2am 4/19/1943, Warsaw: German army/panzers enter the ghetto; Jews attack the Germans and the Battle of the Ghetto begins.

        Dos lid geshriben iz mit blut un nit mit blay,
        S'iz nit a lidl fun a foygl oyf der fray.
        Dos hot a folk ts'vishn falndikeh vent
        Dos lid gezungen mit naganes in di hent!

                This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
                It's not a song that summer birds sing overhead,
                It was a people among toppling barricades,
                That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.

                        "Zog Nit Keynmol"        

This was the "official" song of the Jewish partisans, written in honor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was by the poet-warrior Hirsh Glik, himself a partisan in the Vilna Ghetto at the time. He escaped the ghetto, was caught, then escaped the concentration camp & died in battle in the Baltic woods, fighting Germans. A Treasury of Jewish Folksong, Ruth Rubin; 1950 & Folksinger's Wordbook, Irwin Silber.

The Battle of the Ghetto lasted 21 days, two days longer than the city of Warsaw resisted. The Netherlands lasted 4 days, France 12 days, Belgium 17 days, Yugoslavia 7 days. Of course the circumstances were a little different.

Copyright © 2005, Abby Sale - all rights reserved