The story of the uprising is now well known. In October of 1940. the Nazi Governor of the Warsaw District published the decree establishing the ghetto and within a month the Nazis had squeezed some 450.000 Jews. a third of the citys population. in an area of 100 city blocks. less than a 20th of the citys population. Disease and executions quickly took their tollmore than half of the ghettos populationbut this means of decima-. tion was too slow for the Nazi plans and in the summer of 1942 more drastic measures were instituted. deportation to concentration camp ovens. For 2 months. this "action" continued. accounting for 300.000 Jews from the original ghetto population and those who had been shipped there from other parts of Europe to fill the places of earlier casualties and to swell the ghetto population. Early in 1943 a second deportation "action" commenced to effect the final "liquidation" of the ghetto. This Nazi effort was countered by surprise resistance from defense groups which had been organized within the ghetto. armed with weapons donated by Polish resistance groups. purchased through the black market. andto a large extentmanufactured by clandestine factories within the walls of the ghetto itself. The Nazis withdrew. regrouped their forces. and returned in April. finally overwhelming the last defenders through the use of air and artillery bombardment. overwhelming force and by fire.
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deportation