The 35,000 Jews who were killed in the Warsaw ghetto in a three-week battle which began last April 19, when Nazi extermination squads that came to escort the ghetto residents to execution centers were greeted with rifle and machinegun fire from behind hastily erected barricades, were honored last night at a memorial rally here in Carnegie Hall, attended by 3,000 persons.
Among the speakers were Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Ambassador to the United States; Adolph Held, chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, which sponsored the meeting; Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress; and James B. Carey, secretary-treasurer of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor, sent a message.
Mr. Ciechanowski said that “the so-called liquidation of the Jewish ghettos in Poland by assassination, will forever remain in the annals of German history as a permanent stain which the usual German post-war whining, groveling and appealing to past proofs of German civilization and culture will never suffice to wipe out.” Mr. Held declared that the Jews who died in Warsaw fought the same cause as Allied soldiers in Africa and that their feat would be “resurrected on the pages of future civilized historians.” Mr. Green expressed the hope that for his treatment of minorities, Hitler would be put to death. Mr. Carey suggested the establishment of an official commission to inquire into each atrocity and “record the names of the criminals for future punishment.” Rabbi Wise predicted that the “Jewish people will live as one of the free, unenslaved and liberated people of a free world.”
The speakers also paid tribute to the late Samuel Zygelbojm who committed suicide in London last month to protest the lack of action to save the Jews in Poland.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
