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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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Pope Leo Says Catholic Church ‘Unwavering’ in Its Opposition to ‘Every Form of Antisemitism’
Pope Leo XIV holds a Jubilee audience on the occasion of the Jubilee of Sport, at St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican June 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a statement reaffirming the Catholic Church’s “unwavering” opposition to antisemitism.
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, I would like to recall that the Church remains faithful to the unwavering position of the Declaration #NostraAetate against every form of antisemitism,” the pope posted on the X social media platform. “The Church rejects any discrimination or harassment based on ethnicity, language, nationality, or religion.”
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, I would like to recall that the Church remains faithful to the unwavering position of the Declaration #NostraAetate against every form of antisemitism. The Church rejects any discrimination or harassment based on ethnicity, language, nationality, or…
— Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) January 27, 2026
The post concluded with a link to Nostra Aetate, a declaration from the Second Vatican Council and promulgated on Oct. 28, 1965, by Pope Paul VI that called for dialogue and respect between Christianity and other religions. The theological reform called for a position of Christian-Jewish brotherhood, advocating “the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.”
Leo offered his message opposing antisemitism as the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating antisemitism released its newest research into global hate against Jews.
The report documents 815 “serious” incidents around the world — including 21 murders of Jews — as well as 124 million antisemitic X postings and more than 4,000 anti-Israel demonstrations.
“On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we are called not only to remember, but to act. The ministry stands alongside Jewish communities, monitors and collects information in real time, and pursues the perpetrators of antisemitism and hatred wherever they are,” Amichai Chikli, the Israeli minister of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism, said in a statement.
Chikli urged a proactive strategy, arguing that “antisemitism is rising in various arenas – yet our responsibility is not to remain on the defensive, but to go on the offensive.”
Leo has repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism and promoted Nostra Aetate since he began his papacy last year.
In October, the pontiff condemned antisemitism and affirmed the Catholic Church’s commitment to combating hatred and persecution against the Jewish people, arguing his faith demands such a stance.
Speaking in St. Pete’s Square at the Vatican, Leo acknowledged the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, saying, “I too confirm that the Church does not tolerate antisemitism and fights against it, on the basis of the Gospel itself.”
“This luminous document teaches us to meet the followers of other religions not as outsiders, but as traveling companions on the path of truth; to honor differences affirming our common humanity; and to discern, in every sincere religious search, a reflection of the one divine mystery that embraces all creation,” Leo continued.
He then added that the primary focus of Nostra Aetate was toward the Jewish people, explaining that Pope John XXIII, who preceded Paul VI, intended to “re-establish the original relationship.”
Nostra Aetate details the close bonds between Jews and Christians.
“The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant,” the proclamation states. “Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles making both one in Himself.”
The document also opposes antisemitism, proclaiming that “in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of antisemitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”
Jewish leaders have expressed optimism for interfaith relations under Leo’s leadership.
Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC), told The Algemeiner in May that “his remarks to the Jewish people have actually been extraordinary.”
At the time, just after being elected to the papacy, Leo met with Jewish leaders and other faith representatives at the Vatican. “Because of the Jewish roots of Christianity, all Christians have a special relationship with Judaism,” he said during the meeting. “Even in these difficult times, marked by conflicts and misunderstandings, it is necessary to continue the momentum of this precious dialogue of ours.”
Before the beginning of Leo’s pontificate, Israeli-Vatican relations had come under strain due to the late Pope Francis’s statements about the war to defeat Hamas in Gaza, including his suggestion that the Jewish state was committing genocide.
There has been a recent rise in promoting antisemitism among some Catholic podcasters and social media influencers, especially on the political right. Nick Fuentes, for example, has praised Adolf Hitler and even called for the extermination of Jewish people from American civilization.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) wrote that Fuentes “frequently makes his support known for the Traditionalist Catholic view that rejects the Nostra Aetate, the papal document that declared that modern Jews bear no guilt for the death of Christ.”
