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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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Father and Son Behind Bondi Mass Shooting, Australia Police Say
A man lights a candle as police officers stand guard following the attack on a Jewish holiday celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, December 15, 2025. REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone
Two gunmen who attacked a Jewish celebration in Sydney’s Bondi Beach that killed 15 people were a father and son, police said on Monday, as Australia mourned victims of its worst gun violence in almost 30 years.
The father, a 50-year-old, was killed at the scene while his 24-year-old son was in critical condition in the hospital, police said at a press conference on Monday. Officials have described the shooting on Sunday as a targeted antisemitic attack.
Witnesses said the attack at the famed beach, which was packed on a hot evening, lasted about 10 minutes, sending hundreds of people scattering along the sand and into nearby streets and parks. Police said around 1,000 people had attended the Hanukkah event.
Forty people remain in hospital following the attack, including two police officers who are in a serious but stable condition, police said. The victims were aged between 10 and 87.
Authorities said they were confident only two attackers were involved in the incident after previously saying they were checking whether a third offender was involved.
Police investigations are ongoing and police numbers have been increased in Jewish communities.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who visited the scene on Monday, called the attack a “dark moment for our nation,” and said police and security agencies were thoroughly checking the motive behind the attack.
“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of antisemitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location,” Albanese told reporters.
“The Jewish community are hurting today. Today, all Australians wrap our arms around them and say, we stand with you. We will do whatever is necessary to stamp out antisemitism. It is a scourge, and we will eradicate it together.”
Albanese said several world leaders including US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron had reached out and he thanked them for their solidarity.
“In Australia, there was a terrible attack … and that was an antisemitic attack obviously,” Trump said during a Christmas reception at the White House on Sunday, paying respects for the victims of attacks at Bondi and another shooting at Rhode Island’s Brown University.
‘SAW BODIES ON THE GROUND’
A bystander captured on video tackling and disarming an armed man during the attack has been hailed as a hero whose actions saved lives.
In Bondi, hundreds of police personnel remained on site on Monday as the suburb’s main road remained closed, after being declared a crime scene.
Rabbi Mendel Kastel, whose brother-in-law Eli Schlanger was killed in Sunday’s attack, said it had been a harrowing evening.
“You can very easily become very angry and try to blame people, turn on people but that’s not what this is about. It’s about a community,” he said.
“We need to step up at a time like this, be there for each other, and come together. And we will, and we will get through this, and we know that. The Australian community will help us do it,” he added.
Local woman Danielle, who declined to give her surname, was at the beach when the shooting occurred and raced to collect her daughter who was attending a bar mitzvah at a function center near where the alleged shooters were positioned.
“I heard there was a shooting so I bolted there to get my daughter, I could hear gunshots, I saw bodies on the ground. We are used to being scared, we have felt this way since October 7.”
Sunday’s shootings were the most serious of a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars in Australia since the beginning of Israel‘s war in Gaza in October 2023.
Australia’s Jewish diaspora is small but deeply embedded in the wider community, with about 150,000 people who identify as Jewish in the country of 27 million. About one-third of them are estimated to live in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, including Bondi.
Major cities including Berlin, London and New York stepped up security around Hanukkah events on Sunday following the attack at Bondi.
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World Reacts to Deadly Shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach
People walk at the scene of a shooting incident at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, December 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kirsty Needham
At least 11 people were killed and dozens wounded when gunmen opened fire during a Jewish holiday event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, Australian officials said.
Following are comments from world leaders in the wake of the deadly shooting:
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
“This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah, which should be a day of joy, a celebration of faith.
“At this dark moment for our nation, our police and security agencies are working to determine anyone associated with this outrage.”
SUSSAN LEY, OPPOSITION LEADER OF AUSTRALIA
“Australians are in deep mourning tonight, with hateful violence striking at the heart of an iconic Australian community, a place we all know so well and love, Bondi.”
BRITAIN’S KING CHARLES
“My wife and I are appalled and saddened by the most dreadful antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish people attending the Chanukah celebration at Bondi Beach.
“Our hearts go out to everyone who has been affected so dreadfully, including the police officers who were injured while protecting members of their community. We commend the police, emergency services and members of the public whose heroic actions no doubt prevented even greater horror and tragedy.”
FRENCH PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON
“In Sydney, an antisemitic terrorist attack struck families gathered to celebrate Hanukkah. France extends its thoughts to the victims, the injured and their loved ones. We share the pain of the Australian people and will continue to fight relentlessly against antisemitic hatred, which hurts us all, wherever it strikes.”
US SECRETARY OF STATE, MARCO RUBIO
“Antisemitism has no place in this world. Our prayers are with the victims of this horrific attack, the Jewish community, and the people of Australia.”
UN SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTONIO GUTERRES
“I am horrified and condemn today’s heinous deadly attack on Jewish families gathered in Sydney to celebrate Hannukah. My heart is with the Jewish community worldwide on this first day of Hannukah, a festival celebrating the miracle of peace and light vanquishing darkness.”
FRIEDRICH MERZ, CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY
“The antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach during Hanukkah leaves me utterly shocked. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. This is an attack on our shared values. We must fight antisemitism – here in Germany and around the world.”
NARENDRA MODI, PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA
“Strongly condemn the ghastly terrorist attack carried out today at Bondi Beach, Australia, targeting people celebrating the first day of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“On behalf of the people of India, I extend my sincere condolences to the families who lost their loved ones. We stand in solidarity with the people of Australia in this hour of grief. India has zero tolerance towards terrorism and supports the fight against all forms and manifestations of terrorism.”
