To the editor:

In “2day’s History Journal” for April 19, it was stated that on this day in World War II, “tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but futile battle against Nazi forces.”

These numbers are misleading. It is estimated that around 60,000 Jews were left in the Ghetto at this time, but they were not all armed. In fact, only about 600 to 800 did the fighting. They were members of the Jewish Fighting Organization and the Jewish Military Assn., armed mainly with pistols, rifles and Molotov cocktails (bottles of petrol with a lighted rag, whose explosion could incapacitate a tank).

These heroic fighters resisted a heavily armed German-led force, including Latvians and Ukrainians, for almost four weeks, until May 16. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was the most significant armed Jewish action against the Germans in World War II.

Anna M. Cienciala,

Lawrence