, 1943. The Jewish Military Union has not yet been commemorated in the capital, even though it was the second largest organization whose members fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The ŻZW was probably founded in the fall of 1942. It's impossible to pinpoint the date precisely, as no organizational documents have survived. Its fighters hailed from Betar, a prewar right-wing Zionist youth organization. The ŻZW's chief commander was Pawel Frenkel . His biography is unknown, and no photographs of him have survived. The Rodal brothers and Dawid Wdowiński also belonged to the organization. Women, including Ziuta Hartman , also participated.
According to Emanuel Ringelblum, the ZŻW was well prepared for the ghetto uprising.
Ringelblum saw her at the headquarters of this organization, which was located at 7/9 Muranowska Street:
"I inspected the ŻZW arsenal (...) The ŻZW leadership members, with whom I spoke for several hours, were armed with revolvers tucked into their belts. In the large rooms, various weapons were displayed on racks: light machine guns, rifles, various types of revolvers, hand grenades, bags of ammunition, German uniforms, which had been used so effectively in the April operation, etc. The leadership room was bustling with activity, like a real army headquarters; orders were received here for the barracks "points" where future fighters were gathered and trained."
Before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, fighters from the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) carried out attacks on German executioners and Jewish informants. Just before the armed uprising, ŻZW members held talks with the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻZW), the main force in the ghetto. The two organizations did not join forces, but it was agreed that the ŻZW would defend the area around Muranowski Square.
At the outbreak of the uprising in 1943, the Jewish Military Union had approximately 150 members. Muranów Square was the main battlefield for the organization's fighting against German forces. It was there, on the first day of the uprising, April 19, 1943, that its members hoisted two flags side by side: the Polish, white-and-red, and the Jewish, blue-and-white. For the first time since the September 1939 defeat, the Polish flag flew over Warsaw.
After two days of fierce fighting, the surviving ŻZW members emerged from the ghetto in two groups through a tunnel. The first group reached the forest near Michalin and Józefów, where they perished in combat with the Germans. The second hid in a house at 6 Muranowska Street in Warsaw. Discovered by the Nazis, they had no chance of survival.
Due to the lack of surviving organizational documents and the deaths of the vast majority of its fighters, the existence of this group after World War II has been difficult to reconstruct. It also became the subject of numerous false narratives. This led to the group's marginalization and a failure to properly recognize its role in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
A real breakthrough in establishing the truth about the Jewish Military Union was the book "Heroes, Impostors, Describers: Around the Jewish Combat Union ," published in 2011. Its authors, historians Dariusz Libionka and Laurence Weintraub , described all the manipulations and falsifications concerning this crucial part of the history of armed resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. They also presented a detailed account of the fate of the organization itself, based on a thorough study of preserved documents in Poland and Israel. As part of its mission, the Warsaw Ghetto Museum wishes to restore the memory of the Jewish Military Union. It wishes to commemorate it in the most appropriate place in Warsaw for this purpose: the intersection of Wł. Andersa and Stawki streets, located in Muranowski Square. The main command of the ŻZW was located in this area, the heaviest fighting involving fighters of this organization took place and two flags were displayed identifying both the Jewish and Polish identity of the members of this armed organization.
Naming the intersection after the Jewish Military Union will also be a significant addition to next year's commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
We invite you to sign at the reception desk of the PAST building at 39 Zielna Street or electronically through your trusted profile. Please send your electronically signed support card to aolenderek@1943.pl . Any adult resident of Warsaw can sign.
How to support a project electronically?
- Download the Support Card, which is located on the right below the illustration.
- Complete the Support Card with the following information: name, address, date of birth and save the document to your computer.
- Go to the website https://www.gov.pl/web/gov/podpisz-dokument-elektronicznie-wykorzystaj-podpis-zaufany and log in. If you don't have a trusted profile, you can create one on the website: https://pz.gov.pl/pz/registerMainPage.
- Press the blue SIGN OR VERIFY DOCUMENT button. Then press the blue SELECT DOCUMENT FROM DISK button and select the document you've filled out with your details.
- Sign and download the signed document in .xml format.
- Send your support card to: aolenderek@1943.pl.
The electronic version of the signed Support Card is the original. You do not need to print it and provide a paper copy to the project author.
