Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2005 19(2):201-225; doi:10.1093/hgs/dci020

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© Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved

The Jewish Military Organization (ZW) in the Warsaw Ghetto

Moshe Arens

Former Minister of Defense and of Foreign Affairs, State of Israel

The leadership of the Jewish Military Organization (ZW) emerged from the ranks of the Polish Betar membership after prewar leaders such as Menahem Begin fled to the east in advance of the German occupying forces. Many of the founders of the ZW had received military training in the Polish Army or in IZL cells (Irgun Zvai Leumi; National Military Organization) in the interwar period. Their personal contacts with Polish military officers would prove essential as they armed for battle with the Germans. This study considers the effect of the ZW leadership’s military background on the duration and effectiveness of Jewish resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, comparing the composition and strategy of the ZW to those of Mordechai Anielewicz’s Jewish Fighting Organization (OB).

	Introduction

TOP Introduction Escape from Warsaw Betar and the IZL Begin’s Departure from... Betar under Peretz Lasker The Leadership of the... Contacts with the Polish... The Final Chapter of... Notes

 
Two Jewish fighting organizations participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: the ydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization), generally known by its Polish acronym OB, and the ydowski Zwizek Wojskowy (ZW, the Jewish Military Organization). The OB, composed of members of almost every youth and political movement in the ghetto, including the (anti-Zionist) Bund and the Communists, was headed by Mordechai Anielewicz of the Socialist-Zionist youth movement, Hashomer Hatsair. The ZW was led primarily by disciples of Ze’ev Jabotinsky—members of the Zionist Revisionist movement and Betar, the Revisionist youth movement—but it included others who were politically unaffiliated.

The rival organizations attempted to conclude an agreement uniting their forces before the uprising, but failed. During the uprising they fought parallel battles commanded by different leaders. The OB is usually given the lion’s share of the credit for the uprising against the Germans. However, a detailed examination of the available evidence reveals that the ZW played an important role in the fighting that took place in the ghetto between April 19 and April 28, 1943. This study of the leadership and composition of the ZW brings to light a number of features that contributed to the effectiveness of Jewish resistance in Warsaw. One previously underestimated factor was a well-established link between the ZW and certain elements of the Polish resistance.

The ZW came into being shortly after the German conquest of Warsaw. Its original organizers were former officers in the Polish Army who were later joined by adherents of Jabotinsky’s Revisionist movement. A number of ZW fighters had had previous military training in the IZL cells (Irgun Zvai Leumi; National Military Organization) that had been organized in Poland among members of Betar in the prewar years. The leaders’ military experience lent a professional character to the ZW’s preparations for resistance to the Germans and made it possible for the ZW to forge close relationships with the two Polish underground groups that would assist them in acquiring arms and supplies and provide military training.

A number of secret Polish underground organizations formed spontaneously after the initial shock of the Polish army’s defeat had faded.¹ One such group was set up in October 1939 at the St. Stanislaus Hospital for Infectious Diseases in the Wola district of Warsaw. This group was initially part of the underground organization Wojskowy Zwizek Walki Zbrojnej (WZWZ, The Military Alliance for Armed Struggle), which underwent various organizational transformations. Ultimately the WZWZ was subordinated to Andrzej Petrykowski ("Tarnawa"), the commandant of an organization called Zbrojne Wyzwolenie (ZW, Armed Liberation)—later the Korpus Bezpieczestwa (KB, Security Corps).²

Within the KB, a group of Jewish Polish Army officers formed the nucleus of the organization that would later become the ZW. Kalman Mendelson, a Revisionist and former officer in the Polish Army, reports that the officers forming that unit were (in addition to himself) David Apfelbaum, Henryk Lipszyc-Lipiski, and Szymon Biaoskóra (Biaoskórnik).³ According to Mendelson, their KB superior, Henryk Iwaski ("Bystry"), supplied them with their first weapons and false papers.⁴ In 1970 Mendelson gave a detailed description of the development of the ZW; it is worth quoting at length:

In November 1939, among a Jewish population terrorized by the repression, only a handful of "September" fighters—officers and non-commissioned officers of the Polish Army—saw the need for struggle against the Nazis. In any case, having neither sufficient resources nor the desire to create their own organization, these Jews joined the existing Polish units in small groups based on their connection with former friends. In this way the first two groups were established: Tadeusz Bednarczyk’s unit at ródmiecie, and the "W" unit at Wola, both belonging to the OW (Organizacja Wojskowa, Military Organization)-KB.... The area of activity of [the W unit], which was created at the hospital for infectious diseases at 37 Wolska Street, was generally limited to the Wola quarter. Certain employees—physicians and other personnel, all of whom worked initially at the hospital—were members of this unit. Its commander, Zdzisaw Nosarzewski, alias "Nosek," was head of the administrative service, and his deputy and subordinate, Jan Skoczek, alias "Wasik," headed the supply services.... The first group, composed of several Jewish officers and headed by [David Mieczysaw] Apfelbaum and [Dr. Józef] Niemirski (Celmajster), made contact with the W unit on the basis of their relations with Jan Skoczek. Earlier, Skoczek had worked and lived at the Jewish hospital located at Czyste, where he performed the same functions as he did at Wolska; namely, he was the head of supply services. Consequently, he was well known to the Jews, who contacted him to obtain his counsel and assistance. Doctor Józef Niemirski, a physician working at Czyste, had much confidence in him—confidence that was shared by the entire group and that only increased with time, thanks to the collaboration and assistance of the W unit and the entire OW-KB. This collaboration consisted at first of accepting all of us into the W unit, and later of authorizing us to create Jewish resistance cells in the Jewish quarter (afterwards the closed ghetto). It was primarily the business of Skoczek. It was also he who, in order to underline the seriousness of the newborn Jewish organization and to provide for the security of its fighters, gave the ghetto a number of weapons from the supply that he and Nosarzewski had stored in the hospital in December 1939. Thus the first four cells were created as part of the "W" unit at the end of November and in December 1939. I belonged to the one called wit [Dawn], which was commanded by [Henryk] Lipszyc-Lipiski. At the beginning of 1940, these cells counted more members than a classic military squad. wit was one of those that was more developed.... It became well known in the ghetto because it specialized ... in monitoring radio broadcasts and acted as an information service. It edited an information bulletin called wit, which was first typewritten and afterwards mimeographed. A number of journalists worked on it, including myself.

That was the state of affairs until February 1940, the moment of the reorganization and the creation of the real ZW. During a preparatory meeting held at the end of February 1940, the four cell leaders were informed by Nosarzewski and Skoczek that as of March their cells would be elevated to platoons and their commanders promoted to platoon leaders. They were ordered to structure their units along military lines, complete them by recruiting additional reserves with military experience, and begin training. A small quantity of weapons was distributed to each platoon for training. We were informed on that occasion of the existence of other groups that were going to join us to constitute the ZW. The status of the organization was then defined for us: it was to be an autonomous Jewish resistance organization as well as a unit of that part of the Polish resistance that was ... connected with the person and policy of General Sikorski. This group was to provide continuous material and organizational assistance to the ZW.

The development projects that had been planned were difficult to implement at the time. The German persecution of the Jews made it impossible for the Jews to expose themselves to new blows by taking any action opposing German orders. Under these conditions, there was no possibility of developing a Jewish resistance movement. After the capitulation of France in June 1940, many people left the ZW due to the general discouragement sweeping the Jewish population. Although there had been a small increase in numbers before June, the membership remained quite small, and this made it practically impossible to turn the cells into platoons. This increase was the reason why the wit group had split off in May. I left it at the time together with several men and formed a new group at 5 Karmelicka Street. The other four groups were under the command of [David] Mieczysaw Apfelbaum, Henryk Lipszyc-Lipiski, Leon Rodal, and Szymon Biaoskóra.⁵

According to Mendelson, Leon Rodal, an active Revisionist, had become one of the key members of the group by May 1940. Rodal was in close contact with Perets Lasker, the senior Betar officer in Warsaw, and the Betar mifkadah (command) in Warsaw, but unlike the founders he had not been an officer in the Polish Army.

