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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s 80th anniversary remembered with daffodils, 3 presidents and an 11th commandment against ‘indifference’
WARSAW (JTA) — Exactly 80 years ago, a few hundred ragtag, half-starved Jews emerged from sewers in Warsaw to battle Nazis – and held them off for nearly a month rather than surrender themselves and their Jewish brethren to the Treblinka and Majdanek death camps.
On Wednesday, thousands of Poles and international visitors, including Polish President Andrzej Duda, Israeli President Issac Herzog and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, marked the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in a stirring Holocaust commemoration festooned with daffodils, the emergent symbol of the largest Jewish rebellion against the Nazis during World War II.
“As German federal president, I stand before you today and bow to the courageous fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Steinmeier told a few hundred politicians, Jewish leaders and others at the Ghetto Heroes Monument, marking the first time a German president has joined in the annual commemoration. “I stand before you today and ask for your forgiveness for the crimes committed here by Germans.”
This was also the first time leaders from all three countries came together for the official uprising ceremony to commemorate the fighters, none of whom are alive today. The last surviving fighter, Simcha Rathajzer-Rotem, also known as Kazik, died in December 2018. A handful of Warsaw Ghetto survivors who were not old enough to join the fighting remain, according to Holocaust scholars.
In another first, the three heads of state attended a commemorative service led by Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schdurich at Warsaw’s Nozyk Synagogue. By the end of the ceremony, which was conducted mostly in Hebrew and featured Polish-Jewish children singing the Polish and Israeli national anthems, many attendees had tears in their eyes.
“I just thought, the leaders are here, this is something we should do, it’s part of building relationships and collective memory that partnerships are built on,” Schudrich told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Earlier in the day, Polish President Duda called the fighters “the heroes of the Jews all over the world” and “the heroes of Poland and the Poles.”
Herzog, a day after Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, praised the fighters for sparking hope during one of humanity’s most tragic times. “In a world falling apart, in the shadow of death, under conditions of humiliation, famine, and forced labor, in the ghettos… they succeeded — mothers, fathers, children, grandfathers, and grandmothers — in upholding human morality, mutual responsibility, faith and basic humanity,” he said.
From left to right: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Israeli President Issac Herzog hold hands before the 80th anniversary commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in front of the city’s Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, April 19, 2023. (German Government Press Office/Getty Images)
Wednesday’s diplomatic tribute, which also included speeches by World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder and Marian Turski, a Lodz Ghetto survivor whose so-called 11th commandment — “Thou shalt not be indifferent” — became the slogan for programming by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews around the commemoration.
Eleven years ago, POLIN commissioned Jewish artist Helena Czernek to design a simple paper flower daffodil that has since been worn on the uprising’s anniversary to raise awareness of the day. The pin design was inspired by a commander of the uprising, Marek Edelman, who died in 2009. Each year he would receive a bouquet of daffodils to mark the anniversary date from an anonymous sender, and he would in turn place them on the city’s Monument to the Ghetto Heroes — a large sculpture standing at the site of the uprising’s first battle.
The daffodil marker has since changed the landscape of Holocaust memory in Poland, according to POLIN museum spokeswoman Marta Dziewulska.
“Our research shows that since we began our educational programs around this event, including handing out the daffodils, the rise in general public knowledge about the uprising has been enormous,” said Dziewulska.
This year, thanks in part to financial support from Lauder, a billionaire heir to the Estee Lauder fortune and a major Republican donor, the daffodil campaign reached far more people than ever, both in Poland and beyond. Throughout the center of Warsaw, the paper daffodil was ubiquitous among pedestrians and cafe dwellers across generations. All crew members on LOT Polish airline flights wore them.
For the first time, the daffodils were also distributed to 150,000 people in 100 Jewish communities around the world. More than 3,000 volunteers gave out 450,000 paper daffodils in six cities across Poland, and over 7,000 schools, libraries and cultural institutions participated in the museum’s daffodil campaign, which includes films and educational materials about the uprising.
