The Battle of Muranów Square was a battle between the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) and Third Reich troops which took place during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19–22, 1943. The fighting between the German pacification forces under Jürgen Stroop, which were destroying the ghetto, and the Jewish insurgent forces of ŻZW, under Paweł Frenkel, took place in the now non-existent Muranów Square.
Background After the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, carried out by the Nazis in the summer of 1942, about 300 thousand Jews were forcefully deported to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered there.
A group of young Jewish activists founded two military organizations to fight the Nazis: the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB), which was associated with the left-wing Bund, and the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW), associated with the right-wing Zionists-Revisionists. These organizations, due to political differences, did not reach an agreement on the issue of joining forces (the ŻOB being the majority of them offered the revisionists to join their ranks one by one, not as a separate organization). According to Marek Edelman, few days before the outbreak of the uprising the two armed groups met in the ghetto. Apart from Edelman, the ŻOB was also represented by Mordechai Anielewicz and Icchak Cukierman. According to Edelman, the fighters from ŻZW took out their revolvers and, by blackmailing the members of ŻOB, tried to force them to subordinate to their organization. There was a brawl and gunfire between the two groups, fortunately, no one was wounded. Considering the severe tensions and even hatred in Palestine between the dominant Socialists and the Revisionists (e.g. post-war (Hunting) Season and Altalena) the verity of the above is uncertain.
The fighters did not reach an agreement, but later, for pragmatic reasons, embarked on limited military cooperation, dividing up zones of influence in defense of the ghetto area in the event of another entry of German troops.Dawid Wdowiński: And We Are Not Saved.. London: Allen, 1964, p. 80
The area of military activity of the Jewish Military Union was the vicinity of the now non-existent Muranów Square, located between Muranowska Street and Nalewki Street, in the Warsaw district of Muranów (this place corresponds to the present intersection of Stawki and Józefa Lewartowskiego Streets). The headquarters of ŻZW were located at 7 Muranowska Street.Plac muranowski – "Miejsce bitwy w czasie powstania w getcie warszawskim" article from szetl.org.pl The units of the Union were divided into three groups - two of them defended the so-called "Shops" - factories where ghetto prisoners worked, located outside the ghetto wall, which was reduced after the liquidation operation. The third group, much larger, was located in Muranów Square, where six units, each consisting of 20 soldiers, manned houses in Muranowska Street with numbers 1, 3, 5, 7-9 and 40.Dawid Wdowiński: And We Are Not Saved.. London: Allen, 1964, p. 82. The positions of ŻZW were in contact with the positions of ŻOB, who occupied the houses at Zamenhofa, Miła, Gęsia and Nalewki Streets.Maciej Kledzik, „Zapomniani żołnierze ŻZW”, „Rzeczpospolita” 18-04-2008 The ŻZW units in Muranów Square had at their disposal an excellently equipped arsenal, located in an abandoned house at 7 Muranowska Street. A Jewish historian and an eyewitness Emanuel Ringelblum, who visited their quarters, was impressed by the arsenal of weapons they had gathered, he writes about the preparations for the uprising in his diary. He saw various types of weapons hanging on the walls and also witnessed the purchase of their next batch by Jewish fighters.Emanuel Ringelblum. „Kronika getta warszawskiego”, Czytelnik, Warszawa 1983.
Battle Fighting in the square started immediately after the beginning of the Uprising, on April 19, 1943, and lasted for at least 3 days. According to Dawid Wdowiński, a soldier and commander of ŻZW, a white-blue Jewish flag was hung on the house at 7-9 Muranowska Street, where the headquarters of ŻZW were located, and stayed there for 5 days after the beginning of the uprising.Dawid Wdowiński: And We Are Not Saved. London: Allen, 1964, p. 94. According to other accounts, there were two flags hanging there: the white-blue Jewish flag and the white-red Polish flag; this is confirmed by the accounts of the historian Emanuel Ringelblum, Władysław Bartoszewskiquoted "April 19, 1943. In one of the houses at Muranów Square, two flags were hung: the Jewish one, white and blue, and the Polish one, white and red. (...) Do you remember these flags? Władysław Bartoszewski: Of course. They hanged them so high that they were clearly visible from the tram I was driving from Żoliborz. (...) A special assault group, ordered by SS general Jürgen Stroop, attacked the Jewish positions and on April 20, after a fierce fight, both flags were ripped off. Stroop writes about it in his report. Aleksandra Klich and Jarosław Kurski, interview with Władysław Bartoszewski, "Arcypolskie powstanie żydowskie". "Gazeta Wyborcza". 12.04.2013. and Alicja Kaczyńska, who noted this fact in her memoirs. The two flags are also mentioned in the report by Jürgen Stroop,Jürgen Stroop, Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk in Warschau mehr!, Warschau 1943, p.5. in the testimony by at Stroop's trial, and in the account of Stroop written by his post-war fellow prisoner, Kazimierz Moczarski, in “Rozmowy z katem” [“Conversations with an Executioner”].Kazimierz Moczarski, „Rozmowy z katem”, Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy „Znak” 2009. Contemporary accounts also appeared in a counterintelligence report of the Government Delegation for Poland (April 23), and in the Polish underground press publications Nowy Dzień (April 21) and Robotnik (May 1). (After the war, the flag incident was highlighted by Israeli politician Moshe Sharett in a noted 1949 , with his quote later appearing on the 20 new shekel banknote, Series B.)