After the closing of the ghetto in November 1940, an increased number of new recruits joined the ZW. According to Mendelson, the ZW under the leadership of David Apfelbaum had about 250 members by the beginning of 1941, many of whom had served in the Polish Army. At that time, two of the key positions in the organization were held by Rodal and Pawel Frenkel from Betar. In the winter of 1940–41, Frenkel actively recruited members of Betar to join an underground resistance organization.⁶ By the middle of 1941, the ZW was organized as a proper military unit, with a headquarters staff, two companies composed of four platoons of twenty-five fighters each, a third company consisting as yet of only one platoon, and a special platoon headed by Mendelson. Mendelson describes the organization of the ZW and its leadership in the fall of 1941 as follows:⁷

Apfelbaum was the commander. Leon Rodal (commander of the first company) was his deputy for military affairs, Mojsze Weisstok (commander of the third company) was his second deputy and chief of the headquarters’ staff, Pawel Frenkel was his third deputy, and Henoch Federbusz was his deputy for evacuations from the ghetto to hiding places on the Aryan side. The headquarters was divided into sections, groups, and services:

1. Organization and statistics—Mojsze Weisstok
   
2. Operations and training—Leon Rodal
   
3. Radio monitoring and press propaganda—Henryk Lipszyc-Lipiski
   
4. Intelligence and investigation—Alojzy Kuperman, alias Kuperski. His deputy in the central ghetto: Zelwaski; his deputy in the smaller ghetto: Makower
   
5. Technical (construction of fortifications, bunkers, tunnels, passageways): engineer Leonard Pisz
   
6. Evacuation [of individuals from the ghetto]—Kalman Mendelson
   
7. Transfer of weapons and medical supplies—Henoch Federbusz
   
8. Warehousing and services (depots, food supply, grenade manufacture, shooting ranges)—Pawel Frenkel
   
9. Medical services—Dr. Celmajster-Niemirski
   

	Escape from Warsaw

TOP Introduction Escape from Warsaw Betar and the IZL Begin’s Departure from... Betar under Peretz Lasker The Leadership of the... Contacts with the Polish... The Final Chapter of... Notes

 
The ZW (and the OB) gained influence in the vacuum that had been created by the flight of most of the previous Jewish political leaders. Almost all of the Polish Jewish political leaders of Warsaw left the city as the German Army approached in September 1939. Moving to the east, they soon found themselves in the areas that the Soviet Army had occupied in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. From there they made their way to Vilna, a formerly Polish city that the Soviets had transferred to Lithuanian sovereignty. Among those who fled were Moshe Kleinbaum (Sneh), Apolinary Hartglas, and Moshe Kerner of the General Zionists, Anshel Reiss and Avraham Biaopolski of Po’alei Zion-ZS (Zionist Socialists), Yitshak Leib and Nathan Buksbaum of Po’alei Zion Smol (Marxist Zionists), Zerah Warhaftig and Aaron Weiss of Mizrahi, Yitshak Meir Levin of Agudas Yisroel, and Henryk Ehrlich and Victor Alter of the Bund.⁸ One of the few who stayed behind in Warsaw was Dr. David Wdowiski, who had headed the Revisionist movement in Poland for many years.

The leaders of the Zionist youth movements also left Warsaw before the entry of the German Army. The leaders of Hashomer Hatsair—Hayim Holtz (Alon), Zelig Geyer, Yosef Shamir, Yitshak Zalmanson, and Tosya Altman⁹—made it to Vilna, as did almost the entire netzivut (leadership) of Betar, including Menahem Begin, Natan Friedman-Yellin (Yellin-Mor), Yisrael Sheib (Eldad), Yisrael Epstein, and David Yutan.¹⁰

The leaders of Dror had fled Warsaw expecting to continue leading their youth movement from eastern Poland; they had not anticipated the quick collapse of the Polish Army and the entry of the Soviet army into Polish territory. Under Soviet rule, with no possibility of engaging openly in Zionist activities, they had to choose between attempting to conduct underground Zionist activity in the Soviet zone, continuing to Vilna, or returning to the areas that had been occupied by the Germans.

At a secret conference held in Lvov, in the Soviet zone, on December 31, 1939, the leadership of Dror decided that Zivia Lubetkin should return to Warsaw.¹¹ A few months later she was joined by Yitzhak Zuckerman.¹² The leadership of Hashomer Hatsair, now located in Vilna, decided that "as long as there is a Jewish community in Poland, the movement must be there." They resolved to send emissaries from Vilna back into the German occupation zone. The first to go was Tosya Altman, who was followed by Yosef Kaplan, Mordechai Anielewicz, and Shmuel Breslaw.¹³ The Dror and Hashomer Hatsair emissaries who returned to Warsaw were to become the organizers and leaders of the OB.

The Betar leadership, assembled in Vilna, did not send any emissaries back into the German-occupied territories of Poland. This decision reflected specific individual perspectives as well as an ideology that was Palestine-centered.

	Betar and the IZL

TOP Introduction Escape from Warsaw Betar and the IZL Begin’s Departure from... Betar under Peretz Lasker The Leadership of the... Contacts with the Polish... The Final Chapter of... Notes

 
Perhaps the largest Zionist youth movement in prewar Poland, Betar was organized into some 700 branches¹⁴ and is estimated to have had more than 70,000 members. Its educational program included paramilitary training; members of Betar saw themselves as future soldiers in the ranks of the IZL in Palestine—the underground military organization whose commander-in-chief, Jabotinsky, was also the head of Betar.

In 1937 the IZL had begun a campaign of retaliation for the Arab attacks against Jews, assaults that had been sweeping Palestine during the "Arab riots."¹⁵ These IZL actions aroused great enthusiasm in the ranks of Betar in Poland. In the same period, Betar, the New Zionist Organization (the Revisionists), and the IZL began engaging in a combined effort to transport large numbers of illegal immigrants by boat from Europe to the shores of Palestine.¹⁶ This immigration program took IZL emissaries from Palestine to Europe, and especially to Poland.

In the summer of 1937, Avraham Stern (Yair), who was at the time a member of the IZL high command in Palestine, had met in Warsaw with Natan Friedman-Yellin, a member of the Betar netzivut, and charged him with organizing secret IZL cells among Betar members throughout Poland.¹⁷ Some months later, Stern introduced Friedman-Yellin to Avraham Amper, a Betar member whom he had appointed to command the growing network of IZL cells in Poland.¹⁸ Members of IZL cells were given preliminary military training by IZL emissaries who had come from Palestine and by local graduates of IZL instructors’ courses.¹⁹ As a result of Jabotinsky’s contacts with the Polish government, and further contacts pursued by Stern, the Polish government authorized a military training course for IZL members from Palestine under the instruction of Polish Army officers on Polish soil,²⁰ as well the transfer of arms to the IZL for shipment to Palestine.²¹

Many of the best members of Betar were drawn to the IZL cells, and as a result a parallel and competitive hierarchy developed. Friction between the Betar leadership and those who had been enlisted in the IZL cells was strongly felt behind the scenes of the World Betar Assembly (Kinus Olami) held in Warsaw in September 1938.²² The highlight of the assembly was Menahem Begin’s challenge to Jabotinsky, who was present at the meeting. Begin called for the abandonment of political Zionism in favor of military Zionism, in effect advocating military action in Palestine with the aim of establishing a Jewish state. Although Begin’s views were in line with Jabotinsky’s apocalyptic prognosis of the fate awaiting European Jewry, Jabotinsky rejected them as unrealistic.²³

IZL representatives in Poland, who were led by Stern at the time, approved of Begin’s views.²⁴ They viewed Begin’s rhetoric at the assembly in the context of the secret plans that were being developed for the landing of thousands of armed members of the Polish Betar in Palestine. Begin was a member of the netzivut of the Polish Betar, and his appearance at the Betar kinus was a step towards his accession to the position of netziv (leader) in March 1939.²⁵

Greatly concerned about friction between Betar and the IZL, Jabotinsky called a meeting of representatives of the two groups in Paris at the end of January 1939. The assembled representatives decided to establish a single hierarchy unifying the two organizations.²⁶ They were to continue as separate organizational entities, but the leadership was to be unified so that the head of the IZL in any given country would serve simultaneously as the netziv Betar. In addition, the agreement made the commander of the IZL in Palestine, who was from that point also to be the netziv of the Palestinian Betar, a member of the Betar world headquarters. But when Begin attempted to apply the principles of the "Paris agreement" after he assumed the position of netziv of the Polish Betar several weeks later, he encountered considerable resistance—despite the fact that he had been the IZL’s candidate for the position.²⁷ The IZL hierarchy continued to maintain a shadow existence, and two separate organizations continued to exist.²⁸

This uncertain situation was mirrored among the Polish Betar leaders who had fled to Vilna. Those with a direct connection to the IZL framework were keeping their own counsel²⁹ and had set up their own headquarters in the city.³⁰ Upon his arrival, Friedman-Yellin had wired Amper, who was in the Soviet zone, and asked him to come to Vilna. He and Amper issued a call to the members of IZL cells in occupied Poland, asking them to make their way to Vilna. Many answered the call and succeeded in making their escape from occupied Poland to Vilna.³¹ There they were organized into secret IZL units, which also included IZL members from Vilna. The new units were placed under Amper’s command and were guided by Friedman-Yellin.³²

The IZL and its emissaries in Poland had viewed the Betar movement in that country principally as a recruiting ground. After the German and Soviet occupation of Poland, they tried to bring the maximum number of potential recruits for the IZL to Vilna as the first stage of a move to Palestine. The Betar movement itself was of secondary importance to them. Unlike the leaders of Hashomer Hatsair and Dror, they had little concern for the movement that had been left behind. Their eyes were on Palestine and the impending struggle of the underground there.

