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The Life and Legacy of Holocaust Hero Simcha Rotem

(Jerusalem Post) Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman - Schools across Israel held a memorial day on Monday in memory of Simcha Rotem, presumed to be the last survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who passed away on Saturday. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, 1943, was an act of Jewish resistance to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to death camps. Many of the Jewish fighters were killed in action. Rotem was one of the few that survived by escaping the burning Warsaw Ghetto through sewage tunnels. After the war, Rotem moved to Israel and became involved in bringing illegal immigrants who had survived the war to British Mandatory Palestine. He was 19 in the Warsaw Ghetto and lived to be 94. Screenwriter Miri R. Wilf spent years interviewing Rotem for a feature film that has yet to be released. Wilf said Rotem and the other fighters "realized at one point that the one choice they were facing was what kind of death to have. They did not think they were going to survive. They decided they were going to fight for one reason: so that it would be written in the history books that the Jews fought." Rotem said, "It's time that we stop counting on others to do our job....If we want a world where Jews don't get massacred, we have to make damn sure that those who kill Jews pay the highest price."
2018-12-28 00:00:00
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