Today is the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Polish Jews rebelled against German occupiers before they could be transported to death camps.

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1. The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the Germans in 1940 to temporarily house and isolate Jews from the General Government (German-occupied part of Poland). At it’s height the Ghetto housed as much as 400 thousand Jews. From 1942 the inhabitants of the Ghetto were systematically transferred to death camps, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka or Majdanek, to be exterminated. By 1943 almost 75% of the Ghetto population was dead, and the remaining Jews knew that they too would soon be deported. Knowing that their fate is sealed, Polish Jewish resistance organisations decided in the last act of defiance to launch an armed uprising against their German oppressors, even though they knew their chances of victory are non-existent.

   The Uprising began on 19 April 1943 and lasted a little less then a month, being crushed by 16 May. In response to the uprising the Germans ordered the complete destruction of the Ghetto, this part of Warsaw was completely burned out, block by block, by the SS and the Wehrmacht. By the time the uprising was finished more then 13 000 Jews were dead and the rest was captured, of which most (about 30 000) were later deported to extermination camps. German casualties are unknown, official reports indicate that only 17 German soldiers were killed but the real number is most likely much higher, perhaps as much as 300.

   The Ghetto uprising was the single biggest armed revolt against Nazi Germany undertaken by the Jews during World War II. It was also the largest armed action undertaken by the Polish resistance, until the Warsaw Uprising a year later.

2. There are some great movies about this for anyone interested.

3. How do you not know that you are a total evil A hole doing something like this