In the year following the German invasion, many IZL recruits managed to reach Palestine. On arrival, most of them joined the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LHY; Freedom Fighters of Israel), which was led by Stern and had split off from the IZL by that time. Among this group were Friedman-Yellin and Sheib (Eldad), who went on to become leaders of LHY (the Stern Group).

	Begin’s Departure from Warsaw

TOP Introduction Escape from Warsaw Betar and the IZL Begin’s Departure from... Betar under Peretz Lasker The Leadership of the... Contacts with the Polish... The Final Chapter of... Notes

 
Menahem Begin arrived in Vilna after a long and tortuous journey through Soviet-occupied Poland. In Vilna he found other netzivut members who had also escaped from Warsaw: Friedman-Yellin, Epstein, Sheib, and Yutan. He also found sharp criticism. Betar world headquarters in London (the shilton), complained that Begin had left Warsaw and abandoned the movement of which he was the leader. In their communications they likened him to a captain who had been the first to leave his sinking ship. Begin received letters in a similar vein from Shimshon Yunichman, the deputy netziv of Betar in Palestine. Responding to Yunichman in January and February of 1940, Begin explained some of his thinking:³³

Do you really believe that I did not have all these thoughts? And that before I decided to leave Warsaw I did not consider and question myself and my friends?³⁴ But when I left the capital I did it because of a simple calculation—it too of an idealistic nature. After all, we believed then that Poland would resist for months, that just 100 kilometers beyond Warsaw it would be safe, and that one could wait and be active; therefore we decided to leave and to move eastward, so as to be among the masses of Betar and to continue limited activity (because of the special wartime conditions) from one of the provincial towns. But what happened is known. We were disappointed, all of us, and nobody imagined—aside from Uri Zvi Grinberg³⁵—that the country would collapse in a matter of days. Nobody guessed that in the meantime the Russians would advance from the east.... And the shilton, after I explained to them my position, changed its mind and will not continue to use the quotation about "the captain, etc."

After discussing some possible alternate activities, Begin turned to the possibility of returning to Warsaw:

I am in contact with tens of our friends there and I know that very limited activity there is possible. It is better, because of the conditions here [in Vilna] and in Eretz Yisrael, to return there [to Warsaw] to wait with them and among them. Yes, this is the best solution. But what can I do if I am haunted by pech [bad luck] and there is one special reason that does not permit me to realize this program of mine? It is not worthwhile to write about the reason; maybe, with God’s help, we will meet again and then I shall tell you about the catastrophe and the strange complication, and maybe Ben-Artzi, if you ask him, will be able to explain it to you in part.³⁶ [Begin did not clarify this catastrophe, whose nature remains unknown.]

Almost a month later, the subject of his departure from Warsaw was still on Begin’s mind. In a second letter to Yunichman, dated February 4, 1940, Begin wrote:³⁷

I venture to think that, over the course of my twelve years of service in Betar, I have not given those who are acquainted with this service grounds to think that I would at any price "save myself"—run away in order to save myself, and so forth. In your opinion, am I mistaken?

I have corresponded with the shilton on this question; they were of the same opinion as you. I announced that if this is really their opinion, then I will draw the extreme conclusion, i.e., I will return to Warsaw.³⁸ There, too, I left behind thousands of Betarim. But when I left Warsaw—on the very last day, of course—I was sure that I was fulfilling my duty. News was received at the time that in a day or two the German Army would be in Warsaw, and I—for reasons that you know, and also for reasons that you do not know—would have been immediately sent to the known place. I saw no use in my going to prison. I decided to move the location of the netzivut eastward, because at the time we believed that Poland would last. Then came the Russian episode, and it was very similar to the Warsaw episode, with the following difference: in Lvov I was already in prison, and only by a "miracle" did I get out and manage to come to Vilna.³⁹ ... In short: I wrote to the shilton that if the phrase about the captain etc, is really relevant in this case, then I will "admit my guilt" and return to Warsaw. The shilton explained to me, that this is not their opinion; they simply did not want [me] to "anger" the Betarim of Vilna [by appearing in their midst as a refugee rather than remaining with "the troops" in Poland].... Your position is based on a comparison that has no foundation in this case. Glazman⁴⁰ and I analyzed this comparison and arrived at the conclusion that under these conditions it is simply absurd. There is no sinking ship here; the ship has a special boat that is available to the captain, for the case in which all of the gates are closed just to the captain, and will still be open to the sailors for an extended period of time, or will not be closed to them at all, etc.

If Begin had stayed in Warsaw, or returned there from Vilna, he would not have been able to function in a leadership position. He was simply too well known to the Germans.

But why did he and the rest of the Betar leadership assembled in Vilna not send emissaries back to Warsaw to lead the movement? Their decision is explained at least in part by the separatist outlook of the IZL members in Vilna. Their view was Palestine-centered and their object was to bring their members out of occupied Poland to Vilna, rather than the other way around. On March 1, 1940, before returning to Palestine, Moshe Ben-Artzi, IZL emissary to Poland, wrote from Vilna to Aharon Propes, the former netziv of the Polish Betar, in New York. Ben-Artzi addressed the criticism that had been leveled against the Betar leadership for having left Warsaw: "Rather than being the first to be imprisoned and to be killed, it was essential to be the first to be saved so as to participate in the battle for freedom in Eretz Yisrael."⁴¹

The IZL members assembled in Vilna were probably the elite of the Betar membership there. Emissaries to Betar in German-occupied Poland would have been selected from among them if that had been the common policy. But they were taking their orders from Amper and Friedman-Yellin, not from Begin. In that sense, Begin in Vilna was a general without soldiers. If he was not going back himself, it probably would have been impossible for him to send anyone else. In fact, Begin concludes his letter of February 4 by asking Yunichman to help him obtain a "certificate" for entry into Palestine for Peretz Lasker, the only member of the netzivut who had remained in Warsaw.⁴² The Betar membership that had remained behind in Warsaw does not seem to have been his primary concern at the time. Its leadership would have to emerge from below.

	Betar under Peretz Lasker

TOP Introduction Escape from Warsaw Betar and the IZL Begin’s Departure from... Betar under Peretz Lasker The Leadership of the... Contacts with the Polish... The Final Chapter of... Notes

 
The Revisionists in German-occupied Poland had recognized at the outset that the war against Germany was a war against the enemy of the Jewish people.⁴³ The followers of Jabotinsky in Warsaw were thus drawn to the idea of preparing for armed resistance long before the Germans’ intention to annihilate the Jews in the territories under their control had become apparent. The military and paramilitary training most of them had received in Betar and in the IZL cells in preparation for eventual mobilization in the ranks of the IZL in Palestine served not just as a practical basis for armed resistance to the Germans but as an ideological one as well. The number of Revisionists who had been officers in the Polish Army reserve and participated in the fighting against the German Army was a further reflection of the ideological orientation of the members of Betar and the Revisionist movement.

Peretz Lasker was the only member of the Betar netzivut who did not flee Warsaw ahead of the German occupation forces. He had served as an officer in the Polish Army during the fighting, and headed the Betar leadership (the mifkadah) in Warsaw upon his return from the front. This is how Lasker describes the early work of Betar there:⁴⁴

Despite [our feeling of isolation] we did not despair. The first to suggest that we establish an organization to fight the Nazis was the Betari [Binyamin] Shohat, at a meeting of the Betar mifkadah in Warsaw in the summer of 1940, immediately after the rumor of the Nazi intention to enclose the Jews of Warsaw in a ghetto began to spread.... But this blow also had a positive side of which we were aware: the concentration of Jews in a defined area would make it easier to organize secret activity for political-information purposes as well as for military purposes. Shohat’s suggestion echoed the sentiment of all of us in the mifkadah.

