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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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Vance courts Jewish Republicans, but leaves Tucker Carlson ties unanswered
(JTA) — LAS VEGAS – Vice President JD Vance emphasized the importance of the American-Israel relationship, pinned rising antisemitism on immigration, and sidestepped a question about podcasters like Tucker Carlson, during a highly-anticipated, closed-doors appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit on Monday.
Vance’s appearance came at a moment when a number of Jewish Republicans have turned against him over his reprimanding of Israeli officials, indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and his silence on Carlson, a prominent media personality who promotes such narratives.
Some donors have indicated that they would prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Vance as the presidential nominee in 2028. Yet Vance was met with a standing ovation as he took the stage, and received another one as he left, according to multiple people who were in the room.
Following the event, RJC leaders said they felt the appearance was a positive step in the relationship.
“Today is not primary day. But I think today was progress day for JD Vance and the Jewish community,” RJC board member Ari Fleischer told reporters.
The summit’s Monday evening portion was closed to the press, but an audio recording of Vance’s 35-minute conversation with Norm Coleman — the RJC’s chairman — was sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
During the conversation, Coleman asked Vance where he drew the line when deciding which podcasts he could appear on. Coleman named Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes as examples of hosts who have platformed antisemites, but Vance avoided mentioning Carlson, answering only about Rogan and Fuentes.
“I do not think that Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes are the same, just substantively,” Vance said.
“Obviously I’m not going to talk to a guy who’s attacked my wife or said that Hitler is a good guy — but outside of some pretty bright lines, I try to talk to as many people as I can,” Vance said.
Vance’s response, which advocated for a wide-tent approach, drew applause in the room, though some were not pleased with the answer — nor the openness of the question.
“You might think that Norm Coleman — who owed his audience a bit more — would have said, ‘Let’s address this Tucker question once and for all: Where do you stand with him?’” said Neil Cooper, an RJC member who said he’s run out of patience with the vice president.
Sid Rosenberg, the right-wing firebrand radio host, wrote that Vance “had a chance to hammer @TuckerCarlson and @megynkelly but instead spent all his time defending @joerogan over Nick Fuentes.”
Ann Rubinfeld, an RJC member who supports Vance for 2028, said she is deeply opposed to Carlson but didn’t feel that the vice president needed to address Carlson head-on. “I don’t think that needs to be said,” she said.
Vance received a number of ovations during the conversation, including after Coleman commended him and Trump for leading what he said was the most pro-Israel administration in American history. Chants of “USA!” rang out as Vance took the stage. The warm reception may have come as a surprise for some in the room.
“This will be a tough crowd for him tomorrow,” Florida Rep. Randy Fine told reporters on Monday. In the morning leading up to Vance’s appearance, Rosenberg called on attendees to “give Vance a chance.” Ron Dermer, who has served as Israeli Ambassador to the United States and Strategic Affairs Minister, told the crowd, “I hope you all give him a warm welcome,” and thanked Vance for his “critical role” behind the scenes of the 12-day war fought with Israel against Iran in 2025.
Cooper said he’d expected “more skepticism, even bordering on stony silence” heading into the event, but hoped to be won over.
He added, “People get too excited by celebrities.”
Vance had made a stop in Michigan earlier on Monday, and told the room that he met with the rabbi of Temple Israel, as well as the security guards who helped prevent an antisemitic attack on the synagogue. Vance also referred to Michigan’s Republican nominee in the November senate race, Mike Rogers, who is facing Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, in what he called “maybe the single most important candidate right now in this midterm election.”
Asked about his opinion on the U.S.-Israel relationship, Vance said Israel is “certainly one of our most important alliances in the world,” and that Israel and America or any of its allies must always be pursuing their own interests.
“I’m very much a foreign policy realist,” he said.
Vance also brought up the “growing suspicion” of the U.S.-Israel relationship among people under 40, and said “we have to articulate why this is in the best interest of the United States of America,” listing benefits such as intelligence collection and technology sharing.
Some of the heat Vance has drawn from Jewish Republicans has stemmed from comments he has made about Israel. In June, in response to criticism of the Iran deal, Vance said that Israeli cabinet members should not attack “the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
“We don’t forget statements like that,” Valerie Greenfeld, an RJC member who lives in Jerusalem, said in a text to JTA.
Speaking about the rise of antisemitism in the United States, Vance blamed it partly on immigration policy. He said that the increase comes from “people who are bringing ancient ethnic hatreds into the United States,” and that it is not a problem by-and-large among white Americans.
“You know, the Fuentes character who really does hate Jews — and also by the way, really hates me and my family, so you’re in good company — that is real,” Vance said. “But it’s not common among most of our fellow citizens.”
Vance condemned antisemitism, and drew applause when he told attendees, on behalf of the White House administration, “We love you guys, we appreciate you guys, and you will very much always be on the team so long as I have any say in it.”
Vance spoke about his own Christian faith and the connections between it and Judaism. He said he noticed similarities during a previous RJC event and at the wedding of his Jewish former chief of staff, Jacob Reses, where Vance did a reading.
“There were all these liturgical similarities between Judaism and Catholicism that are very fascinating,” Vance said.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish conservative activist who attended the RJC confab, wrote afterwards that he appreciates Vance’s commitment to his religious beliefs, and that he agrees on forming foreign policy from an “America first” perspective. But Vance had more to prove, he said.
“His refusal to unequivocally denounce and condemn Tucker, who just called for Trump’s immediate removal, will make it very hard for the American Jewish community to consider his otherwise stellar policies,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Vance courts Jewish Republicans, but leaves Tucker Carlson ties unanswered appeared first on The Forward.
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At Jewish Republican summit, GOP casts midterms as a battle against DSA
(JTA) — LAS VEGAS – Speakers at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual convention at the Venetian Resort cast the upcoming midterm elections as a battle against not just the Democratic Party, but specifically its left-wing Democratic Socialists of America faction.
