Adolf Hitler

Don't you wish all history lessons were like an Eddie Izzard standup bit? Because that's the genius of his act. There's nothing too far off the historical record in anything he says. It's just the way he puts it that's hilarious. And the fact he can make people laugh about Hitler, Lenin and Pol Pot all the while declaring us accomplices to their atrocities ... well, that's something beyond genius.

April 20th is Hitler’s Birthday. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler wanted to give Hitler a particularly nice birthday present. He decided that in honor of Hitler’s birthday he would eliminate the entire Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, which had been causing trouble in the early months of 1943.

Instead, the Jews of Warsaw gave Hitler a present that he certainly didn’t want: months of armed rebellion that DEFEATED the German army repeatedly and wasn’t completely crushed until October 1943, though major combat operations, to borrow a phrase, were completed around May. Including the periods of more sporadic fighting, this resistance lasted far longer than the German take over of Poland as a whole, which took scarcely one month. It is pointed out in Melvin Konner’s book Unsettled that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, largely fought by Jews but with some Polish uprisings occurring at the same time and inspired by the Jewish uprising, also lasted longer than the time it took Germany to defeat France, though again you have to include the period of more sporadic fighting as well as the main combat.

The uprising was partly inspired by the Socialist Zionist organization Hashomer Hatzair (coincidentally, my mother briefly belonged to this organization in her youth). Insurgency started in January, 1943. By the end of January the Ghetto was actually controlled by two armed Jewish organizations, one led by Mordechai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair, and Zivia Lubetkin (who survived the uprising) and the other led by Dawid Mordechaj Apfelbaum, a former officer in the Polish army. As Passover began on April 19th, Himmler’s birthday present to Hitler also began, with thousands of German, Polish and Ukrainian forces attacking the Ghetto. They moved in at 4 a.m. They moved throughout the Ghetto and believed they had occupied it within 4 hours. Then, at the intersection of Mila and Zamenhofa Streets, the insurgents struck with a single captured machine gun, ample small arms fire, and many Molotov cocktails. The Germans were completely routed by the Jewish insurgents by 2 P.M., providing Hitler with a major embarrassment for his birthday.