Two Revisionists also took part in the practical discussion of the organization of a fighting unit: [Leon] Leib Rodal and [Meir] Klingbeil. The former had good personal relations with a number of General Zionist personalities.... The latter had contacts with non-Jews outside the ghetto—an important asset in those days. I remember that there were a number of suggestions regarding the form that the organization would have to take to meet the strict conspiratorial requirements, and regarding the timing and circumstances of operation. Fortunately, there were no differences of opinion; we resolved not to attack individual Germans who entered the ghetto, since this would endanger the Jews in the ghetto. From events on the Polish street it was clear to us that the Nazis would not refrain from applying large-scale collective responsibility if an individual German were killed in the ghetto.⁴⁵ We decided to organize in groups of five for training with firearms, to acquire weapons and store them, and to make the maximum effort to obtain the financial means for the implementation of this program. In addition, we resolved to reinforce our cultural and information activities and to extend their scope in order to provide additional encouragement to the many hundreds of Betar members. The number of members was increasing from week to week with the expulsion of Jews from the provincial towns. We had a permanent secret location for this activity on Leszno Street. One thing we did not determine: when and under what circumstances we would act. The situation was not sufficiently clear; the development of events would provide the basis for this decision.

Feverish activity had begun on the implementation of our plans and the first steps towards finding places to store weapons and obtaining money had already been taken when the announcements appeared on walls with the German orders concerning the establishment of the ghetto.

The appalling conditions that soon developed in the ghetto brought about a change in the leadership’s priorities:

The closing of the ghetto changed our practical plans. We were a large movement composed of poor youngsters whose bodies were their only possessions. As long as the ghetto was not closed, they could eke out a meager living. Even then we had to assist many of them, establishing a cheap kitchen for the needy. But in the first days of the ghetto the first signs of hunger appeared. It was accompanied by the cold and the typhus epidemic that was caused by overcrowding in the living quarters. Together these things caused the deaths of hundreds daily, and our people were no exception. The need arose to save people physically and morally.... It was clear that the Nazis were achieving their goal and that the Jewish population would decrease quickly. All of our efforts were now directed toward one goal: preserving the existence of our people.

Through the good offices of the head of the Judenrat in Hrubieszów, in the Lublin district, Lasker managed to arrange for hundreds of members of Betar to leave the ghetto and work as agricultural laborers in the farming estates in that area in the summer of 1941.⁴⁶

The surroundings there were idyllic, permitting the Betar members to hold meetings, listen to lectures, and engage in military training with the weapons at their disposal. Lasker visited them periodically. For many months, during the fall and winter of 1941, they were undisturbed by the Germans. In December 1941, Lasker visited the area again to explore the possibility of transferring more Betar members from the ghetto to the farming estates in the Hrubieszów region.⁴⁷ This plan was never realized. In June 1942 the Germans began rounding up the Jews in the region. Betar members who escaped the German dragnet had to choose between joining the partisans in the nearby forests and making their way back to the Warsaw Ghetto.⁴⁸ Lasker recalls that some of the leading members of the Hrubieszów group, Falek Langleben, Asher Frenkel, Hayim Haus, and Binyamin Shohat, fell in combat against German troops in the Lublin forests.⁴⁹ A number of the survivors, including Salek Hasensprung, Eliyahu (Alek) Halberstein, Yosef Bielewski, and Fella Shapchik, managed to return to Warsaw. Together with Betar members from other regions who had returned to Warsaw in the aftermath of German Aktions, and with a number of Revisionists, including Dr. Michael Strykowski and the lawyer David Shulman, they formed a "strong fighting organization" around Pawel Frenkel and Leib Rodal.⁵⁰

Lasker left the Warsaw Ghetto for Czstochowa in February 1942.⁵¹ The Betar members who returned to Warsaw from Hrubieszów in June 1942 were enlisted into the ZW by Rodal and Frenkel, both members of the underground organization headed by David Apfelbaum.⁵² According to an unconfirmed source, in his last visit to the Hrubieszów area Lasker found that Frenkel had organized the Betar members on one of the farms as an IZL cell and had rejected Lasker’s authority.⁵³ If this is true, it may be an indication that IZL cells had continued their separate activity even in the ghetto; it may explain the close relations between Frenkel and Rodal as well as Lasker’s departure from Warsaw, which left Frenkel in the leadership position there.⁵⁴

	The Leadership of the ZW

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There is some ambiguity as to who was the commander of the ZW. According to Mendelson, David Apfelbaum was in command of the organization in the fall of 1941.⁵⁵ Henryk Iwaski first met Apfelbaum in November 1939, when the latter headed a group of Jews who had been Polish Army officers and who wanted to join the Polish underground. Iwaski seems to have considered Apfelbaum the commander of the ZW at the time of the second battle at Muranowski Square.⁵⁶ Wadysaw Zajdler (Zarski), who was Iwaski’s deputy during that battle, seems to have considered Apfelbaum the commander as well.⁵⁷ All other sources designate Frenkel as the commander of ZW; he appears as such in the memoirs of Wdowiski,⁵⁸ Landau,⁵⁹ and Eisner,⁶⁰ the testimony of Fella Finkelstein-Shapchik,⁶¹ the second-hand accounts of survivors of the ghetto who tell of the fighting at Muranowski Square,⁶² and a letter written by Emanuel Ringelblum shortly before he was apprehended by the Germans.⁶³ It is possible that Frenkel assumed command at some point, but that this information was kept from Iwaski and his unit in order to keep the identity of the commander a secret from the ZW’s Polish allies, or else for the sake of maintaining the relationship that had been established with them. According to all accounts, Rodal was the third-ranking member of the ZW command.

David Apfelbaum was thirty-eight years old when he assumed the leadership of the ZW. He came from a wealthy Polish Jewish family, and had been an adherent of Jabotinsky.⁶⁴ As far as is known, he had held no position in the Revisionist movement or any of its associated organizations.

Leon Leibel Rodal was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Kielce in 1913.⁶⁵ He was active in the Revisionist movement in Kielce, and became a journalist at an early age. He moved to Warsaw, where he worked as a reporter for the Yiddish daily Moment as well as for the IZL daily Di Tat, which appeared in Warsaw in the months before the outbreak of the war. Friedman-Yellin, the editor of Die Tat, wrote about Rodal some years later:

The editor of the Warsaw column was Leibel Rodal, about thirty, [who] had been a correspondent for daily papers since he was very young.... As a member of the Revisionist movement from an early age, he became close to the IZL when the paper was founded.... I was not sure that a person like him, who had never been in need and was used to having everything available to him in good measure, would be capable of sacrificing his comforts—or even more than that—if it were required. I was wrong about him. As it turned out, Leibel Rodal entered the ghetto during the German conquest, even though with the means available to him he could have saved himself by passing as a Polish "Aryan" Christian. He was a member of the Irgun Zvai Yehudi, which was active in Warsaw from the first days of the ghetto. When the uprising broke out in April 1943, Leibel Rodal was one of its commanders.⁶⁶

Rodal, like many others, had evaded the German Army by fleeing eastward, getting as far as Lvov, and finding himself in the Soviet zone of occupation. In March 1940 he returned to Kielce, and from there he proceeded to Warsaw.⁶⁷ From the beginning, he was very active in Betar and the ZW. He participated with Lasker in the early meetings of the Betar leadership. Together with Lasker, he edited the Betar publication Hamedina, which was issued in the ghetto in the summer of 1941 to mark the second anniversary of Jabotinsky’s death.⁶⁸ Rodal was a major contributor to the Revisionist publication Magen-David, which came out in the ghetto in the spring of 1942.⁶⁹ From early on, he was in touch with the former Polish Army officers who founded the first Jewish resistance cells in the ghetto, and he became the leader of one of the first cells. With David Wdowiski and Michael Strykowski he formed the "political committee" of the ZW; he participated in the unsuccessful negotiations to unify the ZW and the OB.⁷⁰ Despite his frenetic activity, he managed to evade the German dragnet, surviving to serve as one of the three senior commanders of the ZW during the days of combat in April 1943.

