Poland in Malta

The foreign ministers of Poland and Israel, Professor Zbigniew Rau and Eli Cohen, along with both countries’ ambassadors in EU member states and across the globe, have come together once again this year to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. From Brazil and the European Union to Iran and Japan, over a hundred Polish and Israeli ambassadors are marking this special anniversary together by taking part in the Daffodil Campaign, organized by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

This joint effort by Polish and Israeli diplomats provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the history of the heroes and heroines of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, while also highlighting the international dimension of the Polish-Israeli partnership in commemorating our history. It is yet another step towards strengthening the friendly and strategic relationship between Poland and Israel.

The foreign ministers and ambassadors of Poland and Israel joined the Daffodil Campaign at the invitation of ELNET–Poland. ELNET (the European Leadership Network) is a non-profit organization dedicated to establishing and fostering dialogue between European countries and Israel, based on shared interests and democratic values.

To commemorate the anniversary of the uprising, ambassadors posed for photos holding daffodils – symbols of the uprising that erupted on this day 80 years ago. For many years, Marek Edelman (1919–2009), the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, received a bouquet of yellow daffodils from an anonymous person on the anniversary of the revolt. Each year he laid the flowers at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw. To preserve this tradition and, above all, to sustain the memory of the heroes and heroines of the uprising, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews launched the annual Daffodil Campaign, now in its eleventh year.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out on April 19, 1943, marking the single largest armed Jewish insurrection against the Germans during World War II. It was a heroic act of defiance against the tragic fate of the Jewish people, a crucial chapter of which was the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, which began several months earlier, on July 22, 1942. The young men and women who remained in the walled-off ghetto chose to die in battle rather than perish in the gas chamber at Treblinka. The uprising ended on May 16, 1943, when the Germans demolished the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street, and razed the rest of the ghetto to the ground.