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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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The post Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s 80th anniversary remembered with daffodils, 3 presidents and an 11th commandment against ‘indifference’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Janet Mills Drops Out of Maine Senate Democratic Primary, Clearing Path for Anti-Israel Candidate Graham Platner
Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at a campaign town hall meeting in Ogunquit, Maine, US, Oct. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday announced that she is ending her campaign in the Democratic primary for US Senate, a move that effectively clears the path for progressive challenger Graham Platner to secure the nomination in a high-stakes race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
In a statement, Mills cited the financial demands of a competitive statewide campaign, acknowledging she lacked the resources to continue. Her withdrawal came after weeks of trailing Platner in grassroots fundraising and momentum, despite support from establishment Democrats.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said.
“That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate,” she continued.
The development represents a sharp ideological shift in the Democratic field. Mills, a two-term governor, had been viewed by party leaders as a pragmatic candidate with broad appeal and a traditionally strong stance on US alliances, including support for Israel. Mills’s candidacy failed to gain traction in the state, with observers pointing to a Democratic primary electorate that is both incensed and deeply desirous for a shakeup from the status quo.
Platner, in contrast to Mills, has built his campaign on an anti-establishment message and drawn increasing scrutiny in part for his rhetoric on the Middle East. Some of his past statements criticizing Israel have alarmed more centrist Democrats and foreign policy observers, who argue his framing downplays Israel’s security concerns and risks alienating key constituencies in a general election.
Platner has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza and vowed to vote against further military assistance to the Jewish state. Earlier this month, Platner accused Israel of “exterminating” people in Gaza and refused to clarify his stance on whether Israel should remain a Jewish state. Most of his criticisms of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza omit any mention of the Hamas terrorist organization, framing Israel as an aggressor with intent of wiping out the Palestinian population.
Further, Platner came under scrutiny last year after it was revealed that the Democratic insurgent possesses a tattoo of a Totemkopf — a symbol historically used by Nazi military units. Though Platner has emphatically denied any knowledge of the tattoo’s connections to Nazism, skeptics have pointed out that the oyster farmer identifies as a military historian, raising serious doubts about his claims.
Concerns about Platner’s conduct and Totemkompf tattoo are already emerging as a potential liability in a race Democrats had hoped to make competitive. Collins, a moderate Republican with a long record of electoral success in Maine, has historically attracted independents and crossover voters, groups that could be wary of candidates perceived as ideologically extreme.
Mills’s exit also highlights a broader dynamic within the Democratic Party, as insurgent candidates in several primaries continue to gain traction over more traditional figures. While that energy has reshaped races across the country, it has also raised questions about general election viability in closely divided states.
Many observers have argued that Platner’s ascendance in the Democratic Party serves as another signal that the party is shifting further away from Israel and becoming more tolerant of antisemitism. Across the country, support for Israel has emerged as a litmus test within Democratic primary competitions, with candidates vowing to curtail support for Israel and being pressured to condemn the Jewish state as a perpetrator of “genocide.”
Despite Platner’s vulnerabilities and personal baggage, he has racked up a bevy of endorsements from Democratic power-players such as Rep. Ro Khanna (CA) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA). On Thursday, the Democratic Party officially endorsed Platner as the nominee to take on Collins.
As of now, polling indicates a close race in the Maine general election, with several polls showing Platner with a narrow lead over Collins. However, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has not yet aired ads against Platner, and the Republicans are expected to weaponize Platner’s history of controversial commentary in the lead-up to Election Day in November.
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Analysis: As Democrats unite behind Platner, Schumer’s future as leader faces tests
National Democrats on Thursday moved swiftly to unite behind Graham Platner — a progressive candidate whose past Nazi-linked tattoo and sharp criticism of Israel have alarmed some Jewish groups — after he became the presumptive nominee for Maine’s Senate seat.
The move made political sense. Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer, had already been leading in polls against Gov. Janet Mills, who dropped out of the race on Thursday, citing fundraising struggles. Once Platner became the de facto Democratic nominee against incumbent Republican Sen.Susan Collins, party unity was all but automatic.
