Armament of the Insurgents in the Ghetto

Izrael Kanał | Public Domain

Initially, the collection of weapons was very difficult – the conspirators did not have solid contacts with the Polish underground or arms dealers on the black market. Furthermore, on 3 September 1942, there was a mishap when ŻOB liaison officer Regina Justman was captured by the Germans while transferring several pistols from one hiding place to another. This was a significant blow to the young organisation. As late as January 1943, Jewish conspirators had very few weapons at their disposal, only a dozen or so pistols and grenades. It was only after the partial success of the January Action of 18–22 January 1943 that weapons began to be accumulated more quickly.  They reached Jewish conspirators through four channels. Both the Jewish Combat Organisation and the Jewish Military Union managed to buy a large number of pistols on the black market, and the ŻOB also received several dozen (most likely sixty or seventy) as a gift from the Home Army. In addition, both organisations obtained a small amount of weapons from the enemy by disarming Germans and Polish policemen, known as the ‘blue uniforms’, in the ghetto. Furthermore, both organisations were involved in the clandestine production of firearms.

Miriam Justman, Paulina Włodawer and Regina Justman | POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

The Jewish Military Union purchased a large part of its arsenal from Cezary Ketling-Szemley, the commander of a small underground organisation (Polish People’s Independence Operation), who, through his contacts in the underground, managed to deliver several thousand rounds of ammunition and some quantity of firearms to the ghetto, including, possibly, rifles. In addition, the ŻZW sought contacts with other arms dealers, probably using the connections of some members of the organisation with the underworld. In order to supplement the donations from the Home Army, the ŻOB, in turn, sent several couriers outside the ghetto walls to buy weapons and smuggle them in at agreed times. A key role in these purchases was played by Arie Wilner, alias ‘Jurek’, the ŻOB representative outside the ghetto, and couriers such as Władka Meed and Tuwia Szejngut.

At the same time, the underground was secretly manufacturing simple weapons, such as Molotov cocktails and grenades. In the ŻOB, engineer Michał Klepfisz was responsible for this production, having been instructed by a member of the Polish underground known as ‘Julian’. This was probably how Major Zbigniew Lewandowski, alias ‘Szyna’, the head of the Home Army’s Technical Research Office, introduced himself. Years later, he told Hanna Krall: ‘Molotov cocktails? There’s no comparison. Our bottles were sophisticated, delicate […] with ignition points around the entire circumference. […] The latest acquisition of the Home Army’s Technical Research Office.’ Two figures attest to the scale of production. According to Marek Edelman, in addition to szedyt (a popular explosive used in underground armouries), approximately two thousand litres of petrol were smuggled into the ghetto for incendiary bottles. Many years after the war, near the intersection of Marchlewskiego Avenue (now Jana Pawła II Avenue) and Miła Street, a cache was discovered which, according to press reports, contained as many as 100,000 glass ampoules filled with an ignitable mixture, used as detonators. Władka Meed visited one of the underground factories producing incendiary bottles. She described a room where ‘two young people were busy working. One was leaning over a large barrel, slowly stirring its contents. The other was carefully scooping up the mixed liquid and filling bottles with it […] Against the wall stood neat rows of “Molotov cocktails”. […] The faces of the workers showed a grim determination.’ Meanwhile, in the attic of a tenement house at 51 Nowolipie Street, a communist unit of the ŻOB was preparing grenades from light bulbs, into which they poured an unspecified explosive material. In total, enough grenades and bottles were produced to give each member of the ŻOB several at the beginning of the uprising. Probably, the ŻZW did not manufacture weapons on a larger scale; even simple incendiary bottles were purchased from Ketling-Szemley.

Cezary Ketling-Szemley | Warsaw Uprising Museum

Both the ŻOB and the ŻZW managed to obtain small quantities of weapons from the enemy. These were important gains, as the Jews were able to capture rifles, which were much more difficult to smuggle into the ghetto and allowed them to fight at a greater distance than with handguns. On the first day of the January Action, 18 January 1943, a ŻOB group on Zamenhofa Street probably managed to kill two Germans and capture their weapons; the next day, one of its members, Zacharie Artsztajn, brought back an armful of captured weapons after another clash. Another rifle was captured by Mordechaj Anielewicz, who, during a skirmish, snatched a weapon from a German guard escorting a group of Jews to Umschlagplatz and managed to escape from the battlefield. In total, during the January self-defence, the ŻOB managed to obtain several firearms. In the following weeks, the ŻZW and the ŻOB obtained several more weapons by disarming policemen and members of the industrial guard (Werkschutz) in the ghetto.

