Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, is to visit Poland, the country of his birth, next week to honor those who died in the ill-fated uprising against the Nazis in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw 65 years ago. "We are expecting President Peres and numerous other figures, including the mayors of around 30 European and Israeli cities whose inhabitants have family ties with the victims and survivors of the Warsaw ghetto," Hanna Paluba of the Shalom foundation, which organizes the annual commemoration, said.
The ceremony has been brought forward to 15 April because this year the actual anniversary of the outbreak of the revolt falls on Shabbat. The official ceremony of the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising will be held in front of the monument to the Ghetto heroes in the center of Warsaw in presence of Shimon Peres and his Polish counterpart, Lech Kaczynski. Both presidents will meet with survivors of the uprising.
The Warsaw Ghetto, set up in 1940 by Poland's Nazi invaders to isolate the thriving Jewish community in the capital, originally contained over 450,000 people. On 19 April 1943 a few hundred young Jews decided to take up arms against the Nazis, resolving to fight rather than face near-certain death in the Nazi death camps. When the resistance groups decided to launch their revolt, the remaining population was down to tens of thousands. About 100,000 had died inside the ghetto from hunger and disease, and over 300,000 were sent to death camps, mainly to Treblinka.
