FIGHTING BACK - VICTORY GARDEN 2011

The government’s stance toward food and food production today is a far cry from the Victory Garden era of World Wars One and Two. Today, Victory Gardens might as well be called survival gardens, since our very existence may well depend on our own ability to feed ourselves.

Back then the Victory Gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private residences in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil "morale booster" — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. Making victory gardens became a part of daily life on the home front.
                                                       

Amid regular rationing of canned food in Britain, a poster campaign ("Plant more in '44!") encouraged the planting of Victory Gardens by nearly 20 million Americans. These gardens produced up to 40 percent of all the vegetable produce consumed nationally.

It was emphasized to home front urbanites and suburbanites that the produce from their gardens would help to lower the price of vegetables needed by the US War Department to feed the troops, thus saving money that could be spent elsewhere on the military: "Our food is fighting", one poster read.

Basic information about gardening appeared in public services booklets distributed by the Department of Agriculture, as well as by agribusiness corporations such as International Harvester and Beech-Nut.

Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch. During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to publicize the movement. In New York City, the lawns around vacant "Riverside" were devoted to victory gardens, as were portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

In 1946, with the war over, many residents did not plant Victory Gardens in expectation of greater produce availability. However the added pressures of supplying liberated Europe meant that, in the UK, shortages remained, or in many cases got worse.

My mother got serious about her Victory Garden in 1942, the year I was born. Even after her only brother, my uncle, Harold, was shipped off to fight and die on Okinawa, she continued the tradition.

I've had gardens through the years, but I didn't really get serious until 2004. That's the year I realized that food shortages were imminent. That became obvious when fresh tomatoes jumped to about $1.50 each, (they are now up to $3.50 each - at times) and other fruits and vegetables carried a sticker that said, "Produce of Mexico."

Other food items continue to rise; asparagus (when you can find it) is about $3.50 a pound; apples average $1 each and other food products have also risen proportionally.

The lesson really came home to roost when I read a small article that even the Jolly Green Giant had farmed out corn production to Peru and when I traveled to Michigan for a two week visit with my mother she showed me acre after acre of asparagus that was to be plowed under since production of that vegetable was also being turned over to foreign growers.

Every year thousands of small farmers sell-out - no longer able to compete in the so-called global economy. Thus, in my humble opinion, the Victory Garden has become more than a way to pass time, it has become a necessity. Yet in spite of the obvious danger our food supply is in, homeowners more and more frequently turn luscious, fertile back yards into pet runs or even worse, cement or stone covered patios. A small 10' x 10' area can produce dozens of quarts of tomatoes, beets, pickles or other vegetables of your choice.

The following three videos tell some of the advantages of having your own food supply.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-APWqoyw9Kw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_bVN_mI7A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX-rL2-KgP4

What will happen to America, the land of plenty, if we wake up one day and find we are no longer able to feed ourselves? Please don’t snicker - that is a very real possibility as more and more of us are herded into cities where there is limited capability to grow even a small portion our own food and small family farms are being driven out.  

Every time a home gardener goes to his or her own pantry and pulls down part of the evening's meal, he or she deprives some foreign producer or government of a sale and thus the profits and control over our nation's food supply.

A lot of the food products our few remaining farmers produce, such as rice, is being shipped overseas because so many people in the "utopian global neighborhood" can't or won't feed themselves. In fact, as of April 24, 2008, rice was being rationed at such retail giants as Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. Rice is no longer being rationed but it should serve as a warning that it could happen again.

We are at war again and this war is much more deadly. We are at war not with Germany, Japan or Italy, but with radical Islam - and to a much larger degree - our own government. The sooner the American public wakes up and begins to assume some small control over its destiny, the better off we will all be. And that control may consist of nothing more than growing a little garden - a Victory Garden.

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Putting million, billion and trillion in perspective

Million, billion, trillion -- which equals five seconds of time at the U.S. Treasury? Don’t know? Well join the millions in the United States, or the billions of people worldwide who don’t know either.

