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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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A pioneering Reform synagogue makes way for a booming Iranian Jewish community
Temple Beth-El is an island of Reform Judaism in the Iranian milieu of deep Great Neck, a suburb on the North Shore of Long Island 35 minutes away from Manhattan by train. There are around two dozen synagogues in Great Neck; three of them are Reform, and two of those are tucked away at the edges of the peninsula. Temple Beth-El stands bravely at the center, with frontage on Middle Neck Road, the main street, just steps away from multiple Orthodox synagogues and kosher restaurants serving a spectrum of cuisines.
As an Iranian-American Jew from Great Neck, I’ve been to Temple Beth-El twice before: once, in middle school, for a classmate’s bar mitzvah, and then, in 2021, to get the COVID vaccine. I called it, simply, “the Ashkenazi synagogue.” Tonight, as the oldest synagogue in Great Neck prepares to downsize, I am here for the third time ever, for Friday night services.
Temple Beth-El formed in 1928, when Great Neck was dominated by Protestants. The presence of the synagogue made even more Jews from the city want to move east. Its rabbis were outspoken civil rights activists and hosted Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967. Now, as Great Neck’s demographics shift further toward more religious Jews, Temple Beth-El’s congregation is shrinking. The synagogue is selling its property to an Iranian Orthodox yeshiva and will be leasing back a portion of it.
In the mid 1980s, Temple Beth-El had around 1,500 families, with a 500-person waiting list, said Stuart Botwinick, the synagogue’s executive director. Now, as members have died off and younger ones aren’t joining as quickly, it has around 400, and can’t fill up its main sanctuary on Rosh Hashanah. Wielding cold economic calculus, I can envision someone arguing that if fewer people choose to attend a synagogue, then whatever happens to it must be natural, or deserved. I can even envision myself arguing that. It’s not guilt, because I did nothing wrong, but as a member of the majority group, some sense of duty makes me want to see with my own eyes what is being lost.
A man hands me a siddur and wishes me a Shabbat shalom. The chapel is beautiful, with a dark wood vaulted ceiling, stained glass and hanging lanterns. I find a seat in the gender-integrated pews among some 30 congregants. I try to follow the prayers, but I don’t know any of the tunes — my home synagogue is not nearly this musical. I am surprised to see some men not wearing kippahs. Rebelliously, I stray from the page everyone else is on and flip briefly to the back of the siddur. There are lyrics to “Hatikvah,” “America the Beautiful,” “God Bless America,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” and, maybe worst of all, “O Canada.” My inner Satmar rebbe shudders.
Fortunately, national hymns are not part of tonight’s repertoire. From the bimah, the rabbi, Brian Stoller, outs me as a Forward reporter. The moment the service ends, several excited Ashkenazi seniors approach me; clearly, the name of this news outlet carries much more clout here than in my typical Great Neck circles.
Stoller holds an optimistic vision of Temple Beth-El’s future that emphasizes adult education and cultural arts above physical space. In other words, “we’re not here to be landlords,” says Jennifer Still-Schiff, a co-president of the synagogue sisterhood. Still, losing ownership and part of their space must be somewhat traumatic. Once the service ends, Howard Herman, an honorary vice president of the board who’s been a member since the 1980s, gives me a tour and shows me all of the things the synagogue will need to sell.
“We have this beautiful Judaica museum, and we’re going to be selling it or giving a lot of it away,” he says. Then he shows me the large sanctuary. We can’t find the light switch, so we turn on our cell phone flashlights to inspect a 55-foot-long sculpture behind the bimah: “The White Flame of the Six Million” by Louise Nevelson. In the sculpture, which integrates the Torah ark, shapes carved out from white wood represent the uniqueness of every life lost in the genocide. “We’re going to have to sell this,” Herman says. “Who can buy this?”
That sanctuary, where Temple Beth-El used to hold regular Shabbat services and now only holds High Holy Day services, seats almost 900 people. It will become part of the yeshiva’s space. Sisterhood co-president Rochelle Rosenbloom says the chapel, which seats about 250, will be enough to seat worshipers even on the High Holy Days. If it isn’t, she and Still-Shiff said, they can stagger two sets of services or have people watch the services on a TV in the lobby.
At a time when Great Neck was still mostly Christian, the existence of Temple Beth-El “was an essential sign that Jews could live in Great Neck and that there were enough of them, committed to religious participation through the Reform movement, to make it safe and desirable for others to try it out,” historian Judith Goldstein wrote in her book Inventing Great Neck. It was the peninsula’s only synagogue until 1941, when Temple Israel of Great Neck formed, said Brad Kolodny, an amateur historian of Long Island Jewish history. In the 1960s, Jews — particularly liberal, Reform Jews — began to outnumber Christians in Great Neck. Temple Beth-El had to build a bigger sanctuary. At times, even that sanctuary — the one with the Holocaust memorial sculpture — filled up, and administration had to set up overflow seating in other rooms.
