He killed himself because he could not stand the inaction of the world in the face of Holocaust. The story of Szmul Zygielbojm
On 12 May 1943, in a protest against the world indifference towards Holocaust, Szmul Zygielbojm, a member of the National Council of the Republic of Poland in London, took his own life. Dr. Marcin Urynowicz, a historian from the Institute of National Remembrance, talked on Polish Radio 24 about Zygielbojm’s life and death.
2018-02-20, 19:00
Szmul Zygielbojm committed suicide to protest against the world indifference towards Nazi crimes upon the Jewish people. On 12 May 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising collapsed, and Nazis were liquidating the Jewish district in Warsaw and murdering its residents.
As Dr. Marcin Urynowicz said on Polish Radio 24, the circumstances of Szmul Zugielbojm’s death were dramatic. “At the end of April and at the beginning of May, when Nazi Germans were liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto, his wife and son were there. When Zygielbojm learned about the liquidation of the Ghetto and the fact that Nazis were murdering all people there, he realised that his closest family would not survive, as a single woman with a child had no chances” – said the expert. “Szmul Zygielbojm decided to make such a desperate act as he hoped that his suicide would activate the international community” – adds Dr. Urynowicz.
In his farewell note, he wrote: “I cannot be silent. I cannot continue to live while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them and to their mass graves. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people”.
Polish Radio 24
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