Helena Czernek designed the paper daffodil over a decade ago. (Dinah Spritzer)
Krystyna Budnicka, who was 11 at the time of the uprising, told journalists about her story on Monday. The fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) were armed with home-made grenades and Molotov cocktails. In the end, roughly 13,000 Jews were were burnt alive or suffocated as the Nazis burnt down the ghetto to quell the rebellion, sending the remaining some 50,000 Jews to be murdered further east.
Budnicka told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza that “as the ghetto was burning, the underground was like a bread oven.”
But Budnicka and some of her 10 immediate family members, none of whom survived the Holocaust, had one advantage. Her brothers and father were observant Jews who happened to be carpenters. They had constructed a bunker to lead to the sewers so that eventually, at least she and her brother, who later died of typhus, were able to make it out.
Budnicka was later taken in by a Catholic orphanage while the war was still raging and hid her Jewish identity, changing her last name to Kuczer. Until the 1990s, she told almost no one of her travels. But today she is the ambassador of POLIN Museum.
Her recollection of life at the time is limited, except that she had hope for survival. The fighters slept during the day in bunkers the Nazis couldn’t easily find, and came out of the sewers to fight at night. She remembers hunger, being the only girl among many boys and dreaming about what bread tasted like, a distant memory.
Many decades later, after the end of the Communist dictatorship, a “Children of the Holocaust” association was formed in Poland. For the first time, Budnicka and many others started telling their stories out loud, and at schools.
“Now I feel that I have to do it,” she told Gazeta Wyborcza. “When I mention my loved ones at meetings, it’s like I’m erecting a monument to my family. They live then. I see them. It’s in order: my mother Cyrla, father Josef Lejzor, brothers Izaak, Boruch, Szaja, Chaim, Rafał.”
Budnicka is not the only Warsaw Ghetto survivor to ask the world to remember what she endured. Helena Birnbaum, 93, who also survived by hiding in a bunker, participated in this year’s March of the Living — an annual Holocaust remembrance event that brings thousands of participants from around the world to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She told reporters at the march on Tuesday why she flew all the way to Poland from Israel to talk about her ordeal.
“The importance of knowing about the Holocaust is to know the person in all situations, on the brink of death,” she said. “The importance of knowing that the Holocaust was life within death and not everyone died at once. The individual stories matter.”
An iconic photo from the Warsaw Ghetto shows Jews being led by Nazis in 1943. (U.S. Holocaust Museum/Wikimedia Commons)
The act of international unity in display at the official uprising ceremony comes at a time when Poland’s right-wing government continues to espouse a nationalist narrative that international scholars say downplays Polish antisemitism and violence towards Jews before, during and after World War II. Multiple Polish laws connected to Holocaust rhetoric and restitution payments caused diplomatic tensions between Poland and Israel for years, and the two only resumed more full relations last month. The rapprochement came after Israel’s foreign minister announced the resumption of Israeli student trips to Holocaust sites in Poland, which now could include sites that explain Nazi violence against non-Jewish Poles.
Six years ago, some Polish Jews who rejected their government’s patriotic narrative launched their own uprising commemoration, which has grown from a group of hundreds to nearly a thousand. During the alternative commemoration on Wednesday, which featured Yiddish songs sung by school children and recitations of poetry by Polish-Jewish authors, participants laid paper and real daffodils at Warsaw Ghetto monuments such as Umschlagplatz, where the Nazis deportee 350,000 Jews by train to Treblinka.
Patrycja Dolowy, director of Warsaw’s Jewish community center, was an early supporter of what she called a grassroots alternative to the pomp and circumstance of the government’s ceremony, only a few hundred feet away.
“Jews were sentenced to death in the center of their own city and the majority of people outside the ghetto were doing nothing about this,” said Dolowy, who believes government focus on heroism should not erase inquiry into less heroic actions by Poles.
“If Jews were not treated before the war as strangers, it would have been much easier for everyone, Jews and non-Jews, to rise together and resist,” she theorized.
