Jewish resistance fighters focus of Memorial

Editor's note: It's Friday, time yet again for another "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" (IJS&F) posting. Today we visit a memorial found in the heart of Warsaw, Poland.

Sculptor Nathan Rappaport captures both the horror of the Holocaust and the heroic efforts of resistance fighters in his larger-than-life monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The ghetto, the largest created by the Nazis, sprawled across a dozen blocks in the heart of Warsaw and held an estimated 450,000 Jews in the early 1940s.

As conditions grew untenable and it became clear the Nazis were intent on slaughtering everyone in the area, a small band of resistance fighters grouped together to battle their tormentors. The uprising was doomed from the start.

The insurgents had few weapons and little training. They also had nothing to lose and managed to hold out against the fierce onslaught of battle-hardened troops for several weeks before the entire ghetto was destroyed.

A bronze relief dominates the memorial, between Karmelicka and Zamenhofa streets in what was once the heart of the city, focusing on a defiant image of Mordecai Anielewicz, the leader of the ghetto's Jewish Fighting Organization.

The back of the monument is filled with a melancholy image of a group of Jews being marched to their deaths by their Nazi captors.

HEROIC REMEMBRANCE: Mordecai Anielewicz and other members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (photo above) are the focus of this massive monument in the heart of modern-day Warsaw.

Poignant memorial honors Jewish hero

Editor's note: One great thing about having your own blog is you can do whatever you want with it. So I declare each Friday on "This&That" to be "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" day (IJS&F). Our premier entry begins with details about a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw that I visited during a trip to Eastern Europe. Return next Friday -- and every Friday -- for more "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" focusing on Jewish ritual, Israel and the Holocaust.

When visiting the Okopowa Street Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, one of the first sites that will capture your attention is a memorial to Janusz Korczak.

Off to one side of the main walkway, the poignant sculpture features Korczak holding a child while other children follow behind. Where they're headed is the focus of the piece and the stuff of legend.

Korczak was a Polish-Jewish children's author, pediatrician and child advocate. A Jewish orphanage he created and ran in the early years of the 20th Century was moved to the Warsaw Ghetto after the Germans occupied Poland in 1939.

In the summer of 1942, the Nazis ordered that the orphanage be closed and the 200 children living there be deported to Treblinka.

Korczak, beloved and respected for his children books and philanthropic efforts, received several offers to smuggle him out of the ghetto. He declined. Instead, Korczak remained with his children, telling them they were headed to the country on holiday.

He had them dress in their best clothes, then marched along with them to the Umschlagplatz, the staging area in Warsaw for Jews being transported to Treblinka. Legend suggests he was still marching with the youngsters when they entered the gas chambers at the camp and were murdered.

MEMORABLE MEMORIAL: This poignant statue (photo above), showing a Jewish orphan clinging to Janusz Korczak, is on the fringes of the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.