Volume 7, Issue 10
October 31, 2014
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Price- Free
Tess Dietrich
Imagine having no hope at all and wishing for a better life where you are treated equally. You
are forced to live somewhere extremely overcrowded, where several families live in the same house.
Human waste and garbage are just thrown into the streets, since plumbing has broken down. People
are always hungry. Begging or stealing is the only way to survive, because they are deliberately being
starved by the Germans. Thousands of people die daily from illness, starvation, or cold, and some
would kill themselves to escape their
hopeless lives. Children become
orphaned every day, and some have
to take care of younger children.
Many young children smuggle food
by crawling through small openings
in walls, so their families can
survive. This is what it was like to be
a Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto. The
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising staged the
first urban uprising in occupied
Europe, and provided hope for Jews
in Ghettos all around Europe.
Initially, the Nazis deported
most of the 350,000 Jews from the
Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka
extermination camp, leaving behind about 60,000 Jews. In response to this forced deportation. The
Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB; Jewish Fighting Organization) and the Zydowska Zwiazek
Wojskowy (ZZW; Jewish Military Union) were established. Although there was tension between both
groups at first, they eventually decided to work together to oppose the Nazis. In November,
Mordechai Anielewicz was appointed chief commander of the ZOB and in 1943 he successfully
formed a relationship with the Polish government. It was through this alliance the Warsaw Ghetto was
able to obtain weapons, and ammunition for their resistance. All together they had nine rifles, fiftynine pistols, and a few hundred grenades. On April 19,
Years of War
1943, the eve of Passover, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Is written, edited, and designed by students in the Selah
started. When the Nazis came to the ghetto to perform
School District, Washington State.
the final deportation, the uprising broke out. The Nazis,
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Journalism Club Advisor: Mr. Bryan Dibble
taken by surprises, suffered many casualties in the
By mail at Years of War
beginning. The Jews were greatly outnumbered, with
411
N.
First
Street, Selah, WA 98942
only about 750 Jewish fighters, yet they held off the
Or email: BryanDibble@selah.k12.wa.us
Nazis for about one month. They knew they didn’t have
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a chance, but they didn’t surrender. Even the women
and children didn’t give up; they remained in hiding
shelters, as the Nazis searched house by house burying
and killing Jews. After four weeks the ghetto was
defeated. The uprising ended May 16, 1943. In the end
approximately 7,000 Jews were killed and 56,000 were
captured. Those that remained were sent to
concentration camps. On the forty-second day of
fighting, one house remained and the surviving
contested every floor. When the Nazis left Warsaw in
January of 1945, only twenty Jews remained in the city.
I chose the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising because I
was inspired by their determination, that such a small
inexperienced group of people had the courage to fight
the Nazis, and hope that they might be able to defeat
them. First in January of 1943, when the Nazis came to
the ghetto to deport a group of Jews to a death camp,
they fought back. The Jews successfully caused the
troops to retreat using only the few weapons they had
smuggled. This small victory inspired the ghetto
resistance fighters to continue. The Jews trained for
days on end and continued even though they were
hungry and tired, when most people would have quit or
give up. Even though the members of the Warsaw
Ghetto didn’t succeed in their final resistance fight, they exceeded their boldest dreams and ended
their lives well. As Mordecai Anielewicz said in his last letter to his fellow friend Yitzhak Cukierman,
“The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defense in the ghetto will have been a reality.
Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic
fighting of Jewish men in battle.” Every one ended their life resisting and not just standing by.
Now how can we make a difference and not let this happen again? Well the answer is simple,
just stand up for what is right. I can easily compare the Holocaust to bullying, it’s basically the same
concept just on a much smaller scale. Someone or many people are being treated unequally because
of their religion, nationality, size, or even appearance. If you stand up for what is right, problems won’t
escalate to the level of Hitler’s campaign. If a group of people had just gone against what Hitler was
imposing before so many people had started following him, the whole Holocaust might not have even
happened. Same goes for bullying, if you see it happening don’t just stand by and let it happen, say
something or even do something. You can put someone out of misery and your words might even
impact the bully and cause them to stop. Standing by never does any good, saying something can
change someone’s life and make the world a better place.