Pawe Frenkel had been a member of Masada, a Revisionist youth organization for high school students who attended Polish and Polish Jewish state schools.⁷¹ The Masada leadership tried to attract intellectuals who were not likely to join Betar. Moreover, they claimed that Masada was producing a potential intellectual leadership for the Betar movement.⁷² In 1938 a group of Masada members, headed by Frenkel, joined Betar.⁷³ Before the outbreak of the war Frenkel headed the Betar youth division of Ken Zafon,⁷⁴ the northern Warsaw branch of Betar. Adam Halperin, the deputy leader of Ken Zafon, remembered watching Frenkel, together with Simha Vitelson, Eliyahu (Alek) Halberstein, and Pinhas Taub, future leaders of the ZW, at the Ken Zafon summer camp in 1939.⁷⁵ By that time Frenkel had also been drawn into the IZL framework and headed an IZL cell.⁷⁶ When the war broke out he was twenty years old.⁷⁷ According to Halperin, Frenkel started setting up an underground organization in the winter of 1940–41.⁷⁸ Mendelson notes that Frenkel was by then associated with the ZW.

In the spring of 1942 the Revisionist publication Magen-David appeared in the ghetto.⁷⁹ It contained an ode to Jabotinsky; according to Lasker, the piece was the work of Pawe Frenkel:

When your spirit is among us we do not mourn your departure from us. When your teachings are before us we are not orphaned. We are struggling on the edge of the abyss with the wave of the storm that overtakes us. We are not ruled by despair, because the wave creates the swimmer—this is what you taught us. You taught us to be the sons of kings or to die.⁸⁰ We know how to die. Therefore we will also know how to be beautiful when we die. . . .

We knew you as Samson,⁸¹ as a fighter and tragic hero, whose people did not understand him. His life was tragic and his fight was glorious.

Then you began telling us of David—the sprit of Samson became the spirit of David. We saw the transmigration of the souls. We looked for its realization in your lifetime....

Together with you we will change our situation, together with you we will go into battle. Together with you we will realize the legend of King David, the redeemer.

David Wdowiski, the Revisionist leader who headed the political committee of the ZW, describes Frenkel as "one of the most beautiful, most honest, and most modest figures that I have ever met in the course of a long political life. He was the personification of dignity."⁸² According to Landau, one of the Betar members of the ZW, Frenkel was an inspiring speaker. He said to an assembly of ZW fighters in January 1943: "We will die before our time, but we are not doomed. We will be alive as long as Jewish history lives."⁸³

Although most of the ZW’s senior commanders were members of Betar, Revisionists, or adherents of Jabotinsky, its ranks were open to anyone who was prepared to accept the organization’s strict discipline and was intent on fighting the Germans—especially if he was already in possession of weapons. In this regard, the ZW was modeled after the IZL in Palestine, which also opened its ranks to anyone prepared to join and included many without previous affiliation to Betar. The common denominator of the original nucleus of the ZW, under the leadership of David Apfelbaum, was not their political orientation, but their prior service as officers in the Polish Army, and the fact that their original intent was to be associated with the Polish underground. It was the enlistment of Pawel Frenkel and Leon Rodal, and their subsequent mobilization of Revisionists and members of Betar, that in time lent the ZW the character of an autonomous Jewish fighting organization led primarily by members of Betar and Revisionists.

Many of those who survived the uprising had no known affiliation with the Revisionists. For example, Ryszard Walewski, who joined the ZW along with a group of armed fighters and played a key role in the battle at Muranowski Square, had actually intended to join the OB; he threw in his lot with the ZW only after being turned down by the OB.⁸⁴ As far as is known, his political views differed considerably from those of the Revisionists. Four other ZW fighters who survived the uprising—Jack Eisner, Simha Korngold, Jakub Smakowski, and Pawel Besztimt—had been unaffiliated.

	Contacts with the Polish Underground

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The stage had been set for cooperation between Polish and Jewish armed resistance groups before the war. Jabotinsky had negotiated with the prewar Polish government for assistance; Avraham Stern subsequently pursued these contacts on behalf of the IZL with a view to enlisting Polish support for the IZL’s underground activities in Palestine. The Polish government, obsessed by the "Jewish problem" in Poland, had supported Jabotinsky’s movement in the expectation that he might be able to bring about the mass migration of Polish Jews to Palestine. As a result of the negotiations, Polish army officers provided training to IZL cells in Poland as well as to IZL fighters who came from Palestine. In addition, weapons from Polish army stores were designated for shipment to the IZL in Palestine. The outbreak of the war on September 1, 1939 put an end to these contacts.⁸⁵

The leaders of ZW had not been involved in these negotiations, although Pawel Frenkel, as a member of an IZL cell, and Leon Rodal, who had worked for the IZL Warsaw daily, Di Tat, must have been aware of them. This awareness undoubtedly encouraged them to seek contacts with Polish underground groups associated with the Armia Krajowa (AK), which was under the authority of the Polish government-in-exile in London, for the purpose of purchasing weapons and obtaining other assistance. Their efforts met with considerable success.

Apfelbaum was able to acquire weapons, ammunition, and other supplies for the ZW on the basis of his close personal connection with Iwaski. He was also able to enlist the participation of Iwaski’s unit during some of the fighting in the ghetto. Frenkel was one of the ZW’s several Betar members who had received military instruction in the IZL cells that were active in Poland in the years prior to the war; he developed a connection with the Polish underground group PLAN (Polska Ludowa Akcja Niepodlegociowa; Polish People’s Action for Independence) on the basis of his relationship with Janusz Cezary Ketling-Szemley ("Arpad"), one of its leaders, and was able to obtain weapons and ammunition from this group.⁸⁶ As a result of these connections between the ZW and the Polish underground organizations KB and PLAN, Polish instructors entered the ghetto to provide training for ZW members.⁸⁷ Thus, considering the circumstances, the ZW was a relatively well-trained force.

By contrast, the OB had focused its initial efforts on obtaining assistance from the communists and from Polish socialist groups that were in contact with the Bund. It was only when these efforts failed that they turned to the Polish underground army. Because the AK was aware of the presence of known left-wing elements in the ranks of the OB, the latter’s efforts were met with considerable suspicion.⁸⁸ As a result of their more constrained relationship with the AK, the OB was able to acquire significant supplies of arms only in the last few weeks before the uprising.

In a deposition provided after the war, Ketling provided a vivid description of his meeting with Pawel Frenkel and other ZW fighters in a pre-arranged meeting outside the ghetto in December 1942:⁸⁹

The meeting was at 11:00 in far-away Targówek, a working-class district of Warsaw.... The house in which my first meeting with the members of the ZW took place stood to the side, away from other buildings. The primitive one-story shack was more a large garage than living quarters. In a low dark room, where large amounts of ammunition, hand grenades, and pistols had been stored on planks, I found some young Jews dressed in civilian clothes. Only the pistols and hand grenades stuck in their leather belts gave away their identity as members of a military organization.

The purpose of the meeting was explained to me by Pawel, the head of their delegation.... I learned that they considered themselves adherents of Jabotinsky ... and claimed that the pre-September [1939] Polish government had come to their assistance several times. They believed that it would continue to do so at this time, although under different circumstances. . . .

From the ghetto, the group had managed to leave through an underground tunnel, which they promised to show me later. On the day of our meeting the young Jewish fighters had managed to acquire a large amount of weapons and ammunition, which had to be taken into the ghetto as soon as possible. They had come out of the ghetto two or three days earlier (during the night) in order to do just that—to acquire arms. Since the group that had left the ghetto was sizable and relatively well armed, and they would, if necessary, be able defend themselves, their commander Pawe had used this opportunity to contact us. He wanted to check personally the scope and possibility of cooperation in the matter mentioned above (joint struggle against the Nazis) with the leaders of both the military and civilian Polish authorities. The contact they had made was, by chance, with me.

The small wooden house—a garage—on the far outskirts of Warsaw had been transformed into a stronghold, ready to be defended at any moment.

I liked the attitude of the Jewish fighters, their fanatical will to fight, their willingness to take a high risk for the cause. It demonstrated their involvement and their feeling of responsibility towards the "work" they had taken upon themselves. Danger had irresistible charm for me personally. However, the lightheartedness and familiarity with which these young boys treated the danger that awaited them made a very strong impression on me.

So I was very touched when I bid them goodbye and solemnly promised not only them, but especially myself, that I would do everything in my power to help them achieve all of their goals. I had a feeling that we had earned each others’ trust and that we would not disappoint each other.

