Battle of Muranów Square
After the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, carried out by the Nazis in the summer of 1942, about 300 thousand Jews were forcefully deported to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered there.
The fighters did not reach an agreement, but later, for pragmatic reasons, embarked on limited military cooperation, dividing up zones of influence in defense of the ghetto area in the event of another entry of German troops.
[5] The ŻZW units in Muranów Square had at their disposal an excellently equipped arsenal, located in an abandoned house at 7 Muranowska Street.
A Jewish historian and an eyewitness Emanuel Ringelblum, who visited their quarters, was impressed by the arsenal of weapons they had gathered, he writes about the preparations for the uprising in his diary.
[15] On the night of April 19–20, the command of the ŻZW held a meeting, during which it was decided to distribute the reserve of weapons among all the insurgents, so that it would not fall into the hands of the Nazis in case they acquired the arsenal.
Some units withdrew that day outside the ghetto wall, trying, with the help of the Polish organization "Miecz i Pług" (Sword and Plough), to get out of Warsaw to a forest near Otwock.
According to Władysław Zajdler "Żarski", on April 27 the battle on Muranów Square was also assisted by an 18-person squad of the "W" squadron of the Security Corps (an autonomous organization associated with the Home Army), commanded by Henryk Iwański "Bystry".
[18] According to Zajdler, on April 27 Poles got there through a tunnel, with replenishment of weapons, ammunition and food, but due to the complete exhaustion of insurgents they replaced the ŻZW unit under the command of David Apfelbaum on the key position between the ruins in the area of the no longer existing Muranów Square and Nalewki Street (today's Bohaterów Getta Street), repelling German and Latvian attacks supported by armored weapons.
[19] Żarski relates:"On April 26, 1943, through a liaison officer of the Jewish Military Union, we received a report that the commander of the section Dawid Moryc Apfelbaum was injured and demanded help in the form of weapons and ammunition.
The group was supposed to join the fight, repel the Nazis from the vicinity of the tunnel and help to move the wounded women and children to the "Aryan" side.
[20]Three subordinates of Iwański, his brother and two of his sons, were allegedly killed in heavy all-day defensive battles, as well as ten Jews, among them Dawid Apfelbaum.
[20][21] According to some studies, "together with ŻZW, on that day a unit of the Security Corps under the command of Captain Iwański (...) fights in the ghetto, suffering some losses (including the death of his son)".
[22] Iwański's accounts were also confirmed by Tadeusz Bednarczyk "Bednarz" - a messenger between ŻZW and Security Coprs, who was to deliver weapons personally to Jews.
[24] According to Dariusz Libionka and Laurence Weinbaum, not only did Zajdler falsify the accounts about his participation in the ghetto fights in order to obtain veteran privileges, but also did Iwański.
Libionka and Weinbaum, referring to other inaccuracies (e.g. the date of the founding of the Security Corps was not until the autumn of 1943), claim that the accounts of Iwański and Zajdler are untrue.
Today we successfully discovered and executed one of the founders and leaders of a Jewish-Polish military organization.”[33][34]The battle is commemorated by the MSI (Municipal Information System) plaque on the building at 1 Muranowska Street.
