Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

When German forces entered the Warsaw Ghetto to deport its remaining inhabitants to Treblinka, the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) under Mordechai Anielewicz and the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) opened fire. Armed with pistols, homemade grenades, and a handful of smuggled rifles, roughly 700 fighters held off a far larger German force for nearly a month — longer than several European states had resisted invasion. The Germans ultimately burned the ghetto block by block to force out those hiding in bunkers. Almost all the fighters died, including Anielewicz at the ŻOB command bunker on Miła 18. It was the largest Jewish armed revolt of the Holocaust and became the defining symbol of Jewish resistance, commemorated in Israel on Yom HaShoah, a date set near its anniversary.