The counter-commemoration reflects the contrasting attitudes in Poland towards honoring Jewish and Holocaust memory. In 2017, the government passed a law that assured public schools taught history from a heroic, patriotic perspective, and in 2018 made it illegal to insult the Polish nation’s Holocaust record, condemning scholars who dared delve into historical Polish aggression against Jews.
Attendees shown at an alternative Warsaw Ghetto Uprising commemoration, which has grown in recent years. (Dinah Spritzer)
Jerzy Warman, 76, a Polish-born Jew participating in the non-governmental commemoration whose parents survived the Warsaw Ghetto, said the Polish government wants to turn the uprising commemoration into an event where “they can do a roll call of Poles who they say helped the Jews.”
Warman noted that his father joined Edelman at the Warsaw Uprising, a major Polish resistance campaign that took place year after the Ghetto Uprising. “The Jews tried to join the Polish Home Army as a group but were rejected by them,” Warman recalled his father explaining.
Moshe Kis, 22, a Jewish political science student from Warsaw whose grandmother spent two years in the ghetto, echoed Warman’s view.
“So many people here still don’t understand their own history,” said Kis, who will immigrate to Israel next year. He added, fiddling with a daffodil over coffee, “when the sirens went off today in honor of the uprising, I heard people around me saying on the street, ‘what is this for, are we being invaded?’”
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Hasan Piker Bashed Gal Gadot in Villainous ‘Variety’ Feature
Hasan Piker. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In case you missed it, The New York Times recently did a fawning profile on popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, in which it mentioned, only in passing, that he once said America deserved 9/11. The article didn’t mention that Piker said he supported Hezbollah or that he took every chance to vilify Israel. It didn’t mention that he interviewed someone who he said was a member of the Houthis, only to later say he wasn’t.
Now comes an article in Variety by Tatiana Siegel, who uncritically lets Piker says his statement about 9/11 was about “blowback” and doesn’t push any further, accepting this nonsense that his own words were “weaponized” against him.
Siegel is more interested in writing that Piker is 6’4″, muscular, and plays basketball, instead of writing about how he interviewed a Houthi and vibed with him. Why get into any of that stuff? It’s much more important for Siegel to repeat a line from the Times article, as if it was her own, that Piker could be a possible answer to when the left-wing will find its own Joe Rogan. Maybe if they repeat it, suddenly Piker will be the next Joe Rogan!
Siegel tries to cast Piker as a moderate, because he disagrees with the insane conspiracy theory that Israel killed Charlie Kirk.
Siegel also interviews Taylor Lorenz. Yes Lorenz, the fool who said she felt joy when she heard news of the murder of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson. Lorenz, who in televised interviews has said she thinks Piker is hot, and says the entire Internet has been weaponized against him. I doubt she’d be so quick to say this if Piker was unattractive.
Of course, Siegel is uncritical of Piker for saying that Amy Schumer should be cancelled, though she at least points out he falsely attributes a statement to Schumer that she never made.
But the kicker is Piker’s disdain for Gal Gadot, who has been a very vocal supporter of Israel. Piker likes his Jews quiet and embarrassed. He calls Gadot a “dogs**t actress” and complains of her normalizing Israel. I don’t remember Piker being a film critic — and of course no one talks about how Piker normalizes antisemitism. Good thing they got a writer with a Jewish-sounding last name to write a puff piece.
As Norman Finkelstein said when speaking about what Zohran Mamdani needed to do to fight off charges of antisemitism (which of course Finkelstein thought were fake) — people like this need to find Jews to do the “dirty work.”
Jewish actress Natalie Portman is okay, according to Piker, because she never served in the IDF. The Jewish actor who plays Superman is fine, because he’s not pro-Israel from what he’s seen. Who’s the Jewish influencer who says which Muslim actors are okay to watch in movies or not?
Oh, that’s right, there is none, as that would be seen as Islamophobic. But Piker gets another free pass to spew his hatred.
The article could not be complete without a little “Jews control the media” implication, as Piker criticizes Bari Weiss because she represents everything he “despises about access journalism.” Of course, Siegel doesn’t bother to mention that Piker got his career from his uncle, Cenk Uygur, founder of the Young Turks, one of the most noteworthy left-wing YouTube channels, for which Piker used to work. And there’s no mention of Weiss’ courage to quit the New York Times to start The Free Press. Because when Jews succeed, it can’t have anything to do with merit — it must be that they all help each other!