The ADL revealed that in March 2024 on Telegram, “Fuentes wrote that he and his followers ‘rightly defend the traditional Catholic view,’ blaming Jews for ‘crucifying our Lord.’”
Nostra Aetate explicitly rejects such rhetoric, stating that the death of Jesus cannot be charged “against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.” It also states that “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”
Recent Catholic convert Candace Owens, who joined the church in April 2024, has also used her platforms which enable her to influence millions of followers to demonize the Jewish people. A study released in December showed how Owens and fellow podcaster Tucker Carlson boosted their anti-Israel content last year.
US Vice President JD Vance also converted to Catholicism in recent years, joining the church in 2019. Vance has disputed the rise of antisemitism on the political right and failed to counter antisemitic statements when confronted with them in public settings. On Friday, Axios published secret recordings of US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) telling donors last year that “Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same.”
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Tim Walz: Get Anne Frank’s Name Out of Your Mouth
Former US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz hold a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, US, Aug. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
Many Holocaust survivors I’ve interviewed have said it pains them when people compare anyone to Hitler and the Gestapo, or compare things to the Holocaust to try to get attention or make a political point.
They’ve also mentioned how people use Anne Frank’s name for political purposes, because most schoolchildren have read her diary.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), who, after a scandal involving alleged fraud in his state, announced he is not running for re-election, recently said the following: “We have got children hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank…”
As January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, many, including Jews, will make false comparisons to the Holocaust, because they imagine this makes them noble and a fighter for social justice.
Anne Frank died in a concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen weeks before its liberation by British forces who found thousands of corpses and about 55,000 emaciated prisoners. The camp was of course run by Nazis. Frank hid in what was known as the annex in Amsterdam for 761 days. She had no option to be deported to another country safely, nor was she in Amsterdam illegally. She knew being discovered likely meant death.
I am sure illegal immigrants fear being deported and some legal immigrants may fear detention. Walz could have said that without invoking the name of Anne Frank. He did this because his goal is to paint Federal agents with a big red Nazi brush. It is also understandable that many are angry after a Federal agent shot Alex Pretti, with video footage showing Pretti did not brandish his gun, and Walz would be correct to rebuke Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security for her characterization of Pretti.
But it is important to know about communist propaganda.
In 1967, the Soviets realized there was a branding problem. The country regretted its support for Israel officially becoming a state in 1948, because it since had become a strong ally of America. The solution? The rebrand of Israel via Holocaust inversion.
Imagine! Those who rose from the ashes of the Holocaust had done so, only to become Nazis themselves. What a twist to the story! Israel would not be the David, but, rather, the Goliath.
It took some time, but by 1975, they passed Resolution 3379 at the United Nations, where the text stated that, “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Fifty years later, this effort has gone past their wildest dreams, with the help of Qatari funding. Most of the world lambasts Israel at every turn, blaming Israel as one of the world’s worst oppressors. Even those propagandists never thought there would be a day where Jews were called “Zio-Nazis.”
This is why Walz sees nothing wrong with a false Anne Frank comparison. Some Jews, blinded by their hatred of President Trump, don’t stop to think about the damage of false Nazi comparisons.
This does not mean one should not criticize any president or demand accountability. Sadly, people are captured by a narrative that is popular, and are not interested in much else.
A false comparison doesn’t strengthen a point, it only takes away credibility. When anyone makes any claim, you should ask: What is your evidence for that? If they don’t have it, you should tell them to use a correct phrase and retract a claim or characterization if it is false.
The reason false Nazi comparisons are a problem is that they have become a prominent component of antisemitism.
It is the Jewish way to fight against racism and to seek justice. But those who make false Holocaust comparisons dishonor the memories of those who died in the Holocaust.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Soccer Clubs Around the World Mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day With Commemorative Events
FC Bayern and Munich FC Augsburg holding a poster to commemorate the Holocaust #WeRemember campaign. Photo: IMAGO/MIS via Reuters Connect
Soccer clubs around the world commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday by pledging to honor victims of Nazi persecution through campaigns, memorial events, and other gestures to show the importance of remembering the atrocities of World War II.