But that unity comes with serious risks.
Joel Rubin, a Democratic commentator and foreign policy expert, called Platner’s candidacy for a much-desired seat a “nightmare scenario” for the party.
“For Jewish Democrats, wanting to defeat Collins, to have a candidate who makes them very uncomfortable on Jewish issues could potentially dampen support for him,” Rubin said in an interview. “Typically, Jewish Democrats are the most enthusiastic of democratic constituencies for Democratic candidates.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who had recruited Mills to run, is focused on winning back the majority, and Maine is a must-win in the pursuit to flip at least four Republican seats. “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” Schumer said in a joint statement with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who heads the Democratic campaign arm.
Schumer navigates new tensions
Schumer could play a pivotal role in mobilizing national donors, including Jewish donors, to support the Platner campaign.
Nonetheless, Schumer, who has seen his popularity decline since he supported a Republican spending bill to avert a shutdown last year, may be helping build a majority that won’t back him, as his longtime support for Israel increasingly becomes a liability in a party where many voters object to the United States providing funds to the Jewish state.
Platner has aligned himself with a new guard of candidates who could emerge from competitive primaries ready to challenge Democratic leadership — as well as the longstanding Democratic consensus in support of Israel.
Abdul El-Sayed, a U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan rising in the polls, and Zach Wahls, a progressive candidate from Iowa, have both said they oppose Schumer as leader.
These insurgents could also alienate moderate and pro-Israel Jewish voters in closely contested races in the fall. Figures like Platner and El-Sayed have adopted language and positions that would have been politically risky — if not disqualifying — in earlier cycles. Now, those stances are survivable.
And even if they win their races in the general election and Schumer stays on as leader, his role is getting harder to maintain as the party’s base has shifted, especially amid the wars in Gaza and Iran.
For years, Schumer has cast himself as an institutional anchor on issues important to the Jewish community, including support for Israel. In a speech for Jewish audiences, he bragged about preserving Democratic unity on Israel aid. In 2024, he told the Forward that “having a majority leader who’s committed to Israel is vital for Israel’s relationship with the U.S.”
But shifting dynamics suggest the balance may be slipping.
Earlier this month, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers — used by the Israeli military to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza — and 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. Those counts shattered a previous high of 27 Democrats who backed a similar pair of resolutions last year.
Schumer was in the minority of his party on both votes.
If a future roster of Democratic senators includes more legislators elected on platforms critical of Israel and skeptical of party leadership, Schumer’s ability to manage internal divisions could be tested in ways it hasn’t been before. Schumer came under fire from progressives in February after telling a Jewish group that he will keep “fighting” for military assistance to Israel.
In a recent interview with Politico, Sanders asserted he has now become the leader for Senate Democrats on Israel policy. “I mean, we got 40 votes, and Schumer got seven,” he said. “We have more support for our position than Chuck has for his.”
What Jewish Democrats are watching
For many Jewish voters, Platner’s rise and the party’s embrace of him are another signal of changes many are finding hard to swallow.
Platner faced backlash last year after acknowledging that a black skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest resembled a Nazi symbol. He has since covered it up. In past Reddit posts, Platner made incendiary comments, including in defending a man with a Nazi SS lightning bolt tattoo who impersonated a federal officer at a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas in 2020.
Last month, Platner accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and suggested the U.S. should cut off all aid to Israel.
Platner has done some outreach to the Jewish community across Maine. Recently, his campaign hosted a Passover Seder in Bath, Maine with some 50 community members, during which he discussed rising antisemitism. It was co-hosted with Steven Koltai, the state chair of the progressive Jewish political fundraising group J Street, who is a key Platner supporter.
For now, Democrats have little choice but to unite behind the presumptive nominee. But if candidates like Platner help deliver a majority, the real test will be holding it together.