Persian synagogues started cropping up in Great Neck after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Great Neck has Iraqi and Syrian synagogues, too, plus several synagogues that are not officially Mizrahi but have Mizrahi congregants. Now, any car trying to drive on, say, Steamboat Road on a Saturday morning must use caution, as the sidewalks aren’t wide enough for the large groups of skipping children, bike-riding kippah-clad young men, and moms pushing double strollers in their Shabbat finest.
People in the Jewish world can get accused of being “Ashkenormative,” but since 1979, Great Neck has become Mizrahi-normative. When I was a child, a last name like “Weiss” or “Katz” connoted nothing to me, and for the longest time I assumed that my classmates whose hair was lighter than mine couldn’t possibly be Jewish. I used to watch The Nanny with my mom; one night, as Fran and Sylvia Fine peppered their speech with schleps, schvitzes, and other Yiddishisms, I asked my mom what language the characters were speaking. “I don’t know,” she said.
Fran was a prime example of what I eventually came to understand as the stereotype of the liberal American Jew, a character so familiar to American audiences that she could speak Yiddish and expect to be understood. But as the growth of the Orthodox community outpaces that of other denominations, I realize that stereotype is becoming less and less accurate. Forty-four percent of Jews ages 65 or older identify as Reform, but only 29% of Jews who are 18 to 30. And more concerningly: among people raised Reform, 12% of them are “no longer Jewish,” according to a 2020 Pew research study. When, in 1994, Fran Fine wished for “a husband and a house in Great Neck,” she was talking about a place already in flux, a place where a legacy of civil rights activism would soon give way to people who voted heavily for Donald Trump and helped elect George Santos.
When I told my mom I was writing about Temple Beth-El, she told me in an approving tone of voice that they lend out wheelchairs and other medical equipment for free, and collect donations from families of people who’ve died and no longer need theirs. Indeed, “social action” is an important value here: The synagogue also sends volunteers to an interfaith food pantry based at a local church, and some congregants volunteer to support undocumented immigrants, said Botwinick.
That willingness to look outward distinguishes Temple Beth-El from, say, my synagogue, and Botwinick argues many Iranian Jews benefit from it. “We believe that the Jewish community and the greater community actually falls in line with a lot of what we do and what we believe,” but doesn’t say so “because of cultural pressures,” Botwinick said. “Equal rights is important, health is important, caring for the immigrant community matters. It takes a strong voice — Temple Beth-El is that strong voice — to say these things matter.”
This is the most compelling thing anyone has told me for this story: that even Orthodox Jews benefit from having a Reform synagogue for a neighbor. If, for example, Temple Beth-El hadn’t opened as a vaccine hub, I struggle to see my synagogue, where many congregants are vaccine-skeptical, filling that gap.
Dr. Gary Zola, Temple Beth-El’s historian in residence, addressed the threats of decline facing Reform Judaism in a March 13 sermon, and said the synagogue’s long history should serve as a source of hope. “Let’s not forget that 98 years ago, a handful of Jewish scholars decided to create a Jewish community out of nothingness.”
“It is clear that the enervation of liberal Jewish life is a challenge,” he said, “but it’s a challenge that awaits our response.”
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Top British private Jewish school closing amid funding challenges
(JTA) — Immanuel College, a top-ranked Jewish private day school in the outskirts of London, announced on Tuesday that it will close its doors at the end of this year amid financial pressures and declining enrollment.
“This is an incredibly difficult and painful moment,” Daniel Levy, the chair of governors for the school, said in a statement. “Immanuel College has been a cornerstone of education and community life for more than 35 years, and we know how deeply this news will be felt by all those connected to it.”
The Modern Orthodox Jewish day school, which was ranked the U.K.’s top-performing Jewish school in The Sunday Times Parent Power Guide in 2025, is one of a small number of independent Jewish schools in the London area.
Founded in 1990 by Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, the former Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, the school serves roughly 360 pupils ages 10-18. Last year, Immanuel College’s prep school also shut down due to “unprecedented financial pressures.”
The school sits alongside a much larger network of state-funded Jewish schools, including the prestigious JFS (formerly Jews’ Free School) and the Jewish Community Secondary School.
Levy said that the school was “committed to ensuring that every pupil is guided to the right next step,” and was working with schools across the Jewish and independent school landscape to find placements for its students. (Independent schools in the U.K. are fee-paying private schools, while state schools are government-funded and free to attend.)
A press release pinned the closure on a litany of factors, including “the introduction of VAT on independent school fees, rising operational costs driven by inflation and increased National Insurance contributions, and a decline in pupil numbers.”
VAT, or the U.K.’s value added tax, was applied to private schools in the country last year after they were previously exempted from it.
In the release, the school also said the decline in enrollment “reflects a broader trend across the sector, with a growing number of independent schools closing in recent years.”
“Additionally, changing dynamics within the Jewish education landscape, including the increased popularity of Jewish state schools, have contributed to reduced enrolment,” the release continued, adding that Immanuel faced ongoing annual losses exceeding £2 million, or $2.3 million.
Oliver Dowden, a British lawmaker and member of the Conservative Party, lamented the closure in a post on X, writing that it was “yet another victim of Labour’s VAT raid on private schools.”
