Video: 80th Anniversary Of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising In New York City Now Available For Viewing

Today, the Congress of Jewish Culture posted a video on YouTube of the entire 80th Anniversary ceremony of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, held last Wednesday in New York City.

Each April 19th, the Congress for Jewish Culture, along with Friends of the Bund, Jewish Labor Committee and Workers Circle, has organized a gathering of survivors and their families, activists, academics, and musicians at the stone in Riverside Park's Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Plaza. This annual event marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the single greatest instance of Jewish armed resistance to the Holocaust, with an academy remembering the victims and their resistance to history's greatest crime. In both 2020 and 2021, due to the pandemic, they did not gather there for the first time in living memory, but instead held their event online. Last year, their fervent hopes were realized as they were able to resume convening at DER SHTEYN (the stone) in Riverside Park, between 83rd & 84th Streets.

This year's event featured an impressive array of speakers and artists to remember the victims of the Nazi war on European Jewry and commemorate their resistance. 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto-many in their teens and twenties-launched a sustained guerrilla battle in response to a planned Nazi mass deportation to the death camps. They fought without any attainable hope of victory, but with the goal that they would not die in silence. Heroically, they managed to hold off the German army from April 19th to May 16th. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during the Holocaust. 13,000 were killed (some 6,000 among them were burnt alive or died from smoke inhalation). Of the remaining 50,000 Jewish residents, almost all were captured and shipped to concentration camps or killing centers. The Uprising did succeed in delaying the German's timeline of deportations, and it inspired other resistance movements across the German-occupied areas.

The annual NYC gathering continued a tradition established in 1947 by Jewish partisans, ghetto fighters and Holocaust survivors at the site designated by the City of New York for a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It has become an annual gathering of Bundists and members of the secular, progressive Yiddish cultural community, as well as children and grandchildren of the original attendees.

The recent program in Riverside Park, including music and readings, featured Joanne Borts (appeared in Broadway's Tony-winning Best Musical ONCE, as well as FIDDLER ON THE ROOF starring Topol), Dr. Michael "Menachem" Fox (author of the acclaimed memoir BECOMING ORDINARY: A YOUTH BORN OF THE HOLOCAUST, WHAT I KEPT, WHAT I LET GO...), Irena Klepfisz (herself born in the Warsaw Ghetto and whose father was the first Jew to perish in the Uprising; just recently published her collected works titled HER BIRTH AND LATER YEARS: NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS, 1971-2021), Marcel Kshensky (educator & son of Holocaust survivors and resistance activists), Shifee Losacco (featured soloist at Lincoln Center who has appeared in numerous Yiddish theater productions in NYC, and is currently a soloist with The Peace of Heart Choir), Elliott Palevsky (an activist with Nusakh Vilne, the association of Jews from Vilna in the U.S. and the son of fighters from the Vilner partisan movement), Lily Pazner (activist with the Workers Circle College Network), Daniella Rabbani (actress; Off-Broadway: THE GOLDEN LAND; film & TV: "Scenes from a Marriage," "God Friended Me," OCEAN'S EIGHT), Jeffrey Shandler (author of WHILE AMERICA WATCHES: TELEVISING THE HOLOCAUST; ADVENTURES IN YIDDISHLAND: POSTVERNACULAR LANGUAGE AND CULTURE; and JEWS, GOD, AND VIDEOTAPE: RELIGION AND MEDIA IN AMERICA), Mindy Spiegel (International Yiddish teacher and daughter of fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising), and Esti Zannoni (a student in the Workers Circle Midtown Shule).

Founded in 1948, the Congress for Jewish Culture (Executive Director, Shane Baker) is a secular organization based in New York City dedicated to its longstanding commitment to enriching Yiddish culture worldwide. They were joined as organizers for this year's ceremony by Friends of the Bund, Jewish Labor Committee, Workers Circle, POLIN: The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

The videographer for the event was Jeff Wertz, owner of MultiMedia Video.