“All Jews living in Warsaw, regardless of age and sex, will be deported east,” an announcement read, put up on posters on ghetto walls on July 22nd 1942. On that day, the grand operation of razing the Warsaw ghetto began. It lasted 46 days.

During the operation, 300,000 Jews were deported to and murdered in the Treblinka death camp. The destruction of the Warsaw ghetto was overseen by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle. He commanded a dozen or so members of SS and the Gestapo – Latvians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians. The liquidation force also included Jewish policemen who hoped they would save themselves and their loved ones.

This is how Stanisław Sznapman wrote about the deportation in his diary: “The operation is on. . . Two or three SS-men barge in where the marshals have put up a blockade and are terrorizing the locals with screams, whips and guns. People are dropping dead. Everything is conducted with mind-blowing swiftness. Faster, faster, run! Everyone is out in the courtyard, the selection already made between those who will go back to their apartments and those who will never see theirs again. There is no time to return, to look back or to have one last conversation with the others. No one is allowed to walk slowly, even though that’s how one walks at funerals. Everybody is forced to run. Faster, faster, faster, run!”

The destruction of the ghetto had its own dynamic. The Germans used various tactics of deception, leaving ever smaller opportunities for rescue. To those being deported they promised bread and marmalade, threatened them with execution, created categories of protected civilians, only to do away with those very categories shortly afterwards.

The Jews tried various ways of rescue: they applied for jobs at German companies, attempted to flee the ghetto or to hide on its premises. There were some who voluntarily showed up on Umschalgplatz, where the trains to Treblinka were departing from. For many the need to be with their loved ones was stronger than the fear of death.

On September 21st, the Germans finished the deportations. The ghetto was officially reduced in size. Officially, there were 35,000 Jews left, working for German companies, but 25,000 unregistered Jews were hiding in areas excluded from the ghetto. On the Aryan side of Warsaw, approximately 8,000 Jews were in hiding.