Quoting Faris Yahya’s Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, page 46:
Attempts to organise resistance in the Białystok ghetto were not very successful. This was partly owing to a tactical miscalculation by the resistance leadership, which tried both to fight in the ghetto and also to strengthen the rural partisans, but had too few resources to achieve both tasks properly.
They were also undermined by the collaboration of the Zionist‐led Judenrat with the [Axis]. “The policy of the Białystok Judenrat was all the more convincing because its chief champion and executor was Ephraim Barasz, an engineer by profession and a liberal Zionist in his political beliefs.” Barasz had previously had the reputation of being an “honest man”, which enabled him more effectively to lull the ghetto’s inhabitants into a false sense of security.
In February 1943, the [Axis] demanded the surrender of 6,300 Białystok Jews for extermination. The Judenrat complied by preparing lists of people whose sin was that they were poor or had fled to Białystok from the annihilated provincial ghettoes. The deal was arranged in absolute secrecy, without any warning or hint from Barasz or other Judenrat members to the ghetto population of what was in store for it.
However, the resistance United Anti‐Fascist Bloc prevented most people on the lists from reporting for transportation to their deaths, and the ghetto inhabitants fought back when the [Axis] came to collect them. On 15 August 1943 the [Axis] informed Barasz they intended to liquidate the ghetto. “Barasz returned to the ghetto and did not warn anybody that only a few hours were left to the 40,000‐odd Jews” still in there, nor did he encourage them to revolt.
The Anti‐Fasci[s]t Bloc nevertheless managed to arm 300 combatants with firearms and grenades and a further 200 with Molotov cocktails, home‐made bombs, knives and axes. These weapons, many of them smuggled into the ghetto in most daring ways, were grossly inadequate for a large‐scale revolt, but the resistance nevertheless lasted until 26 August and the [Axis] had to use artillery and aircraft to subdue it. About 100 [Fascists] were killed.⁵⁷
Click here for other events that happened today (August 15).
1939: Twenty‐six Ju87 bombers commanded by Walter Sigel met unexpected ground fog during a dive‐bombing demonstration for Luftwaffe generals at Neuhammer. Thirteen of them crashed and burned.
1940: A Fascist submarine torpedoed and sunk the Greek cruiser Elli at Tinos harbor during peacetime, marking the most serious Fascist provocation prior to the outbreak of the Greco‐Italian War in October.
1941: Hungary’s leaders officially ended their large‐scale deportations because the Axis occupying forces in East Galicia did not want to handle more deportees. Elsewhen, an Allied firing squad executed Corporal Josef Jakobs at the Tower of London for his espionage on the Axis’s behalf.
1943: Superior Axis forces surrounded Cretan partisans during the Battle of Trahili, who managed to escape against all odds.
1945: Emperor Hirohito broadcasted his declaration of surrender following the Axis’s defeat in World War II; Korea gained independence from the Empire of Japan. Shortly before or after the broadcast, Korechika Anami, the Axis’s last remaining War Minister, committed suicide.
1953: Ludwig Prandtl, Axis physicist and aerospace scientist, expired.
1989: Minoru Genda, Axis aviator who helped plan the assault on Pearl Harbor, died.