The enormity of our $14 trillion national debt is so huge we have lost sight of the ramifications of owing all those “zeros” to foreign interests. The numbers in dollars slide much too easily into conversation about the country’s debt, especially for politicians who glibly toss around those “illions” like pocket change.

Let’s put millions, billions and now trillions in perspective.

A total of 5.3 billion troy ounces of gold have been mined in recorded human history, as of 2009. At the approximate price of gold ($1,000 an ounce) in Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs), the actual value of that precious commodity, of all that gold in today’s dollars is $5.30 trillion. So, how do we plan on paying off a debt of $14 trillion? With so little gold in existence, the only thing I can see that would pay off the debt is if our creditors seized all the land in America and forced Americans into some form of slave labor.

What's the difference between a million, a billion, a trillion? A million dollars is 10,000 $100 bills. A billion dollars is 10 million $100 bills. A trillion dollars is 10,000 billion $100 bills.
A million seconds is 13 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
A billion is 1,000 million.
There are one thousand billions in a trillion
There are 1 million millions in a trillion

A trillion dollars is so large a number that only politicians can use the term in conversation... probably because they seldom think about what they are really saying.

Here is some perspective on TRILLION.
Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000, or a 1 followed by 12 zeros.

The country has not existed for a trillion seconds. In fact, Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds. One trillion seconds – 31,688 years ago – Neanderthals (if you believe in evolution) stalked the plains of Europe.

A million minutes ago was 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes ago.
A million hours ago was in 1885.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.
5 billion years ago (according to “big bang” theorists) the universe was formed.
1 trillion years ago - forget about it.

A million dollars was five (5) seconds ago at the U.S. Treasury.
A billion dollars was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.
A trillion dollars was last month in Washington.

We can only hope no-one tells Obama and Congress what comes after trillion. The known universe isn’t large enough to hold the number.

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THE FOOD WARS HAVE BEGUN

The socialist plan to enslave the American people is nearly complete. The final three major hurdles faux President B. Hussein Obama and his army of czars need to totally destroy our nation are: 1) Internet control; 2) Gun controls and 3) Food controls. I consider this a war on three fronts, each being of equal importance.

World-wide food supplies are in bad shape making this year possibly the most important one for home gardeners - ever. Rising oil prices have made non-organic fertilizers very expensive since petroleum products are the base of most fertilizer and insecticides. Getting food to users has also been negatively impacted by rising oil prices.

Topping everything is our own government’s passage of the “HR 2749 2009 Food Safety Enhancement Act.” That Act, now law, will eventually curtail and control agricultural production, mainly among America’s farmers but extending all the way to little home gardens. America, once known as the bread basket of the world is now facing food shortages. Those shortages have not been caused by drought, flooding or any other natural disaster but have instead been brought on by government’s intervention in the production and distribution of food commodities.

Why is our own government so vitally interested in controlling the food chain? The answer, I fear, isn’t for food safety as they would have us believe. It is to gain more control and power over the citizens. This much power in the wrong hands could lead to abuses and even mass extinction of our populace as has happened to other peoples throughout history.

“History has shown us that Socialists, Communists, Islamists and Marxists, use food and the production of food as a weapon against their own people in order to solidify power and control. Hitler himself said that using food as a weapon was ‘a beautiful instrument . . . for maneuvering and disciplining the masses,’” according to the Kingdom Studies blog.

The same blog continued: “Stalin and Hitler used food to destroy internal opposition to their policies of ‘change.’ They used it to reward accomplishment, punish failure and establish the class distinctions of their ‘new orders.’ In Germany the ‘warrior caste’ of the armed forces received the fattest ration cards, skilled and essential workmen the next. Down at the bottom came prisoners and the Jews. Ration cards that gave the owner the right to more food were used to give workmen incentives to seek promotion, to increase their output. Supplies were suddenly cut down (regardless of the amount stored) to scare the population into believing the situation serious, or extra rations were suddenly granted to boost morale.”
SOURCE

View a full-size photo of a 1935 Chicago newspaper devoted almost exclusively to the man-made “famine” in the Ukraine. Note that the "famine" killed by some accounts, 23 million people, most of whom were farmers who were deprived of their own production by government. (When the photo appears in your browser window, click it again to enlarge it to full size.)


