The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Captured Jews being led by German troops to the assembly point for deportation following the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Photo by wikimedia
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Ultimately, though, the Nazi revenge was brutal and involved burning the Warsaw ghetto down building by building. Only a few dozen of the Jewish fighters survived by escaping the ghetto through underground sewage canals to reach the so-called "Aryan side" of the Polish capital. Spiegel and his future wife Chaika Belchatowska were among them.





However, Havi Dreifuss, a historian and Holocaust expert with Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based Holocaust research institution and museum, warned against trying to put a number on how many fighters remain, in part because it's sometimes hard to distinguish fighters from other resisters.

She noted that aside from those with weapons, there were others who refused to obey Nazi orders to show up for transportation to death camps, and that an appreciation has grown over time for their resistance.
