"what happened exceeded
our boldest dreams.
"The Germans fled twice
from the ghetto...
"It is impossible to describe the conditions
under which the Jews of the ghetto are now living.
"Only a lucky few will survive,
the rest will succumb sooner or later.
"My life's dream has come true."
"I have witnessed the glorious
and heroic combat of the Jewish fighters."
Mordechai Anielewicz,
in his final letter
to his deputy, Yitzhak Zuckerman,
April 23, 1943.
Mordechai Anielewicz
is a symbol of courage
in a period when the survival
of the Jewish people was in doubt
due to the atrocities perpetrated
by the Germans and their allies.
Anielewicz was born in 1919
in the town of Wyszków, Poland
to a family with financial hardships.
He grew up in poverty-stricken neighborhoods
and attended Laor Jewish High School.
At the age of 16 he joined
the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement
where he excelled as an organizer
and youth leader.
In 1939, after the occupation of
western Poland by the Germans,
and the occupation of eastern Poland
by the Soviets,
Anielewicz reached the southern part
of the Soviet-annexed territory
in an attempt to cross
the border into Romania,
and to thereby try and open a route
for youths on their way to Palestine.
Unfortunately for Anielewicz, he was caught
at the border and interned in a Soviet prison.
But after his release,
and despite the danger,
he traveled to Warsaw, which was occupied
by the Germans,
and from there to Vilna,
where refugees, members of youth movements
and political parties from Warsaw were gathered.
Anielewicz strove to return the core-group
of counselors to German-occupied territory
in order to continue underground
educational activities and political work.
Anielewicz devoted much of his time
to self-education,
especially the study of Hebrew, history,
sociology and economics.
In 1942,
as the deportations of Jews from the ghettos
to the death camps were increasing
as part of the "Final Solution,"
Anielewicz traveled to the city
of Częstochowa in western Poland
to organize the resistance movement.
He returned to Warsaw after
hearing of the mass deportation
that had begun on July 22, 1942,
in which most Jews of the ghetto
were sent to the Treblinka death camp,
cofounding
the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB)
in the Warsaw Ghetto 
in October 1942.
On January 18, 1943
began the "small uprising,"
led by Anielewicz and a handful
of Jewish fighters,
in which they attacked a German convoy
carrying Jewish deportees.
Most of the Jewish fighters
were killed in the battle
but Anielewicz survived by overpowering
a German soldier, even taking his weapon.
The deportations were halted
for some four days
and for the next three months
Anielewicz focused on acquiring arms
and planning the next battle.
In April 1943, Passover eve,
the liquidation of the ghetto began
and the underground organizations
started to resist.
The uprising, which began
on April 19,
lasted some four weeks
and is considered the widest urban
civilian uprising
of World War II until that time.
Taking part in the uprising were underground
groups such as the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW)
which fought alongside the ŻOB
under Mordechai Anielewicz
and the ghetto residents who holed up
in bunkers and hiding-places.
On May 8 the Germans captured
the main bunker at 18 Miła Street.
Mordechai Anielewicz was killed in this battle,
at the young age of twenty-four.
Under Mordechai Anielewicz's leadership,
the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
became a symbol of the Jewish
armed resistance in the Holocaust.