Many won’t believe our own government would do that to us. How can we think that considering the federal government has been for years paying certain farmers to NOT grow certain foods? So we must wonder, if the government doesn’t intend to use food shortages as a means of control, why was HR 2749 passed just before Congress took off for the summer recess? Why was this important legislation rushed through in the dark of night, so to speak?

Few even knew about this bill because the public’s attention was fastened on the battle over National Health care, so HR 2749 was rushed through to passage using the same impetus of ‘urgency’ and fear that was used to get the Stimulus bill shoved through, with no public input or comments allowed, and done just one day before the summer recess. And, of course, media silence.

Touted under the same guise of being “for the children”, this Communistic takeover of food and food production was done under the auspices of ‘food safety’ – using the recent salmonella outbreaks caused by peanut butter and spinach as the springboard for nationalization. And apparently, we applaud the notion that giving government total control of our nation’s food supply, from farm to fork – as a good thing.

In HR 2749, EVERY form of food production will be monitored, regulated and controlled at all levels by the federal government under the leadership of a new Food Safety Czar. Yep, you read that right, yet ANOTHER Czar, accountable to no one except faux President B. Hussein Obama. Read more about the Czar HERE.

Once word began to leak about HR 2749, the main-stream media (MSM) began hailing the passage of the Bill in the House as a great step toward helping America have better food safety standards. America already HAS the best safety standards in the world, but that is not good enough for the Marxist/Socialist/Progressive Democrat bureaucrats. In their eyes, the GOVERNMENT must regulate and control it all. And this bill does exactly that. The bill requires every entity, whether it be an individual, business, church organization, homeless shelter, or home gardener to register annually with a new federal food bureau.
Read about the bill HERE.

“This bill proposes greater FDA regulatory powers over the national food supply and food providers, namely granting it the authority to regulate how crops are raised and harvested, to quarantine a geographic area, to make warrant-less searches of business records, and to establish a national food tracing system. Concurrently, the bill would impose annual registration fees of $500 (or more) on all facilities holding, processing, or manufacturing food and require that such facilities also engaged in the transport or packing of food maintain pedigrees of the origin and previous distribution history of the food,” according to the Kingdom Studies blog,

That’s right. You want to plant a garden in your back yard? YOU will soon be required to register with the new Food Safety Czar before you will be allowed to grow any food on your own property because it has to be “traced.” If you get approval you will be required to purchase only government approved seed stocks.
Read the full text of HR 2749 HERE.

This article will continue with discussions on WWII Victory Gardens and getting ready for your own personal survival garden.

Go to TABLE OF CONTENTS for further links to additional food/gardening articles and other articles on a variety of subjects.

THE NEW FOOD SAFETY CZAR IS ONE SCARY DUDE

The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This man is Michael Taylor and this is no joke.

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply — the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods — secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried “serious health hazards,” and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn’t going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.

When the FDA was constructing their GMO policy in 1991-2, their scientists were clear that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to “different risks” than conventional foods. But official policy declared the opposite, claiming that the FDA knew nothing of significant differences, and declared GMOs substantially equivalent.

This fiction became the rationale for allowing GM foods on the market without any required safety studies whatsoever! The determination of whether GM foods were safe to eat was placed entirely in the hands of the companies that made them — companies like Monsanto, which told us that the PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange were safe.

GMOs were rushed onto our plates in 1996. Over the next nine years, multiple chronic illnesses in the US nearly doubled — from 7% to 13%. Allergy-related emergency room visits doubled between 1997 and 2002 while food allergies, especially among children, skyrocketed. We also witnessed a dramatic rise in asthma, autism, obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, and certain cancers.

Read more HERE.

Read more about MICHAEL TAYLOR.