The post Analysis: As Democrats unite behind Platner, Schumer’s future as leader faces tests appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas Exploits Gaza Ceasefire to Tighten Civilian Control, Rebuild Military Power as Second Phase Talks Stall
Palestinians displaced during the two-year Israel-Hamas war shelter at a tent camp in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 10, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
As the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement remains stalled, Israeli officials warn that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is quietly exploiting the pause in fighting to tighten its control over civilian life while simultaneously rebuilding its military capabilities behind the scenes.
Under the leadership of military wing commander and de facto Gaza ruler Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, Hamas is reinforcing its authority across the enclave, further undermining already fragile efforts to advance the truce.
Al-Haddad is said to be operating three parallel systems intended to secure the terrorist group’s survival and restore its military capabilities, according to a report by the Israeli news outlet Walla, which cited security sources.
The first line of effort seems to focus on reestablishing Hamas’s civilian governance and restoring its authority across the war-torn enclave, with its presence still visibly entrenched through checkpoints, strict regulation of goods, and the takeover of key civilian institutions, including hospitals.
Under the ceasefire, the Israeli military currently controls 53 percent of Gaza, while Hamas remains entrenched in the nearly half of Gazan territory it still controls, where the vast majority of the population lives.
The Palestinian terrorist group has also been reactivating internal security mechanisms to enforce day-to-day order while carrying out extensive intelligence operations aimed at identifying alleged collaborators with Israel and any opposition.
Hamas’s second line of effort has been focused on a violent internal campaign against armed militias and local gangs, particularly in southern Gaza, as the group seeks to reassert control and shore up its weakened position by targeting Palestinians it labels as “lawbreakers and collaborators with Israel.”
With its security control tightening, Hamas’s brutal crackdown has escalated, sparking widespread clashes and violence as the group seeks to seize weapons and eliminate any opposition.
A third line of effort reportedly centers on rebuilding military capabilities, including recruiting new operatives, conducting training both in the field and at command sites, restoring intelligence and surveillance systems, and rebuilding underground infrastructure and weapons stockpiles.
Israeli officials estimate that Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, is rebuilding its forces, with its ranks now totaling roughly 27,000 members.
Despite Israeli intelligence assessments that Hamas’s smuggling capabilities have been significantly degraded, the group is reportedly seeking to rebuild its arsenal through local means by recovering Israeli Air Force munitions remnants and converting them into improvised explosive devices.
The Islamist group is also attempting to revive rocket and mortar production using makeshift materials, while reorganizing stockpiles buried under rubble or left largely intact.
Israeli officials have repeatedly warned that Hamas’s ongoing rebuilding efforts are allowing the group to retain control over much of the war-torn enclave and steadily sustain its influence despite over two years of military conflict.
According to a report by the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, a new draft proposal has been presented to Israel and Hamas, with talks potentially beginning this week on moving forward with the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.
Earlier this year, the US-backed plan to end the war in Gaza hit major roadblocks after proposals surfaced that would allow Hamas to retain some small arms.
Israel has previously warned that the Islamist group must fully disarm for the second phase of the ceasefire to move forward, pointing to tens of thousands of rifles and an active network of underground tunnels still under the terrorist group’s control.
If Hamas does not give up its weapons, Israeli officials have vowed not to withdraw troops from Gaza any further or approve any rebuilding efforts, effectively stalling the ceasefire agreement.
The new draft allegedly proposes creating an “Implementation Verification Committee,” to be formed under Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza on Trump’s Board of Peace, bringing together guarantor states, the International Stabilization Force, and a Peace Council to ensure compliance by all parties.
Under this proposed draft, the Peace Council would be granted authority over Gaza’s governance, reconstruction, and development until a reformed Palestinian Authority is able to resume its responsibilities.
The document also reportedly states that Hamas and other extremist Palestinian factions would have no role in governing the Gaza Strip, and that governance would be based on “one authority, one law, and one weapon,” as all armed groups would cease military activity and a phased disarmament process would transfer weapons to the incoming body.
By this framework, Israel’s withdrawal would take place in stages under an agreed timetable, contingent on verifiable progress in the process of disarmament.