Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, following Hitler's orders to annihilate the Jewish population of Poland's capital, pitted hundreds of poorly armed, starving Jews fighting to the death, in total isolation, against an overwhelming Nazi army. This superb, moving, richly informative history of the uprising, which was led by an underground resistance group, should erase the stereotype of the passive Jewish victim. Himself a survivor of the battle, Gutman ( The Jews of Warsaw ), a history professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, uses contemporaneous diaries, letters, underground press articles, survivors' accounts, poems and Nazi documents to create a vivid picture of daily life in the ghetto, and of temporary alliances forged among Jewish fighting factions torn by ideological rifts. He also illuminates contacts between Jewish partisans and the Polish underground and fills in the cultural background by delineating Warsaw's vibrant pre-war Jewish community. Photos. (Apr.)