KEIR STARMER, UK PRIME MINISTER
“Deeply distressing news from Australia. The United Kingdom sends our thoughts and condolences to everyone affected by the appalling attack in Bondi Beach.”
CHRISTOPHER LUXON, PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND
“Australia and New Zealand are closer than friends, we’re family. I am shocked by the distressing scenes at Bondi, a place that Kiwis visit every day.
“My thoughts, and the thoughts of all New Zealanders, are with those affected.”
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL
“A few months ago, I wrote a letter to the prime minister of Australia. I told him that their policies pour fuel on the antisemitic fire. It encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets. Antisemitism is a cancer. It spreads when leaders stay silent, and you must replace weakness with action.
“This didn’t happen in Australia, and something terrible happened there today: cold-blooded murder. The number of those murdered, sadly, grows, with each moment.”
GIDEON SA’AR, FOREIGN MINISTER OF ISRAEL
“I’m appalled by the murderous shooting attack at a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia.
“These are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realized today.”
IRAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESPERSON, ESMAEIL BAGHAEI
“We condemn the violent attack in Sydney, Australia. The assassination and killing of human beings, wherever it occurs, is reprehensible and condemned.”
URSULA VON DER LEYEN, EUROPEAN COMMISSION PRESIDENT
“Shocked by the tragic attack at Bondi Beach. I send my heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims.
“Europe stands with Australia and Jewish communities everywhere. We are united against violence, antisemitism and hatred.”
DONALD TUSK, PRIME MINISTER OF POLAND
“My deepest condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Antisemitism, wherever it appears, leads to acts of crime. Today, Poland stands with Australia in this moment of grief.”
KAROL NAWROCKI, PRESIDENT OF POLAND
“I express my full condemnation of the terrorist attack in Sydney. I extend my condolences to the families of the victims of this unimaginable crime.”
SPANISH FOREIGN MINISTER JOSE MANUEL ALBARES
“Horrified by the terrorist attack in Australia against the Jewish community. My solidarity with the victims and their loved ones, with the people and government of Australia.
“Hate, antisemitism, and violence have no place in our societies.”
JONAS GAHR STOERE, PRIME MINISTER OF NORWAY
“I am shocked by the horrific attack at Bondi Beach, Australia, during a Jewish Hanukkah event.
“I condemn this despicable act of terror in the strongest possible terms. My deepest condolences to all those affected by today’s tragic attack.”
ULF KRISTERSSON, PRIME MINISTER OF SWEDEN
“Appalled by the attack in Sydney, targeted against the Jewish community.
“My thoughts are with the victims and their families. Together, we must fight the spread of antisemitism.”
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After Australia shooting, Jewish leaders say Mamdani’s refusal to condemn ‘globalize the intifada’ has consequences
The shooting attack targeting a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s popular Bondi Beach on the first night of Hanukkah, in which at least 15 people were killed, reignited sharp criticism of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the “globalize the intifada” slogan during the mayoral election.
“When you refuse to condemn and only ‘discourage’ use of the term ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ you help facilitate (not cause) the thinking that leads to Bondi Beach,” Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian and the State Department special envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism in the Biden administration, wrote on X in a post addressed to Mamdani.
Police said a father and son were behind the mass shooting in Australia, with authorities adding that they would need more time to determine a motive.
Mamdani, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, faced fierce backlash during the Democratic primary for defending the slogan used by some at the pro-Palestinian protests and perceived by many as a call for violence against Jews. After his surprise primary victory in June, Mamdani clarified that he understood why the phrase alarmed people and noted that it was not language he personally uses, but he declined to explicitly condemn it.
He later said he would “discourage” the use of that phrase after hearing from Jewish leaders who experienced the bus bombings during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
Lipstadt included a link to a June Politico article detailing Mamdani’s initial refusal to condemn the slogan.
Rabbi David Wolpe, the emeritus rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a harsh critic of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism on campus, wrote, “How about now, Mr. Mayor?” Republicans and Mamdani critics echoed the same sentiment.
New York City is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the United States.
Outgoing Mayor Eric Adams indirectly referenced the controversy during a press conference with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who Mamdani has reappointed to serve in his administration. “That attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to ‘globalize the Intifada,’” Adams said. “We saw the actual application of the globalization of the intifada in Sydney.”
Reacting to Bondi Beach attack, Mayor Eric Adams says:
“That attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to ‘globalize the Intifada.’ We saw the actual application of the globalization of the intifada in Sydney…” pic.twitter.com/3EI3IZp3Dg
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) December 14, 2025
Mamdani issued a statement on Sunday, calling the attack in Sydney a “vile act of antisemitic terror” and “the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world.” He said the deadly attack should be met with urgent action to counter antisemitism. He also reiterated his pledge to “work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe — on our streets, our subways, at shul, in every moment of every day.”
A spokesperson for Mamdani didn’t immediately respond to comment on Lipstadt’s post.
In an interview aired Sunday, Mamdani responded to criticism from Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, who said after a meeting with Mamdani on Thursday that the mayor-elect’s refusal to recognize Israel specifically as a Jewish state could fuel antisemitism.
Hirsch, who also serves as president of the New York Board of Rabbis, was present at a 45-minute discussion with Mamdani as part of the mayor-elect’s outreach to Jewish leaders. Rabbi Joe Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said the conversation was “candid” and “constructive.”
“Rabbi Hirsch is entitled to his opinions,” Mamdani told CBS New York’s political reporter Marcia Kramer on her program The Point. “The positions that I’ve made clear on Israel and on Palestine, these are part of universal beliefs of equal rights and the necessity of it for all people everywhere.” He added, “My inability to say what Rabbi Hirsch would like me to say comes from a belief that every state should be of equal rights, whether we’re speaking about Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere in the world.”
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