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Israeli, Polish, German leaders overcome tension to jointly remember Warsaw rebels

19 April 2023 23:45 (UTC +04:00)

President Isaac Herzog was in Warsaw Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, for talks with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda and other Polish leaders, as well as a trilateral meeting with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, APA reports citing the Times of Israel.

The meeting is symbolically significant not only due to its commemorative value, but also because it occurs amid diplomatic tensions between the three countries over the historical narrative of World War II, which are sowing divisions between Germany and Poland even as both countries assist Poland’s eastern neighbor Ukraine in its war with Russia.

The Warsaw Ghetto, established in the autumn of 1940, was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Europe during World War II. In the summer of 1942, a quarter of a million of its residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which broke out on April 19, 1943 and lasted until May 16, was the first uprising in German Nazi-occupied Europe and the largest act of armed resistance by Jews in World War II. It is estimated that about 13,000 insurgents died in the ghetto during the revolt.