Tomorrow night, Erev Pesach, will be the 77th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the Jewish calendar, one of the most significant events in Jewish history. Because of the general ignorance on this subject, I figured I'd occasionally make threads about it.

The ghetto, comprising all of 1.3 sq mi (3.4 sq km), was established on October 12th, 1940. 113K Poles had been evicted and 138K Jews were ordered in, amounting to a Jewish population of 450K, averaging 9.2 per room. On November 15th, 1940, the ghetto was sealed by the Germans.

Germany was intent upon starving the Jews of the ghetto, and the daily caloric ration went from 184 to 177. Due to the low quality and supply, a black market was established that fed 80% of the ghetto inhabitants. Between '40 and mid-'42, 83K Jews died of starvation and disease.

In the summer of '42, the Germans and their auxiliaries started rounding up Jews at the Umschlagplatz to send to Treblinka under the guise of resettlement. Between July 22nd and September 12th, 265K Warsaw Jews were gassed in Treblinka. 35K were murdered in the ghetto.

After four months without deportations, the Germans returned on January 18th, 1943. 600 Jews were shot and 5K seized, but the Germans withdrew under small arms fire and Molotov cocktails from hundreds of Jewish resistance fighters.

The Jewish resistance organizations ŻOB and ŻZW built bunkers and fighting posts and executed Nazi collaborators, taking control of the ghetto in preparation for a final stand against the Germans and their deportations to the extermination camps.

On the eve of Passover—April 19th, 1943—the SS arrived for final liquidation of the ghetto. They were ambushed by Jewish fighters, suffering 59 casualties. They were pushed back, and the SS commander was replaced by Jürgen Stroop, who led a renewed invasion into the ghetto.

Sustained fighting took place around the ŻZW's stronghold at Muranowski Square, where its leader, Dawid Apfelbaum, was killed in combat. Two boys climbed the roof of a tall, visible building and planted the Polish and ŻZW flags, which flew over Warsaw for four days.

Two Polish resistance groups, the AK and GL, also engaged the Germans in combat outside the ghetto walls.

By April 28th, the ŻZW leadership had been wiped out, and the surviving fighters escaped into the forest through a tunnel. Organized defense collapsed, and survivors took to the tunnels and bunkers, which were smoked, flooded, or bombed out by the Germans.

On May 8th, the Germans discovered the ŻOB command bunker at Miła 18, whereupon the leadership, including commander Mordechaj Anielewicz, committed suicide by cyanide. His deputy Marek Edelman and others escaped two days later.

The Germans went building by building, street by street, burning everything in sight. 13K Jews were killed, half of whom were burned alive. 53K were captured.

The uprising ended on May 16th, 1943, when Stroop detonated explosives and demolished The Great Synagogue of Warsaw. At least 7K Jews were deported to Treblinka and exterminated. The ghetto, and one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, was completely destroyed.

On the site of the former ghetto are now the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, and the original 1946 memorial tablet made by the Central Committee of Polish Jews.

On the tablet is written:

"For those who fell in an unprecedented and heroic struggle for the dignity and freedom of the Jewish people, for a free Poland, and for the liberation of mankind.

—The Polish Jews."