In conclusion, the members of the Warsaw Ghetto had it tough, yet they never lost hope. They
kept striving and fighting for what they knew was right. If they had lost hope during the battle, it would
have been a complete failure and they would not
have had a single small victory. If you keep your
head up and continue doing what you set out to
do, you can make a difference. It may not seem
like the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto succeeded,
but they actually did. They proved their point, that
they would not stand by and allow everything to
go on around them. Instead, they chose to stand
up to the Nazis because that is what needed to
be done. More than that, they made their dreams
reality and a fact.
After the Surrender of Cornwallis By Kaylea Hartman
After the surrender at Yorktown
80,000 Loyalists left the United States
and settled in British Canada. Although
the Americas won they realized it came
at a cost. They lost 6,200 men in
combat; 10,000 men from camps and
diseases and another 8,500 men that
became prisoners to the British. The
Treaty of Paris occurred as well where
the British Government recognized the
Americans as an Independent Nation
and the land that was taken from the Loyalists prior to the surrender of the British was
given back. Now that the Americans won the war, they now faced the task of creating a
government for their new nation.
Modern-Day Slavery - Crime against Humanity
by Nadia Bertrand
Remember in elementary school, when you were forced to read those horrifying articles about children
in slavery? How they would tie little knots for 12 cents an hour? Now there is something, maybe worse, or
maybe equally gruesome: sex slavery, when women are literally enslaved to have sexual intercourse with a
man who pays the woman's owner. The first time I heard about prostitution slavery, it was from a religious
leader. She told me that a man had told his wife that he had found a job interview for her, and, trusting her
spouse, she went to the area in which her husband told her she was to be interviewed, and then was taken by
the owner of prostitution slaves and sent to work for him. The owner had paid the woman’s husband $200,
showing how little the man cared about his wife.
Many women are abused this way, and this is not
just an issue with women, but with men and
children, also. They are captured, raped, and
then sent of to be slaves. But the word “slavery”
plays part in this crime, too. When the victim is
being sexually abused, he or she is being
beaten, in attempting to bring down their pride,
dignity, and self-worth. This method of slavery is
also known as human trafficking.
Prostitution slavery does not exist only in
places of poverty, as most people falsely
assume. Women in the most populated cities will
sit on the streets, appearing to be a prostitute,
but knowing that if she does not do as she is told,
http://www.shrm.org/publications/hrmagazine/editorialc
she would be beaten and maybe even killed.
ontent/2012/pages/humantrafficking.aspx
People, mostly women, in sex slavery, are seen
This website called “Journey” is put together by the
as unequal to their owner, almost one hundred
Society for Human Resource Management.
percent of the time a man. It also shows that the
victim is unequal to pretty much everyone else.
Surprising to some, the prostitution slavery industry is a millionaire company. Prostitution in Kamathipura,
India’s largest red-light district, generates $400 million with 100,000 prostitutes who have been kidnapped and
trafficked from India's rural areas. In poverty-glazed countries, daughters are sold by their parents in order for
the parents to pay off debt, and girls are forced to sleep with wealth men called “sugar-daddies” who pay off
their school fees for them. Some men believe having sexual intercourse with a virgin cures them of STDs
(sexually transmitted diseases). Some girls are so abused that their reproductive system is broken, and the gift
of natural motherhood is completely destroyed. In poor countries, boys are sold into prostitution slavery just as
girls are. But instead of entertaining a woman or a homosexual, they dress up as women and play show to the
customer of the owner. This practice is called bachcabaazi.
One of the largest countries that upholds prostitution slavery is India. In a recent article from BBC
News, a reporter studying human trafficking interviewed a young woman in prostitution slavery named Guddi.
She has been in India’s red light district since she was 11, when a neighbor convinced her family to send her to
be a maid with a good pay in a poverty-stricken village. Unfortunately, this was a lie. The job was not
housekeeping, but prostitution slavery. She was raped by a customer and then later spent three months in a
hospital.
Lack of political will to
immediately address the root
causes of human trafficking has
lead to its expansion. There are
groups that are hired to rescue
people from sex slavery, and they
go undercover to save the victims
of sex slavery. You can donate
money to non-profit organizations
like the Justice Project, who use
the money to rescue the victims.
Put an end to such a cruel,
abusive form of slavery.