Read more about Obama's CZARS here.

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45 GOALS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY - 1963

See how many of these goals have become true.

Source: The Information Corner Communist Goals (1963)

Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35

January 10, 1963

Current Communist Goals

EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.

At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:

[From The Naked Communist by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy making positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

Microfilm:
California State University at San Jose Clark Library, Government Floor Phone (408)924-2770 Microfilm Call Number: J 11 .R5 Congressional Record, Vol. 109
88th Congress, 1st Session Appendix Pages A1-A2842 Jan. 9-May 7, 1963 Reel 12

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THE SWISS MILITIA KEPT THEM NEUTRAL DURING WWII

Hitler hated the Swiss. In 1943 Hitler said that “all the rubbish of small nations existing in Europe must be liquidated,” even though that would earn him the title of ‘the butcher of the Swiss.’

But threatening liquidation and butchering is a far cry from delivering - especially since the Swiss since 1291 have been known as masters of the battlefield. In latter days they became renowned as expert riflemen and snipers. That, combined with the formidable barrier of the Swiss Alps and the incomparable Swiss Militia system, caused even Hitler to pause.




Swiss boys are inducted into the Militia and issued arms
and ammunition similar to that shown above when they
reach their 18th birthday. Their arms and ammunition
are kept in the home for near instant mobilization.
 They serve until they are 50 years old but retain
their arms for a lifetime.



In the days before World War II broke out, the Swiss government regarded a German invasion a realistic possibility. In view of the situation many Swiss were at a loss regarding what course to take. General Henri Guisan, Swiss commander-in-chief, rallied his country to support a policy of heavily “Armed Neutrality.”

Switzerland mobilized 850,000 men (out of a population of 4 million), prepared the Reduit (Alpine fortress), as a stronghold to defend even if the lowland cities fell. In the case of an invasion, streets, bridges and tunnels were to be destroyed and the occupation might have cost the Germans dearly.

German maps and documents seized after WWII showed that Hitler referred to a possible invasion as “Case Switzerland,” and on more than one occasion massed troops on the border to invade. But the invasion order never came.

Other European nations fell like dominoes under the onslaught of the German “blitzkreig.” Even the mighty French Army, which many believed was the strongest in Europe, and possibly the world, fell in a mere six weeks. Nazi troops marched proudly into Paris, yet Switzerland stood, like a tiny island in a sea of her enemies, unbowed.

Another reason Hitler didn’t invade Switzerland had little to do with Switzerland itself. Hitler’s primary military objective was the conquest of Russia. According to Andrew Nagorski (2007; The Greatest Battle) Adolf Hitler had declared his intention to hit the USSR on 11 August 1939 to Carl Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nations Commissioner by saying: “Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. I need the Ukraine so that they can't starve us out, as happened in the last war.”
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/italy/ch19391945.html

Most of the Nazi’s 18 million man army was massed on the Eastern Front (as the German war against Russia was called). At least 1 million men would be required to invade Switzerland since the Germans themselves estimated they would suffer 200,000 casualties. Plus, the Germans suffered grievous losses on the Eastern Front and were having enormous problems with underground resistance movements in previously occupied territories that siphoned enormous resources from Hitler’s primary goal.

Since France’s surrender in June 1940, Switzerland was surrounded by German-held or Italian territory. The Swiss government, aware of it's delicate position and it's dependency on imports, considered repeated German surrender demands and rejected them.

The Swiss held true to their core beliefs and maintained their position of heavily armed neutrality. The tiny Swiss nation thus avoided the horrors of war that befell other European nations. In addition to retaining their freedom, the Swiss provided safe haven for approximately 3 million Jews who would otherwise have been murdered by the Nazis.

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The Warsaw (Poland) Ghetto Uprising - a truly heroic epic

WARNING - There are graphic photos in this article

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse."

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill, (1806–1873) was a British philosopher and civil servant. He was an influential contributor to social theory, political theory and political economy. His concept of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.

