By Michael Kramer
May 12, 2025

Israeli military veteran in Warsaw: ‘Liberate all ghettos’

By Michael Kramer

On the 82nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, Workers World republishes these two articles by Michael Kramer, who is currently a member of Veterans For Peace in the U.S. and served in the Israeli military (1972-75), where his experience led him to support the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. This one was published July 19, 2010 and is followed by one first published in 2002.

An Israeli military veteran, with help from Polish activists from the Palestine solidarity organization Kampania Palestyna, on June 27, 2010, tagged a remnant of the wall that surrounded the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw with “Liberate All Ghettos” in Hebrew and “Free Gaza and Palestine” in English. A Palestinian flag was hung from the top of the wall after the tagging was completed.

The wall was built in 1940 when Poland was occupied by German fascists who were known as Nazis. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, as well as smaller numbers of Romani people, were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto before they were transported to the Auschwitz and Treblinka extermination camps. In April 1943, a heroic armed uprising began in the ghetto and lasted for one month before being put down by the German army. The ghetto was then completely leveled, yet some fighters were able to hold out for months in underground bunkers.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is an important event for all oppressed people, including the Palestinians.

Yonatan Shapira was a captain in the Israeli Air Force. He flew U.S.-made Black Hawk helicopters in the same unit that was to take part in the May 2010 attack on the Gaza Flotilla ship Mavi Marmara in international waters [in which Israeli forces killed nine Turkish activists].

In 2003 Shapira wrote a letter refusing to take part in missions targeting Palestinians. It was co-signed by 27 other Israeli pilots. That was the end of his military career. Since then he has become a well-known activist who supports Palestinian self-determination.

He is also a strong supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and a co-founder of Combatants for Peace, an organization of former Palestinian and Israeli armed combatants.

In a video interview Shapira described his background and motivation: “Most of my family came from Poland and many of my relatives were killed in the death camps during the Holocaust. When I walk in what was left of the Warsaw Ghetto, I can’t stop thinking about the people of Gaza who are not only locked in an open-air prison but are also being bombarded by fighter jets, attack helicopters and drones, flown by people I used to serve with before my refusal in 2003. …

“I was always taught growing up that the atrocities that happened to the Jewish people happened because the world was silent. And therefore I cannot be silent. The Jewish people needed to be liberated from the ghettos, and now Israelis need to be liberated from the crimes of their own government. Each of us can take part in this global struggle for justice and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for the sake of not just the Palestinian people but for Israelis, too.” (www.kampania-palestyna.pl)

Shapira is not alone. Ewa Jasiewicz, a Pole who participated in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, says, “Poland is full of the ruins of ghettos and death camps and shrines to those who sacrificed their lives in the defense of not just their communities but in resistance to fascism.”

From the Warsaw Ghetto to Jenin:

Oppression fuels heroic resistance

“In order to prepare properly for the next campaign, one of the highest Israeli officers in the territories said not long ago, it’s justified and in fact essential to learn from every possible source. If the mission will be to seize a densely populated refugee camp, or take over the casbah in Nablus … then he must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles — even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto.”

 – From the Israeli daily Haaretz (Jan. 25, 2002) 

By Michael Kramer

At 6:00 a.m. on April 19, 1943, more than 2,000 fascist SS troops entered the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw in Nazi-occupied Poland. Their mission was to annihilate the remaining inhabitants — those who had survived more than three years of starvation, slave labor and “involuntary resettlement” to Auschwitz and other death camps.

Unlike previous “round-ups,” however, the fascists were met with machine-gun fire and homemade Molotov cocktails. By 5:00 p.m. the Nazis were forced to retreat, having suffered more than 200 casualties.

Though there had been Jewish resistance before — in the form of illegal newspapers, posters, clandestine meetings and isolated armed actions — this was the first time that such large formations of Nazi troops were confronted. Jewish resistance was tenacious, as documented by Ber Mark, the late director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, in his book “Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.”

The military organization of the ghetto took place in October 1942 when the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa — Jewish Combat Organization or ZOB — was formed. By the end of that month the first successful act had been carried out: the execution of the Nazi-appointed traitor, the chief of the Jewish police. Through militant struggle the ZOB established its legitimacy and leadership. The force demonstrated its role as the ghetto population’s defender by eliminating Jewish collaborators and Gestapo agents.

Only 60,000 Jews were left in the ghetto at that point. A year before, the population had been 500,000.

The Nazis planned to finish their dirty work on April 20, which was Hitler’s birthday. Instead, April 20 proved to be another defeat for the fascists when the Jewish freedom fighters detonated a mine that killed more than 100 SS troops.

Building by building and block by block, the anti-fascists fought back. The ZOB had prepared the struggle in advance, constructing a labyrinth of bunkers, tunnels and secret hideouts.

Polish workers aid ghetto

Polish communists smuggled arms and ammunition through the sewer system into the ghetto. They also attacked Nazi military units from the rear.

Women [and children] played a major role in the resistance as combatants.

The fighting continued for weeks. When the Nazis set fire to ghetto buildings, the ZOB countered by igniting warehouses of fascist-expropriated Jewish property.

Nazis were forced to call in long-range artillery and the air force. Armed with dogs, gas and flame throwers, the Nazis began to hunt down the Jews. On May 8, the ZOB headquarters was overrun.

Seventy-five ZOB survivors escaped from the blockaded ghetto on May 10. By May 16, the 28th day of fighting, the ghetto no longer existed. But snipers continued the resistance as late as November 1943.

Jenin: heroic city

Almost 59 years after the Nazis launched their “final solution” attack on the Jewish population of the Warsaw Ghetto, the U.S.-armed-and-financed Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), fighting under the banner of apartheid-like Zionism, launched their attack on the Palestinian population of the city of Jenin in the West Bank region of Palestine.

A refugee camp established there in 1953, located within the municipal boundaries of the city, was especially targeted.

The Israeli commanders studied WWII-era Nazi military history well: The whole Palestinian population of the refugee camp was targeted whether or not they were combatants. Almost half of the approximately 13,000 residents of the camp were either children or elders.

Air strikes were called in on densely populated neighborhoods. Bulldozers leveled residential areas of the camp while whole families were still inside their homes. The water distribution system and electric power lines were destroyed.

Yet the IDF commanders forgot to study how oppressed people fight back when they have nothing to lose and their backs are against the wall. The Israelis took heavy casualties in the battle of Jenin.

And the IDF commanders should study what happened to the Nazi commanders who led the attack on the Warsaw Ghetto. When the war was over they were tried and convicted as war criminals.