The writer could have asked about the Piker controversy surrounding his dog for which he’s received immense criticism, but I wasn’t shocked she didn’t mention it. That might get in the way of him being the next Joe Rogan!
The article ends with Piker saying he doesn’t have bodyguards, citing Fidel Castro who claimed to have a moral vest.
The article is good for only one thing — pointing out how much the media hates the Jews.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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After Mamdani’s Win, What’s Next for ‘Globalize the Intifada’?
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks at a press conference with activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC, Dec. 14, 2023. Photo: Annabelle Gordon / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar skipped spending time with her constituents and instead opted to use the recent 43-day government shutdown to meet with Malcolm Jallow, a virulent Jew-hating Minister of the Swedish Parliament.
Last week, Jallow posted a picture on his Instagram page of himself posing with Omar, and also anti-Zionist political commentator Mehdi Hassan.
Omar appears beaming while cozying up to Jallow, who is donning a keffiyeh-like scarf with an image depicting the complete erasure of Israel and a Palestinian State as its replacement.
In his lengthy Instagram post, Jallow gushed over his time with Omar and Hassan, writing that “every time we come together, sharing experiences, strategies and visions, we are not just building movements, we are building the future.”
The Congresswoman’s choice to meet with a radical antisemite like Jallow reflects a deliberate choice by the antisemitic politician to leverage radical Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral victory earlier that week and assist in accelerating the anti-Jewish animus streaming through the Western world.
Mamdani’s success gifts Omar the political cover to learn from and replicate the Gambian-born Jallow’s success in eroding Sweden’s historic reputation as a safe and peaceful country.
Less than a week following the hard left capture of New York City, Omar’s gleeful appearance before a picture showing the elimination of Israel also serves as an ominous warning that open hostility toward Israel is no longer viewed as a political liability within the Democratic Party orbit.
In fact, it’s a position that may now be considered an asset.
The anti-Israel Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recently boasted that it secured a “record-breaking 42 election wins.”
Armed with its Political Action Committee (PAC), the Unity and Justice Fund, the Muslim-Brotherhood aligned group, which blamed Israel for the October 7 massacre, is helping usher a new cohort of radical ideologues into the American political system.
Mamdani’s fiery address to supporters following his win was empty of humility and lacked patriotism. The word “America” was not mentioned once. For her part, Omar devotes most of her time extolling the virtues of multiculturalism and embracing a radical agenda that is not in line with the vast majority of Americans.
Despite the two Muslim foreign-born policymakers attaining extraordinary professional success, their behavior seethes with contempt for their adopted homeland. They both espouse a broader, anti-Western civilizational ethos.
Helping drive the antisemitic measures in Congress is Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who led 20 colleagues in trying to put the US House of Representatives on record last Friday as condemning Israel’s actions as “genocide.”
Mamdani has also pointedly shared that pro-Israel Democrats are not welcome in his coalition. The incoming mayor’s hatred of the Jewish State dictated his only legislative priority while serving in the State Assembly when the young socialist introduced the “Not on our dime!” act, a bill that seeks to revoke the tax-exempt status for pro-Israel charities.
All of these measures only give more power to anti-Israel activists like Linda Sarsour.
The Mamdani surrogate, who has pledged to help remove pro-Israel Democrats from power, is linked to the controversial charity, The Arab American Association of New York (AAANY), a group that’s no doubt eagerly anticipating funding beyond the nearly four million dollars it was granted from New York State and city over a period of seven years, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The victory of Zohran Mamdani and Omar’s subsequent meeting with Jallow are poignant reminders that “Globalizing the Intifada” need not require bullets or bombs, but can begin with dangerous politicians who gain footholds in American cities. Their crowning achievement will be spreading their influence across our nation, chipping away at America’s place as a safe haven for Jews and all groups, and perhaps ultimately rendering our nation uninhabitable for Jewish Americans.
