NEW YORK – Amb. Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), will deliver remarks at the 80th anniversary commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, to be held 12 p.m. CEST, Wednesday, April 19, at the Square of the Ghetto Heroes of Warsaw.
Lauder will appear alongside President Andrzej Duda of Poland, President Isaac Herzog of Israel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, and his remarks will be made available immediately after the noon event.
WJC has played an important role in these ceremonies since they were first held in the ruins of war-torn Warsaw, and has partnered with the Mayor of Poland and the POLIN Museum to bring the Daffodil Campaign to an international audience.
WJC’s affiliated community, the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland, will also take part in the week’s events.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. On April 19, 1943, after German troops surrounded the ghetto, Mordechai Anielewicz, Pawel Frenkel and some 700 members of the Jewish underground staged an uprising that lasted almost one month. At least 7,000 Jews, including Anielewicz and most of his comrades, died as a result.
The Warsaw Jewish community had once been the largest in Europe. At one point, over 400,000 Jews lived in the ghetto, most of them killed by the Nazis.
“[A] handful of Polish Jews showed a courage that is hard for most people to understand,” Amb. Lauder said on April 19, 2018, at the commemoration marking the 75th anniversary of the ghetto uprising. “What these brave fighters did not know – what they could not know – is the effect their actions would have on future generations of young Jews and all free people throughout the world.”
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