When German troops entered the Warsaw ghetto at around 6:00 a.m. on 19 April 1943, they encountered resistance from several hundred members of the Jewish Youth Organisation (ŻOB) and the Jewish Self-Defence Forces (ŻZW). After the war, Cywia Lubetkin, one of the founders of the ŻOB, recalled: ‘How much had changed since we first fired our guns in January! Then […] we were a small group of people, standing alone against battalions of Germans. […] All we had at the time were hand grenades and a few revolvers. And now there were hundreds of fighters, in fortified positions, ready for a battle to the death with the enemy.’ To this optimistic picture, she quickly added: ‘Even now, we had very few weapons.’ In practice, by the outbreak of the uprising the Jewish underground had managed to obtain several hundred pistols, several thousand grenades and incendiary bottles, and a small number of long weapons, which meant most of the fighters were armed with pistols and several grenades or incendiary bottles. The ŻOB’s arsenal included a total of about ten repeating rifles and probably one submachine gun. A few days before the uprising, the ŻZW may have managed to buy two or three machine guns, and before that, an undetermined number of repeating rifles.

The weakest link of the insurgents’ arms was their ammunition supplies. Marek Edelman, commander of the ŻOB units in the brush factory area, reported that there were, on average, ten to fifteen rounds per gun. This forced the insurgents to fight very cautiously and count every shot. Years later, Aron Karmi recounted how he distinguished between who was shooting: ‘We could tell from the shots whether it was us or the Germans – ours were pistols and grenades, and the Germans had heavy rifles.’ Even with careful management, ammunition supplies dwindled rapidly. After the first clash, many units had nothing left to fight with. Describing the combat on the first day of the uprising, Masza Glajtman-Putermilch said: ‘We retreated through the attics because we had no more ammunition. I remember that! When we had fired all the bullets from our guns and thrown all our grenades, we retreated.’ The ŻZW was slightly better off in the Muranowski Square area, as the several thousand rounds of ammunition obtained from Ketling-Szemley allowed them to fight for several days. On 22 April, these stocks ran out, and the ŻZW decided to evacuate the majority of its forces from the ghetto.

Muranowski Square | Warsaw Ghetto Museum

Masza Glajtman – Putermilch 1946 | Ghetto Fighters’ House

Szmuel Krakowski, an officer in the Polish Army and later long-time director of the Yad Vashem Institute, estimated that ‘the Nazis’ advantage over the insurgents in terms of small arms and machine guns – not counting ordinary pistols, due to their limited usefulness in regular street fighting – was at least twenty-seven to one on the first day of the uprising. However, the Nazis’ firepower far exceeded this ratio. We must also take into account the ammunition on either side.‘ He illustrated this disparity very vividly: ’It is certain that the Nazis had more ammunition for each machine gun than all the insurgent combat groups combined, with the exception of ammunition for ordinary pistols.” This lack of ammunition forced the fighters to change their tactics. In his famous letter to Icchak Cukierman, dated 23 April 1943, Mordechaj Anielewicz reported: ‘Starting tonight, we have switched to guerrilla warfare’, which meant abandoning larger clashes in favour of nighttime ambushes on small German patrols. Anielewicz hoped that this would enable them to obtain weapons from the enemy. After several such actions, the Germans reinforced their patrols, making ambushes almost impossible.

“Mechitza. Individual and Collective Resistance of Women during the Shoah” | Zuzanna Hertzberg

In the days that followed, ammunition shortages became increasingly acute. Many members of the underground were still in hiding, but they had nothing to fight with. The atmosphere in the bunker at 18 Miła Street, where several dozen members of the ŻOB were hiding, was described by Cywia Lubetkin: ‘The fighters lay on pallets covered with rags, dejected, lost in thought. Three weeks had passed since the beginning of the uprising. In reality, the fight was already over. There was no one left to fight with or fight for. The ammunition was almost completely exhausted. […] We had the feeling that a slow death awaited us all.’ In these conditions, it became clear that it was impossible to continue the fight. After just a few days of the uprising, most of the ŻZW forces evacuated the ghetto, followed by the ŻOB fighters from the shed district on 30 April and, during the night of 8-9 May, the remaining members of the organisation from the ‘central ghetto’. Only a few insurgents remained in the ruins, a group who became known as the gruzowcy (rubble fighters).

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