Ketling goes on to describe the tunnel at Muranowska 7, through which he entered the ghetto for a later meeting with the ZW:

The construction of a 50-meter-long tunnel took about three months—from August through October 1942. Cutting across Muranowska Street, it connected the ghetto with the Aryan side. It began in the cellar of number 7 Muranowska and ended across the street in number 6. On the odd-numbered side, just next to the sidewalk, a high wall made of red bricks and covered on top with broken glass and barbed wire physically separated two quarters of the same city, two living parts of one organism. A tram line ran down the middle of the street, and farther on there were only a few blocks of houses. Beyond them was the "free" wide world, so close but so far; free, but deceiving in its appearance of freedom.

That was the real world to which this tunnel on Muranowska Street, dug with the utmost self-sacrifice and effort, was supposed to lead. That free world, threatening because of its obscurity, foreign in its closeness, was the one to which the hopes of the young fanatics were directed. Their motto was: to eradicate the passivity and inactivity of their own community and to stand up to the impending threat of destruction with bravery and fortitude.

The work of digging the tunnel had to be hidden from the masses of people who were constantly hanging around the yard of the above-mentioned house. As a result of the terrible overcrowding of the Jewish population in the small area of the ghetto, masses of people constantly flowed through the streets and houses.... The digging of the tunnel under these conditions was beset by thousands of unforeseen difficulties. Only a limited number of people could have access to the tunnel, whose entrance was only one meter in diameter. And it was absolutely necessary to work rapidly. Each day there was more threatening news of the imminent and total liquidation of the ghetto. In any case, the last July action did not leave any illusions as to that.

Ketling went on to describe in detail the effort that went into the construction of the tunnel under these extremely difficult conditions. He described some of the obstacles encountered and expressed his admiration for the resourcefulness and determination of the young partisans:

This was the tunnel through which I entered the ghetto for the appointment I had made in December 1942 with the representatives of the Jewish organization. Those were the first days of January 1943. The tunnel could be used only under the cover of night. For that purpose, it was necessary to be in the house of the yard watchman before the police curfew, and to wait for an opportunity to go down into the cellar. It was necessary to walk across quite a large yard, at dusk or even later, when none of the inhabitants would be descending into their cellars. The entrance to the tunnel was from one of the cellars, which had been transformed into a bunker. After lifting the cover of the entrance to the tunnel (it was covered with earth to mask its whereabouts), you would enter the tunnel on all fours. It was lit with electrical light and padded with blankets.

Inside the ghetto, in a closed area on Muranowski Square 7, or 5, I was awaited by the commanders of the organization and an armed unit of soldiers whose leader gave me a full military report. It had a very positive effect on the participants of the meeting. I personally was even more pleased, because I was able to tell them that at least some of their wishes had been granted. Although I was not as yet bringing an answer from the Polish authorities—there had not been enough time to do that—I had brought explosives, Molotov cocktails, and military instructions with me. That night I dedicated myself to instructing the members of the Jewish organization on the use of the materials I had brought with me. The following day at dawn, I left the ghetto. I returned many times, using the same tunnel, until it was destroyed in April and May, 1943. In the meantime, our cooperation had become close and had become a real military cooperation.⁹⁰

There were other opportunities to bring supplies from outside the ghetto to the fighters of the ZW as well. The two tunnels dug by the ZW under the ghetto walls—at Muranowska 7, and at Karmelicka 5—provided easy access for its members to contact their supply sources outside the ghetto.⁹¹ As a result, the ZW was relatively well equipped, with supplies including pistols, grenades, Molotov cocktails, rifles, machine pistols, machine guns, and medical supplies.

Emanuel Ringelblum visited the ZW headquarters shortly before the uprising:⁹²

It was situated in an uninhabited, so-called "wild" block of flats at 7 Muranowska Street, in a six-room flat on the first floor. In the command room was a first-class radio that received news from all over the world, and next to it stood a typewriter. I talked to the people in command for several hours. They were armed, with revolvers stuck in their belts. Different kinds of weapons were hung in the large rooms: light machine guns, rifles, revolvers of various kinds, hand grenades, bags of ammunition, German uniforms, etc., all of which were utilized to the fullest in the April "action." There was great activity in the command room, as in any army headquarters. Fighters received their orders for the "barrack-points" where future combatants were being brought together and instructed. Reports arrived of expropriations of wealthy people carried out by individual groups for the purpose of arming the ZW. While I was there, a purchase of arms was made from a former Polish Army officer amounting to a quarter of a million zoty; a sum of 50,000 zoty was paid on account. Two machine guns were bought at 40,000 zoty each, as well as a large number of hand grenades and bombs. In answer to my question as to why the premises were not camouflaged, I was told that they had no fear of betrayal by their own followers, and if an undesirable visitor—a gendarme, for example—should find his way in, he would not get out alive.

The ZW’s intensive preparations for the uprising were put to the test during the ten days of combat in April 1943.

	The Final Chapter of the ZW

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Imbued by the spirit of Jabotinsky’s ideology, and trained in the Revisionist youth movement, Betar, and IZL cells organized in Poland before the war, the ZW leadership had prepared and trained its fighters for some time for an eventual battle with the Germans in the Warsaw ghetto. The military background of many of their fighters was put to good use in selecting Muranowski Square as the strategic location for the resistance action and in fortifying it for battle. In addition, the tunnels that these fighters dug under the ghetto wall had allowed the ZW to maintain contact with the outside world and facilitated the transport of weapons into the ghetto. Their preparations for an extended confrontation with the Germans made it possible for the ZW to hold off the attacking German troops for a number of days during the "battle of the flags."

The differences between the ZW and the OB were apparent during the course of the uprising. The OB was composed of highly idealistic, politically oriented youngsters with almost no previous military experience. Their preparations for the uprising began considerably later than those of ZW and their acquisition of arms was complicated by the Polish Underground Army’s wariness of the leftist elements within their ranks. In contrast to the ZW’s strategy of meeting the Germans head-on, the strategy of the OB was to ambush the German forces and then retreat to bunkers for safety.

The major encounters between Jewish fighters and the German forces that entered the ghetto took place between April 19 and April 28, 1943. OB units fought the Germans in the central ghetto on April 19 and in the Brushmakers’ shop area on April 20. They harried German and Ukrainian units in the Toebbens-Schultz shop area throughout the first few days of combat. ZW units also participated in the fighting in the Brushmakers’ shop area and in the Toebbens-Schultz shop area, but their major effort was concentrated in the area around Muranowski Square in the central ghetto. From their fortified positions there they succeeded in holding off German and Ukrainian troops in continuous fighting for four days. On the highest building in the area, at 17 Muranowska Street, they raised both the Zionist flag (today the Israeli flag) and the Polish national colors. It is not by chance that it was ZW that raised the Zionist flag over the ghetto; Bundist and Communist members of OB would not have agreed to that gesture. That flag, flying next to the Polish flag, was seen far and wide in Warsaw and became the symbol of the ghetto uprising. For three days the Germans were unsuccessful in their repeated attempts to bring down the flags. On April 27 and 28, there was renewed fighting between ZW forces and the Germans at Muranowski Square. These were the last major encounters of the uprising.⁹³

David Apfelbaum fell in the second battle at Muranowski Square.⁹⁴ Leon Rodal was mortally wounded in that battle and died while being evacuated from the ghetto.⁹⁵ Pawel Frenkel fought in the four-day "battle for the flags" at Muranowski Square and in the renewed battle there on April 27 and 28, 1943. He succeeded in leaving the ghetto together with other ZW fighters after the last battle, going into hiding in a building on Grzybowska Street. When they were discovered in May or June 1943, Frenkel and his men fell in battle with the Germans.⁹⁶

	Notes

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^1. Stefan Korbonski, The Polish Underground State: A Guide to the Underground 1939–1945 (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1978), p. 14.

^2. Wadysaw Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin, eds., Righteous Among the Nations (London: Earlscourt Publications, 1969), p. 148. For a short biography of Andrzej Petrykowski, a brigadier general in the Polish Underground Army, see Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert, Sownik biograficzny konspiracji warszawskiej 1939–1944, vol. 2 (Warsaw: PAX, 1987).

^3. Haim Lazar’s Matsada shel Varsha (Tel Aviv: Machon Jabotinsky, 1963) includes a copy of a notarized statement by Kalman Mendelson, made out in Warsaw on November 27, 1959 (p. 350).

