Foreign Affairs

One Of The Last Living Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Fighters, Simcha Rotem, Dies At 94

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• Simcha Rotem was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1924.
• He took part in the most significant armed resistance to the Nazis by Jewish fighters, the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943.
• Rotem was only 15 years old when World War II overtook Poland in 1939. By 1942, he was a part of the armed resistance against the Nazis.

Tributes are pouring in for Warsaw ghetto uprising fighter Simcha “Kazik” Rotem after he died Saturday in Jerusalem at the age of 94.

“This is a loss of a special character since Kazik was a real fighter, in the true sense of the word,” said chair of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Avner Shalev, according to Fox News. “The challenge for all of us now is to continue giving meaning to remembrance without exemplary figures like Kazik.”

Rotem was one of many Jews trapped by the German Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland starting in 1940. The uprising lasted for nearly a month in the spring of 1943 as Jewish fighters revolted against deportations to the death camps, according to Fox News.

Rotem was born in Warsaw in 1924 and moved to Israel in 1946 after World War II ended. He is survived by two children and five grandchildren, reported The Times of Israel.

He is also survived by Aliza Vitis-Shomron, who is now believed to be the single remaining Warsaw ghetto uprising fighter. She distributed leaflets within the ghetto before escaping.

Rotem was only 15 years old when World War II overtook Europe in 1939. By 1942, he was a part of the armed resistance against the Nazis and had joined the Warsaw ghetto’s Jewish Combat Organization, according to The Times of Israel. German bombs had already taken the lives of his brother and grandparents and left Rotem and his mother wounded.

During the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Rotem and his fellow fighters killed 16 Nazis and wounded nearly 100, according to Fox News.

Rotem didn’t know if he would survive the resistance.

“We’d kill as many of them as we could,d [but] we knew our fate was completely clear,” he said at a ceremony to remember the uprising on its 70th anniversary in Poland in 2013.

He recounted:

At the first moment when I saw the great German force entering the Ghetto, my first reaction, and I’m sure not just mine — I felt we were nothing. … What could we do with our pathetic, almost non-existent weaponry, when faced with the tremendous German firepower, with light canons and tanks and armored personnel carriers and a huge infantry force numbering hundreds, hundreds if not thousands. … I felt utterly helpless.

But then he felt “an extraordinary sense of spiritual uplifting … this was the moment we had been waiting for … to stand up to this all-powerful German,” he said, according to The Times of Israel.

Rotem lived after smuggling survivors out of the burning ghetto through sewage tunnels.

Even after World War II drew to a close and the world discovered the atrocities committed against the Jewish people, the fight was not over for Rotem. He immigrated to Israel and fought in its war for independence in 1948.

Rotem was honored by Poland for his role in the war on the uprising’s 70th anniversary in 2013, according to Fox News.

“Kazik fought the Nazis, saved Jews, immigrated to Israel after the Holocaust, and told the story of his heroism to thousands of Israelis,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, according to Fox News. “His story and the story of the uprising will forever be with our people.”

Rotem continued to be active in helping his people remember the Holocaust, speaking publicly and working with the Yad Vashem.

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