84: Warsaw Aktion

84 years ago today (July 23, 1942) the Große Aktion Warschau (Great-Action Warsaw) started in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-Occupied Poland.

(The first day of the Große Aktion Warschau (July 23, 1942.) Immediately after this picture was taken the old Man was shot by the German (standing nearby are the Ghetto’s Jewish Police) and the Jews lined up were sent to the Cattle Cars to go to the Treblinka Death Camp.)

The Germans demanded 6,000 Jewish Men, Women and Children every day be rounded-up and deported.

The Head if the Judenrat (Jewish Council) of the Warsaw Ghetto, Adam Czerniaków, committed Suicide when the Germans told him of their plans to deport all the Inhabitants of the Ghetto “to the East.”

Those rounded-up were kept at the Umschlagplatz until the Germans had “collected” enough People to fill the Cattle Cars (sometimes days with no food or water.)

Upon arrival at the Treblinka Death Camp the Men, Women and Children got off the Cattle Cars at what looked like a Regular Train Station and were separated between Men and Women and Children.

Sometimes the Germans would select a few People who had Special Skills (like Carpenters, Jewlers, etc.) out of the arrivals before sending the rest to take “Showers” as the Germans called it.

Those sent to die walked to an Undressing Hut where they were forced to take off all of their Clothes and then forced to walk through a fenced -off path through the forest (what the Germans called “die Himmelstraße: (or “The Road to Heaven”) where the Men were made to go first into the Gas Chamber while the Women and Children waited outside where they could hear their Fathers, Husbands and Brothers dying before they (the Women and Children) were forced into the Gas Chamber and murdered.

From July 23, 1942 to September 21, 1942 the Germans deported 265,000 Jewish Men, Women and Children from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka Death Camp where they were gassed to death.

On August 5, 1942 Janusz Korczak (a World-Famous Author, Educator and Head of one of the Orphanages in the Ghetto) and 196 of his Orphaned Jewish Children walked down the Streets of the Warsaw Ghetto to the Umschlagplatz after the Germans closed their Orphanage.

The Germans offered to let Janusz Korczak survive, but when the Germans refused to let his Children live too he went on the Cattle Car with them where they were gassed to death and their bodies burned at Treblinka.

10,000 Jewish Men, Women and Children were murdered by the Germans inside the Ghetto during the same time period.

11,500 Jewish Men and Women were deported to Forced Labor and Concentration Camps.

Of the 51,548 Jewish Children who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto before the Große Aktion Warschau  began, 498 remained in the Ghetto in November 1942 (all in Hiding and in Secret.)

70,000 Jewish Men, Women and Children were left in the Ghetto (either living with the Permission of the Germans to help go through all the leftover Personal Belongings of those Deported so they could be sent to Germany or in Hiding such as all the Children.)

The Germans lost a total of 155.9 Million Polish Zlotys (or $365 Million US Dollars in 2026) by deporting the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Große Aktion Warschau since they no longer had the Forced Labor Manpower in the Ghetto’s Factories.

In 1988, the 45^th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising the Umschlagplatz Monument (Polish: Pomnik Umschlagplatz) was unveiled in Warsaw, Communist Poland.