Terming the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto “an example of courage that history can scarcely match.” the New York Times, in an editorial today, devoted to the first anniversary of the Jewish revolt against superior German armed forces in Warsaw, points out that the Jewish mayors who fell in this battle “did not die in vain.” Similar articles lauding the Jewish resistance and asking for speedy rescue of Jews who can still be saved from the Nazis, are published in the New York Herald-Tribune, New York Post, and other metropolitan newspapers.
“It is not only Jews who, this week, observe the first anniversary of the battle of the Warsaw Ghetto,” the Time editorial says. “All faiths and creeds thrill at the heroic story. All the free world stands uncovered in profound respect for those brave men, women and children who, almost barehanded, fought the tanks and the guns of the Nazi beast through thirty-five days of horror and died rather than yield.
“At least three thousand died, perhaps five thousand. Their number is not important in the total of all who have perished for liberty’s sake in this atrocious war. What is important is that they, the most helpless and hopeless of all Hitler’s victims, defied the tyrant’s wrath and set for the rest of us an example of courage that history can scarcely match. The whole human race owes them a debt of gratitude for the inspiration their self-sacrifice gives to the cause of freedom.
“They did not die in vain, those Jewish martyrs. When the war entered its blackest phase, the flaming spirit of their Polish ghetto shone as a pillar of light in the darkness to all who struggled toward the dawn of a better day for all mankind. With lidice, Warsaw will be a beacon for humanity for centuries to come,” the editorial concludes.
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.
