Eliazer Geller - Day 13 - Friday 30 April 1943 - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

A letter signed by Eugeniusz, the moniker of Eliezer Geller, to his comrades in Mandate Palestine.
He describes his situation. Warsaw, June 7, 1943.

Eliezer Geller letter to friends in Eretz Israel. He describes Celina (Lubetkin) and Tosia (Altman). He also mentions Regards from Haganska which is a kind of code related to Hagana (?). In the same way, the name of Celina (Lubetkin) was used in several letters. As mentioned Tosia Altman was captured two weeks later when the factory she and others (also Eliezer) were sheltering caught fire. Severely burned, she was handed over to the Gestapo and died two days later.

A 40-person group of ŻOB fighters under the command of Eliezer Geller (from Gordonia), from the area of Többens and Schultz's shops, try to get out of the ghetto. They go down to the sewage mains on Leszno St. Several hours later they come out on the corner of Ogrodowa and Żelazna Streets. They are transported out of Warsaw by car.

Stroop writes in his report “Despite the fact that huge blocks of houses were completely burned down, Jews still survive in bunkers located 2–3 meters underground,” which are very difficult to detect. The Germans wipe out 30 bunkers and destroy all escape routes to the “Aryan side”. 1,599 Jews are captured, 179 of whom are “shot in combat”. 3,855 people are loaded onto trains at the Umschlagplatz. Stroop reports to his superiors that 37,359 Jews have been captured since the operation began. He assures them the operation will continue the next day.


Eliazer Geller was born in Opoczno in 1919. He was among the initiators in setting up fighting underground in Czestochowa and Zaglebie. Geller served in the Polish army in 1939 and, along with many of his comrades, fell prisoner to the Germans and was freed after four months. He then went to Warsaw, where he was called upon by Yisrael Zeltzer, the only one of the Gordonia leadership still alive, to take on extensive movement activities. Geller distributed the movement's publications in the underground, visited Gordonia branches throughout Poland, and made contact with the Gordonia office in Geneve (Geneva). Geller and Zeltzer did not work well together, and they turned for mediation to Dr. Natan Eck, to decide which of them would step down from Gordonia's leadership. Eck decided in favor of Geller, who was made a member of the movement's directorate.

In the January 1943 fighting in the ghetto, Geller fought in the Dror/Gordonia combat group, and was made commander of a squad in the Toebbens - Schultz "shop" area. In the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April 1943, Geller commanded a combat squad at 76 Leszno Street.
On May 10, 1943, he left the burning ghetto via the sewers to the "Aryan" side of Warsaw. He and other fighters took refuge at a celluloid factory at 10 Listopadowa 11 Street (November 11th, Poland's Independence Day). Geller was burned in the fire that broke out there on May 24, 1943 -- he was the only survivor -- and succeeded in escaping from the Polish police. In the summer of 1943, he tried to leave Poland with forged documents of a South American national, but was caught and sent to Auschwitz, where he perished.

O co chodzi żonkilowcom? O Święto żonkilka?

Narcyzy chca by żonkile przypominaly Bund a jak Bund to i KOR no i Edelmana.

Przy tym niestety aktywnie zapomina się o Powstaniu w Getcie tylko komu przyczepiono żonkilek albo kto nie pozwolil sobie przyczepic żonkilka.


Jest juz Święto Kwiatów, Owoców i Warzyw no to można wprowadzic Święto żonkilka i walczyc o pamięc Edelmana zapominajac o Powstaniu w Getcie i jego ofiarach, nie tylko wsród bojowników!

Cywia - Zivia Lubetkin poem by Zrubavel Gilad - "Masada dance bursts in flames and burns" - "Suicides" in the sea of flames in Warsaw Ghetto - "Taniec Massady wybucha"

Photo of a Jewish man leaps to his death from the top story window of an apartment block during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Niska street.

Masada dance bursts in flames and burns

wrote Gilad in his poem about Zivia, Cywia Lubetkin, read the entire poem below.
The entire Warsaw Ghetto was a sea of flames. A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. Germans were systematically burning houses block by block using flame-throwers and fire bottles, and blowing up basements and sewers.
When Germans put the fire on the houses Jews were trying to move up to the attics. When the fire reached them they jumped and found the death on the pavement. Germans called it in their reports for suicide.

