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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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AIPAC-backed Wesley Bell defeats Cori Bush in Missouri Democratic primary
(JTA) — Missouri incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell registered a resounding victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary against Cori Bush, a prominent Democratic socialist and ardent critic of Israel.
The Associated Press called the race just an hour after polls closed, at 8:02pm local time. By the time 99% of the vote was counted, Bell had garnered 59.2% to Bush’s 36.9%.
The primary is a déjà vu moment for St. Louis. The same pair of candidates vied just two years ago to represent the state’s 1st Congressional District.
Bell prevailed in 2024 to oust Bush in a clash that was largely defined by a $9 million influx of AIPAC cash in support of Bell. In this rematch, Bush made the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a central issue in her campaign, similar to other Democratic Socialists of America candidates.
“AIPAC has become yet another way for MAGA-donors to divide the Democratic base by meddling in primaries,” Bush told JTA in a written statement prior to the primary. “In St. Louis and across the country, people know that our fight against antisemitism means fighting against the far-right’s effort to divide us.”
Federal Election Commission records show that this time around, AIPAC has invested far less in the race. Through its United Democracy Project super PAC, the pro-Israel lobby has spent in the neighborhood of $3 million on the rematch, with the vast majority targeted at opposing Bush.
In response to Bell’s decisive win on Tuesday, AIPAC posted its congratulations on X: “Our community was proud to support a strong, principled Democratic leader,” the lobby stated.
The Washington, D.C.-based Jewish Democratic Council of America, which had mobilized networks of voters to make phone calls in support of Bell, added their congratulations to the congressman following his victory.
“Rep. Bell is a leader in taking on Trump’s corruption,” the group posted on X. “We look forward to seeing him continue to fight for our Jewish and Democratic values.”
Aside from their conflicting perspectives on Israel, Bell and Bush have much in common. Born in Missouri in the mid-1970s, they are both Black progressive Democrats who entered politics after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in the city of Ferguson.
Amid protests across Ferguson for police reforms, Bell won a seat on the city council and focused on passing such changes. He went on to become St. Louis County prosecutor in 2018, defeating a 27-year incumbent who had failed to prosecute the officer who had killed Brown.
Bush, meanwhile, became involved in politics by participating in the Ferguson protests. She lost Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate and House in 2016 and 2018, but then won congressional races in 2020 and 2022. In 2024, however, she lost to Bell by more than 5 percentage points.
The candidates have similar stances on most political issues, prioritizing concerns like reproductive rights, gun violence prevention and the dismantling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as lowering costs of housing, utilities, healthcare and prescriptions. But they have sharp differences when it comes to Israel, with Bush’s campaign pledging to “stand for justice in Palestine.” Bell, in contrast, has stood steadfast in his support of Israel.
The post AIPAC-backed Wesley Bell defeats Cori Bush in Missouri Democratic primary appeared first on The Forward.
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William Lawrence, El-Sayed-aligned progressive, takes Democratic House nomination in Michigan battleground race
(JTA) — An outspoken pro-Palestinian progressive who campaigned with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed bested two establishment-backed picks in a Democratic House primary for a battleground district in the state on Tuesday.
William Lawrence, a co-founder of the climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement, took the Democratic nomination in the state’s 7th District, with the Associated Press calling the race for him Tuesday night. With 58% of the vote in, Lawrence had around 43% of the tally in the three-way race.
His opponents Bridget Brink, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam, two centrist candidates who boasted military and foreign policy backgrounds, effectively split the establishment vote and opened a lane for the progressive.
“I couldn’t be prouder of the movement we’ve built in mid-Michigan,” Lawrence wrote on social media after the race was called. “We’re building a movement made up of real Michiganders across political divides, not DC consultants.”
At the time the AP called the race for Lawrence, another House candidate backed by El-Sayed, state Rep. Donavan McKinney, was awaiting results in his challenge to the incumbent in Michigan’s 13th District.
As with several other victorious Democratic House candidates this primary cycle, Lawrence made pro-Palestinian advocacy a central plank of his campaign. He was the only Democrat in his race to accuse Israel of genocide, and at his rally with El-Sayed in Lansing, the candidate had called for America to “stop arming Israel.”
Lawrence, whose campaign also tapped into growing public anger over data centers, will face Republican incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett in November.
Lawrence’s victory marked one area where party leadership will be pressured to support pro-Palestinian progressives if it hopes to retake Congress in November. Democrats have eyed the district, which was held by centrist Jewish Democrat Sen. Elissa Slotkin before Barrett, as a top target for flipping. Slotkin had endorsed Maasdam in the race’s homestretch while staying out of the Senate race.
It won’t be easy to line the party up behind Lawrence. He had been condemned by the Congressional Black Caucus during his campaign over resurfaced podcast comments in which he said Black Democratic leaders “defang the white left” — comments he later explained as having been prompted by his anger over Israel’s war in Gaza. Centrist House Democrats have questioned his ability to win in November.
