The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 19 to May 16, 1943, was the largest and best-known part of Jewish urban resistance against the Nazis during World War II.

Municipal alarm sirens and church bells in Warsaw are scheduled to ring at noon in the Polish capital to commemorate the insurgents who died in this neighborhood annihilated by the Germans.

Presidents Isaac Herzog and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accompanied by their Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda, are scheduled to pay their respects and make statements at the Ghetto Heroes Monument, located in the heart of this former neighborhood, opposite the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, before going together to a synagogue.

Throughout the city, as in previous years, more than three thousand volunteers will distribute paper daffodils that people hang on their jackets and coats, in memory of Marek Edelman, the last commander of the Jewish uprising, who died in 2009, who used to mark each anniversary of the uprising by laying a bouquet of these yellow flowers alone at the foot of the memorial to the Heroes of the ghetto.

By color and shape, the daffodils recall the yellow star whose wearing was imposed on Jews by the Nazis.

Memorial plaque in memory of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, April 12, 2023 in Poland © Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP

This year, the tradition will also be spread to other cities in the country.

450,000 Jews

"Together we plan to distribute 450,000 paper flowers. This number symbolizes the number of Jewish women and men locked up in the Warsaw ghetto at the time of the greatest overcrowding in the spring of 1941," Zofia Bojanczyk, coordinator of the Daffodil Project, told reporters.

A year after invading Poland in 1939, the Nazis demarcated an area in Warsaw to cram nearly half a million Jews into three square kilometers, exterminate them through hunger and disease, and deport more than 300,000 to gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp. 80 kilometers east of the capital.

The Warsaw ghetto was the largest of all ghettos during World War II.

At the time of the outbreak of the insurrection by a few hundred Jewish fighters, about 50,000 civilians were still hiding in ghetto cellars and bunkers.

The Germans put down the insurrection in blood and set fire to the entire district, which immediately became a field of ruins.

- Civilians -

Many events of all kinds, meetings with survivors, concerts, film screenings, theatrical performances, have been planned this year to mark the 80th anniversary of the uprising.

At the Kordegarda Gallery, a collection of everyday objects, unearthed during various works, tells how Warsaw's Jews lived, loved and died during the war.

"These are the voices of a buried city that resound under our feet," Jacek Konik, co-curator of the exhibition, told AFP.

Co-curator Jacek Konik shows a flashlight discovered in the former Warsaw ghetto, at the Kordegarda gallery, on March 29, 2023 in Warsaw © Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP

Photos of the ghetto, taken by a Polish firefighter and recently discovered will be part of an exhibition at the Polin Museum whereas until now, most of the known photographs had been taken by the Nazis and represented the Jewish quarter through the eyes of Germans.

The Warsaw public transport company reconstructed, on an original chassis discovered in a depot, a specific tram car, marked at the time with a Jewish star instead of the line number, reserved only for ghetto residents.

This year's commemorations of the uprising must highlight the views of civilians, especially women.

Presidents and various delegations are expected to gather at the Ghetto Heroes Memorial, located on the site of many clashes during the uprising.

This monument also has its too often forgotten face, which shows a line of people on their way to death.

© 2023 AFP