Chaike Belchatowska Spiegel (November 11, 1920 – March 26, 2002), also called Helen,[1] was a Jewish resistance fighter and one of the last survivors in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis.
[1] Due to the overrun of Poland in 1939 by the armies of Nazi Germany, there was a start of a systematic deportation of Polish Jews and Spiegel opposed this.
[1] She joined the Jewish Fighting Organization (known by the Polish acronym ZOB) in January 1943[2] after she escaped from the train that was taking her to Treblinka death camp in November 1942.
[1] On the first night of the Jewish Feast of Passover on April 19, 1943, under the command of Col. Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, a Nazi force entered the ghetto to resume deportation but they were repulsed by ZOB and other resistance groups thereby suffering heavy losses.
[1] An estimate of 7,000 Jews were killed during the fighting and 30,000 were deported to death camps while fifty to one hundred Jewish resistance fighters escaped to the woods outside of Warsaw.