Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Opposing Forces

Opposing Forces

Hanna Krall, who interviewed the only surviving uprising commander, Marek Edelman (from the left-wing Jewish Combat Organization, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB), stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters; and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one submachine gun in the whole Ghetto. The insurgents had little ammunition; more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, and some were captured from the Germans. Some weapons were hand-made by the resistance; sometimes such weapons worked, other times they jammed repeatedly.

Support from outside the Ghetto was limited, but Polish Resistance units from the mainstream Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) and the communist Polish Workers' Party's militia People's Guard (Gwardia Ludowa, GL) attacked German units near the Ghetto walls and attempted to smuggle weapons, ammunition, supplies, and instructions into the Ghetto. Polish resistance provided the insurgents with a limited number of badly needed weapons and ammunitions from its meager stocks. Jewish right-wing resistance in the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) received large quantities of armament, including several automatic weapons, from the AK-affiliated National Security Corps (Państwowy Korpus Bezpieczeństwa, PKB). AK disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the Ghetto, both in Poland and by way of radio transmissions to the Allies. Several ŻOB commanders and fighters later escaped through the sewers with assistance from the Poles and joined Polish underground. A PKB unit commanded by Henryk Iwański ("Bystry") even fought inside the Ghetto along with ŻZW and subsequently both groups retreated together (including 34 Jewish fighters) to the so-called Aryan side. Although Iwański's action is the most well-known rescue mission, it was only one of many actions undertaken by the Polish resistance to help the Jewish fighters.

Participation of the Polish underground in the uprising was confirmed by a report of the German commander Jürgen Stroop, who reported:

"When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire. ... The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There, it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits. Its plan was to hold the Ghetto by every means in order to prevent us from invading it. ... Time and again Polish bandits found refuge in the Ghetto and remained there undisturbed, since we had no forces at our disposal to comb out this maze. ... One such battle group succeeded in mounting a truck by ascending from a sewer in the so-called Prosta, and in escaping with it (about 30 to 35 bandits). ... The bandits and Jews – there were Polish bandits among these gangs armed with carbines, small arms, and in one case a light machine gun – mounted the truck and drove away in an unknown direction." —Jürgen Stroop, 1943

On the other hand, despite German evidence of Polish fighters joining the struggle, some survivors have reported different experiences. In her book On Both Sides of the Wall, Vladka Meed, who was a member of the Warsaw Ghetto underground, devoted a chapter to the lack of support from the Polish resistance, writing, "We knew that the Polish underground had secret caches of weapons. Mikolai was in touch with the leaders of the Polish underground, ‘They keep making promises!’ he told me again and again. We are urged to be patient. (...) Often, we wondered why, in spite of our willingness to pay generously, the underground refused to help us. However, our contacts with the Poles were tenuous and often came to grief; many times we were sold out."

Ultimately, the efforts of the Jewish resistance fighters proved insufficient against the German occupation system. According to Hanna Krall, the German task force dispatched to put down the revolt and complete the deportation action numbered 2,090 men armed with artillery pieces, armored vehicles, minethrowers, 82 machine guns and 135 submachine guns. Its backbone consisted of 821 Waffen-SS Panzergrenadier troops in five SS reserve and training battalions and one SS cavalry reserve and training battalion. The other forces were drawn from the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) order police (battalions from the 22rd and 23rd regiments), the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) security service of the SS, the Warsaw Gestapo, one battalion each from two Wehrmacht (Heer) railroad combat engineers regiments, a battery of Wehrmacht anti-aircraft artillery pieces and one field gun, a battalion of Ukrainian "Trawniki-Männer" from the Final Solution training camp Trawniki, Lithuanian and Latvian auxiliary policemen known as "Askaris" (Latvian Arajs Kommando and Lithuanian Saugumas), and technical emergency corps. Some personnel from the nearby Gestapo Pawiak prison, led by Franz Bürkl, volunteered to join. 363 officers from the Polish Police of the General Government (so-called Blue Police) were ordered by the Germans to cordon the walls of the Ghetto. Warsaw fire department personnel were also forced to help in the operation. Jewish policemen were used in the first phase of the Ghetto's liquidation and subsequently executed by the Gestapo.