“A Democrat majority in November is not just a political setback for our party and our movement, it is a direct threat to the Jewish community,” said Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican National Committee. “The people in charge would not be moderate Democrats who have occasionally pushed back on antisemitism. It would be the Squad. It would be the DSA.”
Ed Gallrein, the farmer and former Navy SEAL who defeated Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in a Republican primary back in May, said that “radical socialism sentiment is gaining ground across our nation,” calling November’s elections a battle between “the Constitution versus the Communist Manifesto.”
Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, accused the Jewish senator of using November’s election as a springboard to run for president in 2028 as “the DSA candidate.” (Ossoff has repeatedly denied having interest in running for president. He is also neither a DSA member, nor has he been endorsed by the group.)
Even the WiFi password for the Vegas confab — “DSA=AntiUSA” — offered a rejection of the group.
The RJC’s summit comes after a string of victories by DSA members and DSA-backed candidates in Democratic primaries across the country, sparking criticism from Republicans and moderate Democrats who oppose tenets of the group’s left-wing ideology, including its anti-Zionist stance.
The total number of House members endorsed by a DSA chapter could rise from two to seven, depending on how November shakes out, in addition to candidates in downballot races. Though there are 212 Democrats in the House, Republican officials on Sunday and Monday painted the Democratic party as one that is ceding control to the DSA.
China, Russia and Iran, Gallrein said, are hoping that “Democrats controlled by the DSA take the House and the Senate, and that they can exploit and divide America.”
Speakers panned other DSA-backed politicians such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, as well as the streamer Hasan Piker, who has fundraised for numerous DSA-endorsed candidates.
Florida Rep. Randy Fine specifically attacked Muslim politicians in the Democratic party, saying he was addressing “the elephant in the room.” He was among the speakers to say that there are anti-Israel and antisemitic voices on both ends of the political spectrum. The difference, he said, is that Republicans “repudiate this evil” with actions like voting out Kentucky’s anti-Israel congressman Massie, while Democrats elect anti-Israel candidates.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories in recent years, was repudiated by the RJC and also cast aside by the party’s leader, President Donald Trump. Trump’s second-in-command JD Vance, however, has made no such condemnation, to the chagrin of many Jewish Republicans.
With Vance set to speak at the RJC’s summit on Monday night, multiple Jewish Democratic groups blasted the RJC for hosting him, particularly in a session that is closed to the press.
“JD Vance may be speaking behind closed doors, but he should not be able to avoid questions about his attacks on Israel, his failure to confront antisemitism within the MAGA movement, and his continued alliance with Tucker Carlson,” said Brian Romick, president and CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, in a statement.
“What’s next, a live taping with Tucker Carlson on the main stage?” the Jewish Democratic Council of America wrote.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the JDCA’s CEO Halie Soifer said, “The RJC may choose to highlight the less than ten DSA candidates on the ballot in November for their own cynical political purposes, but Jewish voters see past their deflection and lies, just as they see the Republican Party for what it is — the party of Donald Trump.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post At Jewish Republican summit, GOP casts midterms as a battle against DSA appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel and Greece ink defense deal to protect against regional threats
(JTA) — Israel and Greece finalized on Monday a $3.5 billion deal providing the Hellenic Republic with a multilayered antimissile system designed to protect the European Union country against aerial attacks from nations such as Iran and Turkey. It is one of the largest defense export deals in the history of the Jewish state.
The two countries “share common strategic interests and face shared regional challenges,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a press statement sent out after the deal was signed at Tel Aviv’s Ministry of Defense.
Called the “Achilles Shield,” the agreement was inked by the General Director of the General Directorate for Defense Investments and Armaments of Greece, Maj. Gen. Ioannis Bouras, and Israel’s Ministry of Defense Director-General reserve Maj. Gen. Amir Baram.
“At a time when actors with hegemonic ambitions are seeking to expand their influence and undermine stability in the region, Israel and Greece will continue to deepen their defense and strategic cooperation, and will act with determination to preserve stability and safeguard their security and shared interests.” Katz said.
Katz didn’t name Iran or Turkey in his remarks, but it was widely understood that the two countries pose regional concerns for both countries. Turkey and Greece are not just neighbors but historic enemies with several current disputes. As Israel’s relationship with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has deteriorated, Jerusalem and Greece have drawn closer in an effort to counterbalance Turkey’s growing power.
At the same time, Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel multiple times since 2024. Greece has not been under Iranian fire, but Tehran has threatened to attack European countries. Greece hosts a U.S. naval base and is among those European countries that are closer to Iran.
The agreement isthe “largest defense export deal in the history of Israel-Greece relations, and one of the largest in the history” of the country, Israel’s Defense Ministry noted.
The multilayered system Israel will build for Greece will mark the first time that it provides a country with a system that can combat a wide array of threats from ballistic missiles to drones, the ministry explained.
Among the systems included in the “Achilles Shield” architecture are David’s Sling, SPYDER, BARAK MX and MMR multi-mission radars for air surveillance.
The two countries on Monday also signed a supplementary deal valued at $30.2 million for the sale of the Israeli company Rafael’s Drone Dome systems.
Chairman of Israel Aerospace Industries Boaz Levy said during the recent fighting with Iran that Israel’s aerial defense systems had shown they could intercept “a range of threats, chief among them exoatmospheric ballistic missiles.” The same systems that defended Israel could also be used to help allies in Europe, Levy explained.
“We are proud to take part in the important ‘Achilles Shield’ project, and will continue to be key partners in additional projects in Greece and around the world, as we develop and build the next generation of defense technologies,” he added.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel and Greece ink defense deal to protect against regional threats appeared first on The Forward.