The photos above and below show a Jewish man leaping to his death from the window of an apartment block during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

These photos were taken on the fourth day of the ghetto clearing operation. The original caption (translated from German) reads, "Bandits jump to escape capture.". They called it for suicide.

A Jewish man leaps to his death from the top-story window of an apartment block during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

A Jewish man leaps to his death from the top-story window of an apartment block during the suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. There are several bodies on the pavement. Maybe his wife and/or children. German soldiers and Polish firemen use to stand on the sidewalk and watch the "action of flames"!

Zrubbavel Gilad - Zerubawel Gilead spent two years in Warsaw 1937-39 and became a close friend to Janusz Korczak.

As I wrote earlier, Janusz Korczaks and Cywia (Tzwia - Zivia) Lubetkin´s friend from pre-war Warsaw, Zrubbavel Gilad wrote a poem about her, see below.
At that time Zrubbavel Gilad thought that Cywia died in the bunker at 18 Mila str. Dalia Tauber from our sister organization succeeded to find the poem and also was so kind to translate it from Hebrew to English. Actually, at that time, the publications of the labor movement glorified Lubetkin, as in June 1943 issue of Mibifnim which is devoted primarily to the WarsawGhetto Uprising and contained Zerubavel’s poem “Zivia.” 

The journal Zzror Michtavim contained the following words: Zivia – this name has become synonymous with the pioneering underground, the pioneering movement in occupied Poland, Polish Jewry, imprisonment within the walls of Warsaw, Lublin, and the barbed wire fences of the death camps.[…] She was the living spirit behind the heroic story of the pioneering uprising, the immense power of life that revealed itself in slaughtered Jewry, and the ability revealed in the great joint action


Tzvia - Cywia - Zivia
Translation: Dalia Tauber

The fountains of the song have dried out.
only one orphan tune
like drippings of blood
my heart will pour.

I will always remember your voice,
soft and confident,
while singing the song
with a raging soul:
"Masada dance bursts in flames"- -

Night it was. The Kibbutz was a hush.
You alone are awake: in the light if an oil lamp
Collecting the bread.
Night it was. And your rejoicing voice
over the sleeping hovers
Like a mothers' breath…

How will everything light up now
In flames of horror and fears! -
And your silent voice turned a flaming shout
Heart stabbing:
"Masada dance bursts in flames"- -
Over the ruins,
Over the crushed,
Over your wobbling body -
Your voice raises from the flames,
Your glorious, awesome voice grows stronger:
"Masada dance bursts in flames
and burns" - -

Źródła pieśni wyschły
tylko jedną osieroconą melodię
jak krople krwi
serce moje zaśpiewa.

Zawsze wspominać będę twój głos,
cichy i pełen wiary,
śpiewając tę piosenkę
z głębi wstrząśniętej duszy:
"Taniec Masady wybucha"...

Była noc
w kibucu zapadła cisza
tylko ty jeszcze nie śpisz:
w świetle lampki naftowej
wyjmujesz z pieca chleb.
Była noc
i twój śpiewający glos
unosił się nad śpiącymi
jak oddech matki...

Jak rozjaśni się teraz wszystko
światłem niepokoju i przerażenia! -
I twój cichy glos stal się ognistym krzykiem
przeszywającym serca:
"Taniec Masady wybucha"...
nad ruinami

nad zmiażdżonymi
nad twoim słaniającym się ciałem
twój głos unoszący się nad ogniem,
twój majestatyczny, straszny głos, wzmacnia się:
"Taniec Massady wybucha i płonie"

Members of the He-Chaluts movement's Central Committee in Poland. In the photo: Rachel Fogelman (top row, on the right), David Kokla-Kafri (top row, center), Chaya Spiegel (top row, on the left), Eliezer Grawicki-Regev (bottom row, on the right), Rivka Perlis -Tamarit (bottom row, second from the right), Yitzhak Perlis (bottom row, third from the right), Yoske Rabinowicz (at the bottom), and Zrubavel Gilad, a Zionist emissary from Mandate Palestine (bottom row, on the left). Photographed in 1938.

In Warsaw. From December 1, 1939 all Jews were obliged to wear white armbands with the blue Star of David on their right arm according to the order issued just 7 days earlier.

 

In Warsaw. From December 1, 1939 all Jews were obliged to wear white armbands with the blue Star of David on their right arm according to the order issued just 7 days earlier.

Photo on the right from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.