Warsaw Doe was a Jewish individual who was killed during the German occupation of Poland in World War II when the Warsaw Ghetto was destroyed by German forces. Their remains were found nearly 80 years later during a water main break in the basement of a nonprofit foundation.
Case[]
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising[]
In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and occupied it with its control being split between Germany and the Soviet Union. Years later in the summer of 1942, the Grosskation Warsaw was executed by Nazi forces and began removing the Jewish population from the ghettos of Warsaw through the use of daily round-ups to be transported to concentration camps and murdered. In 1943, after the deportation of an estimated 250,000 Jewish citizens, the remaining Jewish population of the Warsaw Ghetto began to build bunkers and sneak weapons into them when possible. A Jewish military union was formed and began to train to fight back against the Nazi forces with their cause only becoming stronger after a small uprising by victims of the roundup was partially successful in its cause and garnered support from Polish resistance groups.
The total uprising was enacted on the 19th of April when the remaining occupants of the Ghetto fought back against SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who commanded the police, resulting in Stroop ordering his forces to burn down the Ghetto block by block in retaliation. This effort by Stroop succeeded a month later on May 16th, with the Warsaw Ghetto in shambles alongside the deaths of 13,000 Jewish occupants with most of their deaths being attributed to suffocation or being burned alive. There were only fewer than 150 German casualties in the conflict, and the remaining survivors of the Ghetto were either executed within the ruins or placed in the Warsaw concentration camp complex, which was erected over the ruins of the Ghetto. Meanwhile, German SS officers would continue combing the ruins for survivors.
The German occupation of Poland was disintegrated at the end of World War II in 1945, with an estimated 5.47 to 5.67 million Polish casualties attributed to the brutal rule of the Nazi party. The rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto was rebuilt on top of after the war, resulting in the district of Muranow.
Discovery[]
In the summer of 2021, a water main break erupted in the building of Marek Slusarz's community nonprofit organization located in the district of Muranow. Slusarz would enter the basement of the establishment alongside a plumber to search for the source of the break, only for the men to stumble upon human bones. The Polish police and Jewish community were quickly contacted upon the discovery with the knowledge that Muranow was once the Warsaw Ghetto. The victim is believed to have been killed while hiding from the razing of the Ghetto.
On the 14th of September that year, on the eve of the sacred Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the decedent was laid to rest in Warsaw's Jewish Cemetery covered in soil from Israel alongside Jewish leaders reciting Kaddish, a Jewish prayer for the dead. The decedent's funeral ceremony was attended by Poland's chief rabbi alongside other Jewish leaders, Slusarz himself, a member of the Israeli Embassy, and Wojciech Kolarksi, a Polish secretary of state. No leads as to the decedent's identity outside of their status have been found as of September 2021.
Sources[]
- ABC News
- The Chicago Sun-Times
- AP News
- U.S. News & World Report
- 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Wikipedia GRAPHIC POSTMORTEM WARNING
- German Occupation of Poland on Wikipedia GRAPHIC POSTMORTEM WARNING