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.