Eighty years ago in April-May 1943 one of the most inspiring moments in world and Jewish history was unfolding. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising had virtually no chance of success but had at its core a moral and ethical mission. As the Jewish Fighting Organisation (in Polish ZOB) announced to the world: "All of us will probably perish in the fight…it is a fight for our human dignity and honour, as well as yours."

In November 1940, the German occupation in Poland moved to the ghetto stage of its plans for Jews, and the Warsaw Ghetto was created and walled in. At the height there were nearly 350,000 Jews, one-third of Warsaw’s population, forced into 2.5% of its area. The massive overcrowding and drastic shortage of food, sanitation and medicines meant that there was a large death rate from disease and malnutrition. Nonetheless, the Jews were not dying fast enough and Nazis began clearing the residents to death camps; by early 1943, there were only some 60,000 left in the ghetto.

When the Nazis surrounded the ghetto in Spring 1943 for the final round up, ZOB resisted by force. ZOB was a mix of Zionist and socialist organisations, with big differences in politics, their point of unity being that all Jews, regardless of their political outlook, would end in Auschwitz. ZOB was completely outnumbered and outgunned as they only had a few rifles and pistols (smuggled into the ghetto), a few grenades and home made bombs and Molotov cocktails.

The German army, with thousands of troops, machine guns, tanks and some air support, was startled and withdrew, with dozens of casualties and a damaged tank. The uprising held out against the German army for some five weeks. It tied down thousands of German troops, meaning they could neither be deployed in the war or used to hunt Jews. Goebbels (the Nazi propaganda chief) fumes in his diary about Jews fighting back and with captured German weapons!

It was an inspiration understood by some of the leaders of the Polish resistance, one of whom commented that ‘the blood of the ghetto fighters was not shed in vain…it gave birth to an intensified struggle against the fascist invader’. By the middle of May, the Nazis decided to burn the ghetto to the ground to avoid casualties. Some survivors fled through the sewers; most were captured and killed.

The ghetto fighters left us a universal message of humanism and hope in the face of barbarism. The Manifesto to the Poles stands out as one of the greatest appeals of the 20th Century, ‘we, the slaves of the Ghetto convey heartfelt greetings to you…All of us will probably perish in the fight…it is a fight for our freedom, as well as yours; for our human dignity and national honour, as well as yours! We shall avenge the gory deeds of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Majdanek’.

This is a message that we need to remember as we confront racism and fascism wherever and whenever it raises its head.

Henry Maitles is Emeritus Professor of Education, University of the West of Scotland