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Last surviving fighter from Warsaw Ghetto Uprising dies in Israel

Simcha Rotem's story 'will be with our people forever'

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Simcha Rotem, the last surviving fighter from the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, has died in Jerusalem, aged 94.

He was 15 when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Although feeling “utterly helpless”, he joined the Zob, the ghetto’s Jewish combat organisation, in 1942.

The following year, with many of the ghetto’s inhabitants dead and those remaining facing deportation, he stood with those who decided to fight.

Although thousands died in the uprising, he helped many fighters escape through the drainage system.

He returned to take part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising led by resistance fighters.

He was awarded Poland's Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2013.

Mr Rotem said that during the Holocaust, he had met “people worthy of the adjective 'human beings', even among the Poles. But there were also people who, without any clear interest other than evil intent, sentenced a Jew to death in a word. I cannot and do not wish to understand them.”

Leading the tributes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Mr Rotem’s story “will be with our people forever”.

The Holocaust Educational Trust mourned the loss of “yet another key eyewitness”. Jonathan Freedland said his death marked “a significant moment as living memory turns into history”.

 

 

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