Irit Tratt is a writer who lives in New York. Follow her on X @Irit_Tratt.
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Growing Danger: Why Iran’s Nuclear Defiance Demands a New Strategy
Navy forces of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution commandos and missile boats in Great Prophet IX Maneuver in the general area of Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf. Photo: Sayyed Shahab Odin Vajedi/Wikimedia Commons.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed this past week that Iran has not allowed its inspectors access to the nuclear sites bombed by Israeli and American forces in June. This sustained, deliberate obstruction has persisted for five months, rendering the verification of its nuclear material inventories long overdue.
Iran’s action is no mere technical violation; it is the creation of strategic ambiguity. Iran is actively denying the international community the ability to pinpoint the location and status of the 440.9 kilograms of uranium it had enriched to 60 percent purity, a quantity the IAEA itself assesses as potentially sufficient for 10 nuclear bombs if further refined.
The gravest threat is not just the volume of material, but the intentional collapse of verification. By keeping the IAEA blind, Iran ensures that any future military action will carry exponentially higher risks of striking a facility closer to weaponization than previously verifiable. Tehran is deliberately hedging its bets, creating a permanent deterrent shield of uncertainty.
The Synchronized Strike: Nuclear Threat Meets Naval Aggression
This nuclear defiance is not occurring in isolation. It is strategically synchronized with Iran’s kinetic threats in vital waterways.
The seizure of a Marshall Islands–flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz last week by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is a clear act of economic and military blackmail. This move directly targets a vessel operated by British and German interests, sending a hostile message to the E3 nations — France, Britain, and Germany — that any diplomatic pressure, like the new anti-Iran resolution they are planning at the IAEA, will be met with immediate, tangible military retaliation in the Persian Gulf.
Iran is attempting to dictate the diplomatic price of its own proliferation. It is leveraging its strategic nuclear advantage and its tactical naval aggression simultaneously. When the E3 countries threaten diplomatic action, Tehran responds not with words but with seized ships. This is an integrated campaign designed to impose asymmetric costs on the West, forcing economic decisions to override security principles.
The Allied Betrayal and the Failure of Pressure
The deepest source of vulnerability lies in the exposure of systemic differences within the allied camp itself. The US Treasury sanctions announced last week exposed a critical failure: entities operating within key allied countries — specifically Turkey — are actively running procurement networks that supply Iran’s ballistic missile and UAV programs.
This exposure is a profound betrayal of the maximum pressure campaign. It proves that, despite diplomatic assurances, allied nations are prioritizing transactional gains over the existential security of the international community. Iran’s ability to exploit the financial systems of NATO members and crucial Gulf partners confirms that the campaign against Tehran is critically compromised by internal sabotage and greed.
This internal compromise is what gives Iran the confidence to engage in its dual-domain aggression. When Turkey insists on maintaining its Russian S-400 system, defying US security mandates, and simultaneously enables Iran’s missile growth, it is acting as a strategic liability, not a partner.
The Mandate for Decisive Action
Israel, with the full backing of the United States, cannot afford to wait for the consensus-driven paralysis of the United Nations. The current diplomatic landscape offers little comfort: Russia and China are actively undermining the US-led stabilization plan for Gaza, and Saudi Arabia is holding normalization hostage to impossible political demands. The enemy is exploiting the West’s focus on internal squabbles.
Iran is at the 10-bomb threshold and actively preventing the verification required to pull it back; Iran is using military seizures to retaliate against diplomatic pressure; and allied nations are enabling Iran’s most destructive weapons programs.
Diplomatic pressure should be immediately paired with credible joint military deterrence in the Strait of Hormuz to secure the free flow of commerce. Furthermore, Washington must enforce strict accountability on its allies, making it clear that funding Iran’s missile program is an act of geopolitical sabotage that will incur severe and immediate penalties.
The window for a diplomatic solution is closing rapidly. If the current trend of non-compliance and synchronized defiance continues, the world will soon have to face the fact that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability has crossed the point of no return.