It was the summer of 1942, and I never saw it happen. I was 17 and clueless of what was forming for so long. Around 300,000 Jewish people from the Warsaw camp was transported from Warsaw to Treblinka for a mass execution. I had to stay behind to guard the remaining 70,000 Jewish people in the ghetto. I joined the 3rd Reich because of what I heard, I later found out we were brainwashed. If only I had found out sooner.
At the time I thought that the Jewish people where getting what they deserved, that what I was doing was actually justice. Everything was going fine until word got to the remaining Jewish people about the execution, that’s when everything went wrong. Weapons started to get smuggled in to the ghetto and the Jewish people started to get organized. By January 1943 the Jewish people opened fire on our troops as they tried to gather another group of Jewish people for deportation. On April 19, 1943, the battle had begun. The remaining inhabitants where to be taken away by incoming forces.
Men, women, and children’s lives, taken away by something as simple as a bullet. We had more training and better weapons but they had greater numbers. We were unable to suppress them. I was scared that we would lose, that I wouldn’t see my family again. We started to burn the building to make them retreat into the sewers and bunkers so we could take them out separately with teargas. It worked and we were finally able to capture the survivors.
The fighting went on for nearly a month, but that month felt like years. Many of my friends died for an unjust cause. I had taken a bullet in my leg and was pulled out of battle, but others wherent as lucky. In the end 300 Germans had died and 13,000 Jewish people had died. The survivors where later executed. I had died a little myself in Warsaw, and a piece of me will always be there.