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Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:14 pm Post subject: Warsaw ghetto uprising commemorated Thu Apr 19, 7:16 PM ET |
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Warsaw ghetto uprising commemorated Thu Apr 19, 7:16 PM ET
WARSAW, Poland - The last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising placed yellow daffodils on a granite memorial Thursday to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the start of the ill-fated, armed resistance.
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Marek Edelman, shivering on a chilly spring day, walked arm-in-arm with his granddaughter from the stark monument for heroes of the uprising in downtown Warsaw to several other sites within the Nazi-era ghetto for Warsaw Jews.
On one of Edelman's stops, a group of teenagers sang Yiddish songs that roused the fighters who rose up on April 19, 1943 against Germany's attempts to liquidate the ghetto.
Edelman, who picked out the tunes, sang along softy.
In a separate ceremony, Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and other officials placed wreaths at the monument to those killed in what was the first major act of civilian resistance against the Nazis in Poland during World War II.
They opted to fight their captors in the face of plans to exterminate the tens of thousands of Jews remaining in the ghetto, where Nazis had crowded more than 400,000 people in November 1940. The residents, outnumbered and outgunned, held off German troops for three weeks with homemade explosives and a cache of smuggled weapons.
Most of fighters were killed and the Nazis burned down the ghetto street by street.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_eu/poland_ghetto_anniversary |
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