But his campaign told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement ahead of primary day that they were confident his focus on “ending military support to human rights abusers and bringing that money home to fund good jobs, housing, and healthcare here at home” would play well across party lines.
The post William Lawrence, El-Sayed-aligned progressive, takes Democratic House nomination in Michigan battleground race appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats await Senate winner in party’s biggest test yet on Israel
The Democratic primary for the open Senate seat in Michigan appeared too close to call Tuesday night, with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens locked in a tight race that had become a proxy fight over the Gaza war and a referendum on Israel supporters’ influence in Democratic politics.
According to unofficial results, El-Sayed, a physician and the son of Egyptian immigrants, held a narrow lead over opponent Rep. Haley Stevens, the establishment favorite — 49.9% vs. 46.3% — with 65% of the vote counted for the seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters.
The Michigan contest is AIPAC’s largest investment this election cycle. Its super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent more than $30 million on ads attacking El-Sayed and promoting Stevens, according to recent FEC filings. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens’ own campaign through its donors’ portal.
If El-Sayed prevails, it would deliver a blow to the establishment and to the U.S.-Israel fundraising group, AIPAC, its biggest setback since it started its direct political spending in 2021 and after years of helping defeat progressive critics of Israel who challenged congressional incumbents. The brand has become increasingly controversial among Democratic voters in the wake of the Gaza war. Congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC.
Supporters of El-Sayed remained optimistic that the candidate’s upset victory would be proof positive that the future of the Democratic Party lies in candidates who support cutting off U.S. aid to Israel and characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the progressive insurgent’s most prominent backer, said on CNN the race reflected a broader shift in Democratic politics. “What we are seeing, no matter what happens tonight in Michigan — and I hope very much that El-Sayed wins — is: you’re seeing the transformation of the Democratic Party, and what the debate within the Democratic Party is about,” he said. Sanders added that the campaign showed that progressive candidates are challenging the party establishment not only on ideology, but also on how campaigns are run.
Winning the primary may be the easier test. Michigan remains one of the nation’s top battleground states, and a close finish would suggest ongoing divisions within the Democratic coalition. El-Sayed will have to carry moderate Democrats who backed Stevens, while taking on former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in a race that could help determine control of the Senate. Recent polls found Rogers leading El-Sayed by single digits.
How we got here
The Michigan race became a culmination of several political currents that have been building for years.
It reflected lingering anger among Americans over the Gaza war, Democratic criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, frustration among progressives over AIPAC’s support for some Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results, and the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America, accelerated by the political rise of Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race last year.
Michigan, home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities and the birthplace of the “uncommitted” movement to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war in the 2024 presidential primary, made it a natural testing ground for progressive forces.
El-Sayed highlighted the Gaza war and AIPAC’s involvement in Democratic primaries when he launched his campaign in April 2025 — months before AIPAC spent a dollar. He advocated for ending unconditional military aid to Israel and framed his candidacy as a fight against outside influence. Notably, El-Sayed supported the “uncommitted” movement, though he later endorsed Kamala Harris after Biden dropped out.
According to data compiled by Milan Singh, a fellow at The Argument, a liberal opinion-focused media publication, insurgent progressive candidates for Congress mentioned Israel in 48% of their fundraising emails.
With most major primaries already decided, this race became the biggest Democratic showdown yet over Israel.
Jewish divide
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan. But the community had become deeply invested in the race — with Jews both in fierce opposition to El-Sayed and fiery support.
For many Jews, El-Sayed’s questioning of whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state and his decision to campaign alongside controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric, were cause for alarm. El-Sayed also came under fire for calling the Israeli government “evil” like Hamas.
Rep. Hillary Scholten, a second-term Michigan Democrat, said on CNN Tuesday night that El-Sayed reinforced concerns some voters had about him by campaigning again with Piker in the final days before the primary. “Elections are about choices,” she said. “What is the message that you want to send to your voters?”
At the same time, El-Sayed courted Jewish voters. He attended a Passover seder at Congregation T’chiyah, a progressive Reconstructionist synagogue outside Detroit. Many of its congregants volunteered for El-Sayed’s campaign with a group dubbed “Jews for Abdul.”
Jewish former Michigan congressman Andy Levin — who lost his House election against Stevens in 2022 after AIPAC poured millions into defeating him — endorsed El-Sayed.
In the final days of the campaign, Stevens had sharpened her concerns about El-Sayed, accusing him of blaming “all of your problems on Jewish Americans.”
El-Sayed rejected accusations of antisemitism and argued that his critics conflate the Israeli government with the Jewish people.
“I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said.
The post Michigan Democrats await Senate winner in party’s biggest test yet on Israel appeared first on The Forward.