“Very sad to learn of closure of the brilliant Immanuel College at the end of the current academic year. A real blow to Bushey and the Jewish community,” Dowden wrote, referring to the Hertfordshire village where Immanuel is located.
Writer and political analyst Arieh Kovler described the school as an “oddity” in the British Jewish educational landscape, writing in a post on X that it was “not religious enough for ‘black hat’ type modern Orthodox, not prestigious enough for parents who want excellent private schools, and parents who just want a Jewish school for their kids have many free state options now.”
According to Britain’s Institute for Jewish Policy Research, of the Jewish children enrolled in Jewish schools, 60 percent attend haredi (or “strictly”) Orthodox schools, a figure that does not include haredi Orthodox teenagers studying in yeshivot and seminaries not included in government data. In the 1990s, only 46 percent of Jewish students attended haredi schools.
For many parents and members of the British Jewish community, the loss of the school cut deep.
“At a time when our children’s strength in their own identity is so essential, it feels doubly tragic for a school that instills that Jewish pride to close,” Naomi Greenaway, an Immanuel College parent and journalist, wrote in an op-ed in The Jewish Chronicle. “But this tragedy is one that the Immanuel College community of parents, pupils, teachers, trustees, governors and alumni will have to mourn together.”
Rabbi Alex Chapper, the leader of the Borehamwood & Elstree United Synagogue in England, wrote in a post on Facebook that the closure served as a reminder of “just how important Jewish education is for our community.”
“It must never be taken for granted, outsourced, or undervalued,” Chapper wrote. “Instead, we should redouble our commitment to supporting the education of the next generation, so they can build a proud, knowledgeable, and confident Jewish future.”
The Hertfordshire Friends of Israel also mourned the closure in a post on Facebook, writing, “This is more than just a school closure story, it’s about a community, a legacy and the growing pressures on Jewish education across the UK.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Hochul pushes 25-foot buffer around New York houses of worship as Mamdani wavers on local bills
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday doubled down on her support for proposed legislation that would create a 25-foot buffer zone around houses of worship statewide, stepping into a growing debate over public safety and free speech in a move that puts her at odds with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Hochul, who is running for reelection this year, pushed the plan ahead of a final budget agreement with the state Legislature, now more than two weeks past its April 1 deadline. It comes as Mamdani has declined to say whether he will sign a more limited measure passed by the City Council aimed at curbing disruptive demonstrations outside synagogues and schools.
“I want to get that done,” Hochul, speaking alongside Jewish leaders and law enforcement officials, said about her proposed 25-foot buffer, which would be upheld by police around places of worship. “That is common sense. It’s a statement when people leave their homes, that they will feel safe from harassment.” She added that the fear of Jews facing antisemitic attacks and harassment “is not a hypothetical. It is happening. It has happened, and the effects are lingering.”
The governor’s proposal marks a more aggressive statewide approach than the one recently passed by the New York City Council, led by Speaker Julie Menin, who is Jewish, as anti-Jewish incidents continue to make up a majority of reported hate crimes in New York. The Council’s package of bills directs the NYPD to develop a plan within 45 days for managing protests near houses of worship and educational institutions. The synagogue-focused measure passed 44–5 — a veto-proof margin — while a companion bill addressing protests near schools cleared the chamber with a narrower majority.
Mamdani, a strident critic of Israel who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism, has not committed to signing or vetoing the legislation, citing “serious concerns” raised by free speech advocates and pro-Palestinian supporters about limiting New Yorkers’ constitutional rights. Under city law, the bills could also become law automatically if he takes no action within 30 days.
The mayor, however, did publicly express objections to the Council’s initial proposal to establish buffer zones of up to 100 feet outside synagogues. “I wouldn’t sign any legislation that we find to be outside of the bounds of the law,” he said. The perimeter proposal was omitted in the final version of the bill following reservations expressed by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who cautioned that a one-size-fits-all rule might not withstand legal challenge and could prove unworkable across neighborhoods with vastly different street layouts.
A City Hall spokesperson referred to Mamdani’s previous statements when asked for comment on the Hochul proposal. The state measure could supersede any action he takes.
The proposals emerged following disruptive protests outside houses of worship in recent months centered on events promoting immigration to and real estate in Israel, at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan and Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills in Queens.
Hochul was uncompromising about her approach. “I believe I have the right to protect people’s constitutional right to free exercise of religion,” she told reporters. “And so if that needs to be tested in court, bring it on.”
Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani in the mayoral election last year, has maintained a warm relationship with Jewish leaders since becoming governor. If passed, the buffer zone bill could bolster her chances among the state’s more than one million Jewish voters against Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate and the first Jewish executive of Nassau County on Long Island. In 2022, former Rep. Lee Zeldin came within five percentage points of winning the governor’s race, powered by strong Jewish support.
Hochul made the announcement to call for an additional $70 million in funding for the state’s Securing Communities Against Hate Crimes program, which provides grants to protect vulnerable institutions, as well as a new online system for reporting bias incidents. Hochul has already allocated $131 million in grants for a total of 1,745 security projects since taking office in 2021.
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