|
On the
night of August 15-16, 1943, the Bialystok Ghetto was enveloped in
three tight rings of Wehrmacht and SS forces-armed with heavy and
light weapons and artillery-and by Ukrainian auxiliary forces. The
chairman of the Judenrat was informed that the ghetto inhabitants
would be relocated to Lublin. Some 30,000 Jews, exhausted, spent,
and burdened with whatever possessions they could carry, streamed
toward the evacuation point. At that precise moment, the Jewish
underground in the ghetto launched an uprising. Flyers were
disseminated to the population to disobey the German evacuation
order. For five days, fierce battles raged in the ghetto between
forces that were vastly unequal in size, training, and equipment. A
large detachment of German soldiers and police, backed by armored
vehicles and tanks, was brought into the ghetto, and the main bunker
of the underground was surrounded on August 19. The Germans shot all
the underground fighters, except one, that day. There is no firm
information on how the commanders of the uprising, Mordechai
Tenenbaum-Tamaroff and Daniel Moszkowicz, met their death, but it
appears that they committed suicide.
Deportations
from the ghetto began on August 18 and went on for three days, in
the course of which most inhabitants of the ghetto were sent to
extermination in Majdanek and Treblinka. The 2,000 Jews who were
left behind were deported three weeks later. |
