The uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began in the spring of 1943 and lasted about twenty days. Of the thousands of Jews still in the ghetto when the uprising began perhaps a few hundred escaped alive. A greater number were killed by the blowing up of their dugouts and the sewers. But, despite the burden on every S.S. man and German police officer during the action to drive out the Jews from Warsaw–where they had once numbered a quarter of a million–the spirit of the S.S. men and the police officers, it was noted by one of their superiors, was “extraordinarily good and praiseworthy from the first day to the very last.”
Charles Reznikoff