^4. Henryk Rolirad, testimony in Yad Vashem archives O3/3068. Rolirad, a Pole who emigrated to Israel, testifies that he was a member of Henryk Iwaski’s unit in the KB, which was commanded by Petrykowski, and that he provided assistance to the ZW. He was in contact with Apfelbaum and Rodal, two of the commanders of ZZW. According to his testimony, many of the ZW fighters had been officers in the Polish Army.

^5. Kalman Mendelson, "Historia powstania ZW," Kronika 18 (London) (May 2, 1970). A similar description of the relationship between the Polish underground organization WZWZ and the ZW is provided in a statement signed in Warsaw on June 11, 1948 by thirteen former members of WZWZ, including Iwaski. See archive no. 3809 of the ydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute, IH).

^6. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 82 (based on conversations with Adam Halperin, a member of Betar in the Warsaw Ghetto). Frenkel required those joining the ZW to be quartered in ZW barracks, leaving their families behind.

^7. Kalman Mendelson, "Rozwój i dziaalno ZW," Kronika 19 (May 19, 1970).

^8. Yisrael Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939–1943 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), p. 121.

^9. Levi Dror and Yisrael Rosenzwig, eds., Sefer Hashomer Hatsair, vol. 1, 1913–1945 (Merhavia: Sifriat Poalim, 1956), p. 455.

^10. Yisrael Eldad (Sheib), Ma’aser Rishon (Tel Aviv: Hamatmid, 1950), p. 40. Another member of the netzivut, Peretz Lasker, had been serving as an officer in the Polish Army, and returned to Warsaw after the fighting ended.

^11. David Gotesfurcht, Aharon Richman, and Hayim Harari, eds., Sefer Dror, Histadrut Olamit "Dror-Hehalutz Hatsair" (Ein Harod: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1947), p. 446.

^12. Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 36–40.

^13. Dror and Rosenzweig, eds., Sefer Hashomer Hatsair, vol. 1, pp. 432, 445.

^14. Ch. Ben-Yerucham, Sefer Betar: Korot Umkorot (Jerusalem; Tel Aviv: Havaad Lehotsaat Sefer Betar, 1975), vol. 2, part 2, p. 985.

^15. David Niv, Ma’arachot hairgun hatsvai haleumi, Part 2: Mehaganah lehatkafah, 1937–1939 (Tel Aviv: Mosad Klausner, 1965), pp. 17–29.

^16. Ibid., pp. 129–63.

^17. Natan Yellin-Mor, Shenot Beterem (Tel Aviv: Kineret, 1990), p. 16.

^18. Ibid., p. 20.

^19. Niv, Ma’arachot hairgun hatsvai haleumi, p. 174.

^20. Ibid., p. 171.

^21. Ibid., p. 164.

^22. Ben-Yerucham, Sefer Betar, pp. 841–44.

^23. Ibid., pp. 847–72. "It is our impression," Begin said, "that we stand before the third period of Zionism. The Jewish national movements started with ‘practical Zionism’; afterwards came ‘political Zionism,’ and now we are on the threshold of ‘military Zionism.’"

^24. Ibid., p. 873; Eldad, Ma’aser Rishon, pp. 14–22.

^25. Ben-Yerucham, Sefer Betar, p. 983.

^26. Ibid., pp. 903–8.

^27. Ibid., p. 986; Niv, Ma’arachot hairgun hatsvai haleumi, pp.184–86. Stern, who was in Warsaw at the time, disagreed with the terms of the agreement and tried to circumvent it by maintaining the independent and secret nature of the IZL cells. Although Begin was known for his "activist" political views, as netziv he tried to impose the authority of Betar on the IZL cells—to the consternation of Stern and Stern’s confidante, Friedman-Yellin.

^28. Yellin-Mor, Shenot Beterem, p. 70.

^29. Eldad, Ma’aser Rishon, p. 40.

^30. Yitshak (Isaac) Raviv, Keshet Beanan (Jerusalem:Hamercaz Lemoreshet Yerushalayim, 2001), p. 32.

^31. Ibid., p. 122; Yaakov Banai, Hayalim Almonim (Tel Aviv: Yair, 1989), p. 35; Raviv, Keshet Beanan, p. 30; Eldad, Ma’aser Rishon, p. 40.

^32. Yellin-Mor, Shenot Beterem, p. 133.

^33. Letter written in Hebrew by Begin on January 8, 1940, to Shimshon Yunichman, preserved in the archives of Mercaz Moreshet Begin, Jerusalem. From the letter it is clear that Begin was in contact with Peretz Lasker. Most of the letter is devoted to the situation in Palestine and contains Begin’s opinions and advice on what his comrades there should and should not do.

^34. Begin and his wife Aliza had left Warsaw by train on September 7, 1939, in the company of Friedman-Yellin and his wife Frieda.

^35. Uri Zvi Grinberg, the Hebrew poet, worked on the Warsaw Yiddish daily Moment until 1939. He left for Palestine as soon as the war broke out.

^36. Ben-Artzi (Moshe Stein) was an IZL emissary to Poland who subsequently returned to Palestine.

^37. Letter written in Hebrew by Begin on February 4, 1940, to Shimshon Yunichman, in the archives of Mercaz Moreshet Begin, Jerusalem.

^38. According to Eldad (Ma’aser Rishon, p. 97), after he received a letter telling him that the captain should be the last to leave the sinking ship (possibly the letter from Yunichman, or a letter in a similar vein from Mordechai Katz, the secretary of the shilton in London), Begin called a meeting of the netzivut and announced that he was returning to Warsaw. Evidently this was not his final position on the matter.

^39. According to Yellin-Mor (Shenot Beterem, p. 110), Begin was taken into custody in Lvov because a woman who recognized him in the street demanded the return of money she had paid for illegal immigration to Palestine. He was released after paying her the money.

^40. Yosef Glazman was the netziv of the Lithuanian Betar at the time and later one of the leaders of the united armed resistance organization in the Vilna ghetto, the FPO. He fell while leading a Jewish partisan unit in an encounter with German troops.

^41. Archive of Aharon Propes, Machon Jabotinsky. Propes had moved to the US to head the American Betar and been replaced by Begin as netziv of the Polish Betar.

^42. Peretz Lasker remained in Poland throughout the war, arriving in Palestine after the war ended. During the first years of the German occupation he played a leading role in organizing members of Betar and headed the Betar mifkadah in Warsaw. He left Warsaw for Czstochowa prior to the great liquidation in the summer of 1942.

^43. This is in contrast to the position of some of the socialist Zionist movements, whose ideological stance led them to interpret events—at least in their public statements—in terms of class struggle. Israel Gutman observes: "The standard and dogmatic positions promoted by the parties made it difficult [for them] to arrive at realistic appraisals of the essence of the war.... Thus, for example, Left Po’alei Zion and many members of the radical youth movements—such as Ha-shomer ha-Za’ir and to a lesser degree Dror He-Halutz—refused to perceive Fascism and National Socialism as other than the phenomenon defined as a ‘capitalist regime.’ ... The war itself was in the nature of an ‘imperialist war,’ a conflict between two kinds of imperialism—the ‘sated’ and established vs. the ‘hungry’ and ambitious" (The Jews of Warsaw, pp. 125–26).

^44. Peretz Lasker, "Hairgun hatsvai haleumi herim rishon et ness hamered bevarsha," Herut, April 24, 1962.

^45. Lasker is referring here to the German occupation authorities’ policy of imposing draconian collective punishments on the Polish population in response to any signs of resistance.

^46. Lasker, "Hairgun hatsvai haleumi"; Fella Finkelstein-Shapchik, testimony given at Beit Lohamei Hagetaot on September 4, 1997, BLH Archives no. 9648. Finkelstein-Shapchik remembers that, led by Peretz Lasker, a group of some 300 Betar members moved out of the ghetto to the Hrubieszów farming estates in the fall of 1941. Lasker recounts that arrangements were made for 600 members of Betar to work in the farms in the Hrubieszów area in the summer of 1941.

^47. Lasker, "Hairgun hatsvai haleumi."

^48. Finkelstein-Shapchik, BLH Archives 9648, and Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 103.

^49. Lasker, "Hairgun hatsvai haleumi."

^50. Ibid.

^51. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 105.

^52. Finkelstein-Shapchik, BLH Archives 9648. Finkelstein-Shapchik describes meeting Rodal in the ghetto and being inducted by Frenkel into the ZW.

^53. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 86.

^54. Leon Rodal had worked on the IZL Yiddish daily Di Tat in Warsaw in the months before the war and must have been part of or close to the IZL framework there.

^55. Mendelson, "Rozwój i dziaalno ZW."