Hitler’s final solution, the extermination of all Jews, was progressing smoothly until the time came to eliminate the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Even that went smoothly at first.

Between July and September 1942, Nazi authorities deported or murdered about 300,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. SS and German police agencies deported 265,000 to the Treblinka killing center and 11,580 more to forced-labor camps. Another 10,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto itself during deportation proceedings.

Germans granted 35,000 Jews permission to remain in the Ghetto and another 20,000 stayed behind in hiding. Only 55,000 to 60,000 Jews were left alive.

Two Jewish self-defense organizations formed in 1942 in an effort to halt the deportations and genocide - the Jewish Combat Organization, (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or ZOB and the Jewish Military Union, Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy or ZZW.) Their goal seemed unattainable with a mere 750 fighters opposing the entire German war machine. Nevertheless, during the summer of 1942, the ZOB established contact with the Polish military underground movement known as the Home Army. There they obtained a small number of weapons, mostly pistols and explosives, from Home Army contacts.

German SS and police units tried to resume mass deportations of Jews from Warsaw on January 18, 1943. A group of Jewish fighters, armed with pistols, infiltrated a column of Jews being forced to the Umschlagplatz (transfer point) and, at a prearranged signal, broke ranks and fought their German escorts.

Most of these Jewish fighters died in the battle, but the attack sufficiently disoriented the Germans to allow the Jews arranged in columns at the Umschlagplatz a chance to disperse. After seizing 5,000-6,500 ghetto residents to be deported, the Germans suspended further deportations on January 21. Encouraged by the apparent success of the resistance, which they believed may have halted deportations, members of the ghetto population began to construct subterranean bunkers and shelters in preparation for an uprising should the Germans attempt a final deportation of all remaining Jews in the ghetto.



A few victims of Hitler's genocide.


The Germans wanted to begin liquidation of the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover. But when SS and police units entered the ghetto, the streets were deserted. Nearly all of the residents had gone into hiding places or bunkers. The renewal of deportations was the signal for the armed uprising within the ghetto.

Armed with pistols, grenades (many of them homemade), and a few automatic weapons and rifles, the ZOB fighters emerged from their bunkers and stunned the Germans and their auxiliaries on the first day of fighting, forcing the German forces to retreat outside the ghetto wall. German commander SS General Jürgen Stroop reported losing 12 men, killed and wounded, during the first assault on the ghetto. On the third day of the uprising, Stroop's SS and police forces began razing the ghetto to the ground, building by building, to force the remaining Jews out of hiding. Jewish resistance fighters made sporadic raids from their bunkers, but the Germans systematically reduced the ghetto to rubble.

Though German forces broke the organized military resistance within days of the beginning of the uprising, individuals and small groups hid or fought the Germans for almost a month.

Eventually, the Germans won the battle over the Warsaw Ghetto and 42,000 Jews were deported to such notorious killing centers as Tteblinka, where 7,000 Jews were gassed to death almost immediately on their arrival. Most of the remaining 35,000 Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising were sent to Lublin/Majdanek, Poniatowa, Trawniki, Budzyn and Krasnik forced labor camps. All were eventually murdered.

Instead of the three days the Germans estimated it would take to ship all the ghetto residents to killing centers, the stiff resistance held out for more than 30 days and even after that individual Jews hiding in the ruins of the ghetto continued to attack German patrols.
Most of the statistics in the above came from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005188

The United States has fielded one of the most formidable armies in world history. An army many feel it would be useless to resist should they ever be turned against our own citizens. What good would a pistol or hunting rifle be against heavy armor, artillery, tanks and jet fighters, they ask rhetorically? Perhaps the answer can be found in the sheer courage and heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance movement and in the website,
What good is a handgun against an Army?

Remember, the German Army in WWII was also formidable with tanks (panzers), a state-of-the-art air force, artillery and an extremely well trained force of foot soldiers. Yet a force of only 750 Jews, armed mainly with handguns, held that army at bay for more than 30 days. Imagine if there had been 100 such groups…

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