After the Uprising: Life Among the Ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto
Even after the 16th of May, 1943, a number of undetected bunkers remained in the area of the former ghetto. It seems that hundreds of Jews still lived among the ruins of the ghetto, even after its official liquidation. Due to the harsh conditions and the presence of Germans in the area, only a small number of these Jews managed to survive for any extended period of time. Among them were also some members of the Jewish fighting units, such as Josef Farber and Zachariah Artstein of the Jewish Fighting Organization, who continued their resistance activities for many weeks.
6 June 1943
We would spend the entire day lying on our cots. Only the scouts who had ventured far afield remained outside, thoroughly checking the terrain. Across from us stood the ruins of the Jewish hospital, charred bed frames hanging from its soot blackened rooms. The Jewish part of Gęsia Street was covered with mounds of debris from the building which had been blown up. Everything was as still as a cemetery, a silence which was only broken in the mornings, when the German sappers paraded through the street… In an attic we come across dead bodies, flies swarming all over them… Nearby we find bags of rusks and flasks of water. We had no way to try to ascertain who these people had been. Arieh (Leon) Neiberg, The Last Ones, p. 130-131
In the summer of 1943 the Germans brought forced Jewish laborers from Auschwitz to dismantle the remnants of the ghetto's houses. In September of the same year, armed German guardsmen led a group of Polish workers to the ruins of the ghetto, and instructed them to blow up and demolish the frames of the buildings which were still standing. In this manner many of the last survivors of the Jews of Warsaw finally met their end.
Now, when only a small handful remained, once again we didn't have enough fighting power. With the systematic destruction of the remaining buildings our possibilities of hiding drastically shrank. Those who were in bunkers might one day wake to find themselves buried under the rubble of collapsed houses… Our provisions were almost gone, as was our ammunition… From September we were cut of entirely from the Aryan zone, hunted day and night by the Germans and cast out, as it were, by our Jewish brethren. We became ghosts, nothing less, nothing more.Arieh (Leon) Neiberg, The Last Ones, p. 183-184
Until November 1943 small groups of Jews remained in the ghetto, cut off from each other and in dire straits. The harsh weather conditions, the lack of food, and the presence of Germans meant there was no possibility of life. In isolated cases some Jews succeeded in reaching the Aryan side of the city. Of Neiberg's group, which had consisted of 45 people after the liquidation of the ghetto, only four survived. On the 26th of September, more than five months after the beginning of the ghetto uprising, Neiberg and his friends managed to steal across to the Aryan side.
