In commemoration of the 76th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, 1943, Ambassador Mosbacher attended official commemorations organized by the Jewish Association for Culture and Social Affairs and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and laid a wreath at the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument in downtown Warsaw. Earlier in the day, Ambassador Mosbacher and the U.S. Embassy honored the heroism of the Ghetto’s fighters by participating in the “Daffodils” social and educational campaign led by the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Since 2013, the “Daffodils” social and educational campaign has promoted awareness of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with over 1,000 institutions across Poland annually taking part in the handing out of paper daffodils, a traditional symbol of the heroism of the Ghetto fighters.
On the eve of the 76th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Embassy personnel attended a music concert held by the POLIN Museum to pay tribute to the heroic musicians from the Jewish Symphony Orchestra who played while interned in the Warsaw Ghetto, including Josima Feldschuh, an 11-year old soloist pianist who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 but later died of tuberculosis. The concert on April 18 featured the 17 year-old U.S.-born Lauren Zhang, who won the BBC‘s Young Musician Contest in 2018, performing alongside the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra under the baton of Gabriel Chmura. The Embassy is a proud supporter of the POLIN Museum’s music and other programs.
This week the Embassy also selected six teachers from schools around Poland to participate in a U.S. Department of State-funded Holocaust teacher training in the United States this summer, in cooperation with the POLIN Museum and the U.S.-based Association of Holocaust Organizations. Since the inception of this program, the United States has brought more than 250 teachers–including over 80 from Poland–from approximately thirteen countries to the United States for training seminars.
The Embassy would like to take this opportunity to remember and solemnly honor those who sacrificed their lives for freedom in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.