The first clash took place when the German units approached Nalewki Street in the morning of April 19 - the insurgents opened fire on them with machine guns and hand guns, forcing the Nazis to retreat in the afternoon. During the fights that day, two commanders of the ŻZW, Paweł Frenkel and Leon Rodal, dressed up as SS officers, approached a unit of Ukrainian soldiers grouped near the square and attacked them by surprise, breaking the encircling of the Jewish units and restoring their contact with the rest of the insurgents.Dawid Wdowiński: And We Are Not Saved. London: Allen, 1964, p. 95. According to Kazimierz Iranek-Osmecki, later the head of the Home Army Main Command's Intelligence, the Germans, after capturing the ŻOB resistance point on Gęsia Street, attacked ŻZW positions at Muranów Square, commanded by Paweł Frenkel.
On the night of April 19–20, the command of the ŻZW held a meeting, during which it was decided to distribute the reserve of weapons among all the insurgents, so that it would not fall into the hands of the Nazis in case they acquired the arsenal. Heavy fights continued over the next few days, and when Jürgen Stroop took command of the Nazi army, they became even more intense as the Germans used tactics of destroying individual houses, burning and bombing them using heavy cannons. The insurgents, using hidden passages between the houses, attacked Germans by surprise, but at the same time they lost all communication and could only contact each other at night. On the fourth day of the fights, the Muranów unit was joined by a group of ŻZW from the "shop" of brushers in Świętojerska Street, which was captured by a German armored unit.Dawid Wdowiński: And We Are Not Saved. London: Allen, 1964, p. 96. According to Wdowiński, on the fifth day of the uprising, the flag was still on the command building at Muranów Square, and the insurgents were still defending themselves by shooting from the windows.
Little is known about the fate of the ŻZW units in the central ghetto after they lost contact. On April 21 a ŻZW unit was still fighting in Franciszkańska and Miła Streets. Some units withdrew that day outside the ghetto wall, trying, with the help of the Polish organization "Miecz i Pług" (Sword and Plough), to get out of Warsaw to a forest near Otwock. However, they were denounced by the MiP (an organization penetrated by Gestapo agents) to the Germans and died fighting on the road to Otwock.Barbara Engelking, Jacek Leociak: Getto Warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście.. Warszawa: IFiS PAN, 2001, p. 737. Some of the units stayed in the ghetto and kept fighting. On May 2, 1943, the group moved out of the ghetto to a flat at Grzybowska Street, where they were surrounded and killed.
Account by Władysław Zajdler According to Władysław Zajdler "Żarski", on April 27 the battle on Muranów Square was also assisted by an 18-person squad of the "W" squadron of the Security Corps (an autonomous organization associated with the Home Army), commanded by Henryk Iwański "Bystry". The unit consisted of a team headed by Władysław Zajdler "Żarski" and a section of Lejewski "Garbarz".Władysław Zajdler. Wypad do getta. Fragment walk na placu Muranowskim.. „Za Wolność i Lud”. 8, 1962. According to Zajdler, on April 27 Poles got there through a tunnel, with replenishment of weapons, ammunition and food, but due to the complete exhaustion of insurgents they replaced the ŻZW unit under the command of David Apfelbaum on the key position between the ruins in the area of the no longer existing Muranów Square and Nalewki Street (today's Bohaterów Getta Street), repelling German and Latvian attacks supported by armored weapons. Żarski relates:"On April 26, 1943, through a liaison officer of the Jewish Military Union, we received a report that the commander of the section Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum was injured and demanded help in the form of weapons and ammunition. The Jewish units regained access to a tunnel stretching under the road and reaching the basement of a house outside the ghetto wall, at 7 Muranów Square... SC's Main Headquarters ordered us to organize the passage of our combat group to the ghetto area. The group was supposed to join the fight, repel the Nazis from the vicinity of the tunnel and help to move the wounded women and children to the "Aryan" side. (...) An attack of SS infantry started under the cover of two tanks. Grenades and bullets of Polish and Jewish fighters fighting shoulder to shoulder fell on the Nazis. The attack was repelled. The fighters collected the conquered weapons".Stanisław Wroński, Maria Zwolakowa, „Polacy i Żydzi 1939–1945”. Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa 1971, p.192.Three subordinates of Iwański, his brother and two of his sons, were allegedly killed in heavy all-day defensive battles, as well as ten Jews, among them Dawid Apfelbaum. Iwański himself was injured and, together with 30 other wounded people, was taken back through a tunnel by his surviving soldiers. According to some studies, "together with ŻZW, on that day a unit of the Security Corps under the command of Captain Iwański (...) fights in the ghetto, suffering some losses (including the death of his son)".