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In the
midst of a deportation Aktion in the ghetto on September 1-4, 1943,
the FPO, the Jewish underground organization in the ghetto, urged
the inhabitants not to report for deportation and to launch an
uprising. The inhabitants ignored the call, believing that they were
heading not to death in Ponary, but to labor camps in Estonia, as
the Germans had stated and, as it happened, was indeed the case. In
the late afternoon on September 1, members of the underground
clashed with German forces that were combing the ghetto. In an armed
battle, Yechiel Scheinbaum, commander of one of the underground
units, "Yechiel’s Combat Group," was killed.
Lest the
Germans destroy the entire ghetto in the event of another armed
clash, Jacob Gens, the chairman of the Judenrat, delivered to the
Germans the entire quota of Jews that they had demanded for the
deportation. |