^56. Henryk Iwaski, "Czy mona byo rotowa ludzi . . .? Mowi major ‘Bystry,’" Kultura, no. 16 (254), April 21, 1968.

^57. Wadysaw Zajdler, "Walki na placu Muranowskim w dniu 27.4.43," IH Archives no. 5790.

^58. David Wdowiski, "Mered getto Varsha," Hamashkif, April 26, 1946, p. 79.

^59. David J. Landau, Caged—The Landau Manuscript, published by the Landau family in Australia, 1999, pp. 181–83.

^60. Jack Eisner, The Survivor (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1980), p. 177.

^61. Finkelstein-Shapchik, BLH Archives no. 9648.

^62. Arye Najberg, Haaharonim (Merhavia:Sifriat Poalim, 1958), p. 89; Jonas Turkow, In kamf farn leben (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1949), p. 22.

^63. Letter from Emanuel Ringelblum of December 28, 1943, located in the Berman archives at Beit Lohamei Hagetaot. Regarding the ZW, Ringelblum wrote: "I have only two names: Rodalsky and Frenkelowski. The latter (brunet ... black hair) was the head of the firm." Ringelblum must have purposely altered the names of Rodal and Frenkel for conspiratorial reasons.

^64. Marian Apfelbaum, Retour sur le Ghetto de Varsovie (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 2002), p. 25. Also a private communication from Marian Apfelbaum, a relative of David Apfelbaum.

^65. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 355.

^66. Yellin-Mor, Shenot Beterem p. 39.

^67. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 355. According to the reminiscences of Ozer Libers, who met Leon Rodal in the Soviet-occupied zone, Rodal decided not to join the others in moving to Vilna, but insisted on returning to Warsaw (see Ozer Libers, "Haveri umefakdi," in Haish shekiyem et haneder, ed. Yosef Chrust (Tel Aviv: Yedidim [published by friends], 1974, p. 20. (This is a book in memory of Avraham Amper, who had been in charge of the IZL cells in Poland before the war, and afterwards of the IZL cells in Vilna. He succeeded in reaching Palestine, where he joined the LHY underground. He was shot and killed by the British police); see also the postcards from Rodal, using the pseudonym L. Wladimirski, addressed to Josef Klarman in Kaunas, Lithuania. Machon Jabotinsky, Tel Aviv, the Klarman archive.

^68. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, pp. 60–66.

^69. Ibid., pp. 333–47.

^70. Wdowiski, Mered getto Varsha.

^71. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 106.

^72. Sefer Betar, vol. 1, pp. 233–34; vol. 2, part 2, p. 976.

^73. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 106.

^74. Private communication in July 2004 from Yisrael Ribak, a resident of Ber-Sheva, who had been a member of the Betar group of youngsters in the Warsaw Ken Zafon led by Pawel Frenkel before the war.

^75. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 48.

^76. Ibid., p. 106.

^77. Communication from Yisrael Ribak.

^78. Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 82.

^79. Ringelblum Archives, Ring 1, no. 744. The publication was in Yiddish. The one surviving copy was in poor shape when it was recovered. It was deciphered and translated into Hebrew by Haya Lazar. The text appears in Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha, p. 333.

^80. An allusion to the Betar anthem written by Jabotinsky. In it appear the lines: "you were born the son of kings, crowned with the crown of David," and "to die or to conquer the mountain, Yodefet, Masada, Betar."

^81. This is an allusion to Jabotinsky’s novel Samson.

^82. David Wdowiski, And We Are Not Saved (New York: Philosophical Library, 1963), p. 79.

^83. Landau, Caged, pp. 181–83.

^84. Walewski’s testimony before a commission of the Warsaw court investigating German war crimes in Poland, chaired by Janina Skoczyska, on November 25, 1948.

^85. A description of Jabotinsky’s contacts with the prewar Polish government can be found in Laurence Weinbaum, A Marriage of Convenience (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993).

^86. Janusz Cesary Ketling-Szemley, "Wspomnienia z walk i dziaalnoci ZW," IH Archives no. 4469.

^87. Ibid. Also see Finkelstein-Shapchik, BLH Archives 9648. Reference to these connections appears also in Pawe Besztimt’s testimony in the Berman archive as published by Yehuda Helman, Hamachon leheker tkufat hashoah (Dapim leheker tkufat hashoah, vol. 5) (Haifa University and Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, 1997) p. 312.

^88. Yitzhak Zuckerman, Bageto uvamered (Tel Aviv: Beit Lohamei Hagetaot/ Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1985), p. 149.

^89. Ketling-Szemley.

^90. The archives of Machon Jabotinsky (2 0 7 1) contain Ketling’s testimony before an AK military court. In it he declares that "there are in the ghetto 150 relatively well armed men," and that "he has close contact with the group, supplies them with weapons and food against payment." He testifies further that there are advanced preparations for self-defense, that there is an underground passage to the "Aryan" side, and that the Jewish group is seeking through him to contact "Teodor" (Franciszek Niepokolczycki) in order to coordinate large-scale sabotage actions.

^91. The tunnel from the ZW headquarters at Muranowska 7 is mentioned in many sources. Landau describes how he guided the Polish underground courier Jan Karski through the tunnel on his visit to the ghetto before the latter for the West in late August 1942 (Caged, p. 132). Simha Rotem relates how he left the ghetto on April 29, 1943 through the tunnel (Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994], p. 163).

The tunnel from the ZW headquarters in the Toebbens-Schultz shop area, which connected to the Warsaw sewer system, is mentioned in a number of sources as well. Fella Finkelstein-Shapchik and Simha Korngold relate in their testimonies how they and other ZW fighters from the Toebbens- Schultz shop area left the ghetto through that tunnel on April 28, 1943. Stephen (Shalom-Stifan) Grayek (Sheloshah yeme kerav [Tel Aviv: Maarakhot, 1972], p. 163.)

^92. Joseph Kermish, ed., To Live with Honor and Die with Honor: Selected documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives "O. S." (Oneg Shabbath) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1986), p. 596.

^93. For a description of the battles in which OB units took part see the following accounts by surviving participants: Tuvia Borzykowski, Tsvishn falndike vent (Warsaw: Merkaz Hehaluts in Poyln, 1949); Zivia Lubetkin, In the Days of Destruction and Revolt, transl. from the Hebrew by Ishai Tubbin (Beit Lohamei Hagetaot: Hakibbutz Hameuhad Publishing House, 1981); Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights (New York: American Representation of the General Jewish Workers’ Union of Poland, 1946); Aharon Carmi and Haim Frimmer, Min hadlikah hahi (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1961).

For a description of battles in which ZW units took part see the following accounts by surviving participants: Jack Eisner, The Survivor (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1980); Ryszard Walewski, Jurek (Tel Aviv: Moreshet and Sifriat Poalim, 1976); Simha Korngold’s diaries in Yiddish in the Yad Vashem archives O33/1566, also quoted in Hayim Lazar, Matsada shel Varsha.

The operational reports by Jürgen Stroop, the German general charged with suppressing the uprising, provide a day-by-day account of the fighting in the ghetto. In his summary report of May 16, 1943, after he had "declared victory," he described the battle of the flags at Muranowski Square and refers to the ZW forces there as "the main Jewish combat group." During his stay at Warsaw’s Mokotów prison, where he was awaiting trial, he described the fighting at Muranowski Square as the fiercest fighting of the uprising; see Joseph Kermish, ed., Mered geto Varsha beeinei haoyev: Ha dochot shel Jürgen Stroop (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1966). For a detailed account of the fighting during the Warsaw ghetto uprising see Moshe Arens, "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: A Reappraisal," Yad Vashem Studies 33 (2005).

^94. Zajdler, Walki na placu Muranowskim.

^95. Kalman Mendelson, "Ci, ktorzy byli z nami," Argumenty 15 (775), April 15, 1973.

^96. Yitshak Zuckerman, testimony in the archives of Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, reel 17, pp. 13–17. Zuckerman, who was on the "Aryan" side at the time, recounts: "Some time after the uprising a connection was established between me and a Revisionist group that was in hiding together with their commander [Pawel Frenkel] on Grzybowska Street. This group received financial support and assistance from me.... One day they were discovered by the Germans. They defended themselves but they all fell in the encounter."

There are conflicting reports regarding the date on which Frenkel and his comrades fell in battle with the Germans. The battle took place in May or June 1943, at 11 or 13 Grzybowska Street, outside the ghetto.

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