Germany’s professional leagues — including FC Bayern and Augsburg – held over the weekend a series of memorial events and matches across the country opened with a moment of silence dedicated to the #WeRemember campaign by the World Jewish Congress. The campaign aims to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the 81st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in 1945.
Vor dem Spiel haben beide Mannschaften der Befreiung Auschwitz‘ gedacht. Im Stadion gab es eine Schweigeminute.#WeRemember #DSCKSV pic.twitter.com/U098DdMbiW
— Arminia ist wieder da (@arminiawiederda) January 23, 2026
In Italy, a commemorative ceremony in memory of Jewish Hungarian soccer player and coach Árpád Weisz was held Tuesday morning at Stadio Renato Dall’Ara and organized by Bologna FC. Those in attendance included Bologna FC CEO Claudio Fenucci, a delegation from the club’s youth sector, Bologna City Councilor for Sport Roberta Li Calzi, and Emanuele Ottolenghi, vice president of the Jewish community of Bologna.
Weisz lived in Italy and led Bologna to league and international victories. He also coached Fiorentina and Inter Milan, and was the first coach to claim Italian titles with two clubs. He additionally is credited with discovering talented players such as Giuseppe Meazza. He, his wife and two children were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were murdered by the Nazis. He died in 1944 at the age of 47.
The FIGC, which is the governing body of soccer in Italy, is running a campaign on its official website and social media channels to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. The campaign features an image of empty seats in a stadium, to remember those murdered by the Nazis.
“Remembering is not enough; there is an absolute need to stay aware of one of the greatest tragedies in human history,” said FIGC President Gabriele Gravina. “To know is to prevent, to fight, to protect, to respect. [Soccer], with its social impact, can serve as a powerful platform to spread messages of profound significance, especially to younger generations, who did not experience this atrocity firsthand but have both the right and the duty to understand it.”
England’s Manchester United marked Holocaust Remembrance Day by making a pledge “to listen, learn, and carry the legacies forward of the millions of innocent lives that were taken under persecution.”
The Football Association, which is the governing body of soccer in England, said in a released statement that International Holocaust Remembrance Day “is for everyone. It brings people together from all walks of life to strengthen communities and stand up against hatred and discrimination.”
“As the years pass, we’re growing more distant in time from the Holocaust and from the other, more recent genocides that are commemorated on HMD. That distance brings a risk – memory fades and the sharp reality of what happened becomes blurred, abstract, or even questioned,” the FA added. Soccer “has the power to bring people together in so many ways, can eradicate social barriers and be a force for good across communities. One of our key commitments is to do everything in our power to deliver a game free from discrimination and that will never stop, which is why IHMD is so important.”
The British club Chelsea FC hosted on Tuesday at its stadium a free exhibition, open to all visitors between 10 am and 2 pm, which highlights “the achievements, struggles, and resilience of athletes before, during, and after the Holocaust.” Visitors also learn about the role sport played in fighting against Nazi persecution, and the exhibit shares the stories of Jewish athletes persecuted under Nazi rule as well as the post-Holocaust rise of Jewish sports figures such as Mark Spitz, one of the most decorated Olympic swimmers of all time. The exhibition is produced by Yad Vashem in partnership with the Jewish Ethics Project and the soccer team’s Jewish Supporters’ Group.
Tottenham Hotspur hosted a Holocaust Memorial Day event for faith leaders and students, while Fulham FC shared on its website and YouTube channel a video of Holocaust survivor Barbara Frankiss talking to three Fulham players about her experience facing Nazi persecution and the importance of Holocaust remembrance.
We were honoured to host Haringey’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day event, uniting faith leaders and students from across our community to reflect on this year’s theme ‘Bridging Generations’.
#HolocaustMemorialDay #HMD2026 pic.twitter.com/dQIZk4VpUF
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) January 27, 2026