On 19 July 1942,
SS Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered
Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the
SS commander in charge of the
General Government, to carry out the 'resettlement of the whole Jewish population of the General Government by 31 December 1942.' Three days later on 22 July 1942 the German SS, headed by the "Resettlement Commissioner"
Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, called a meeting of the Ghetto Jewish Council
Judenrat and informed its leader
Adam Czerniaków about the "resettlement to the East". Czerniakow, who committed suicide after learning of the plan, was replaced by
Marek Lichtenbaum. The population of the Ghetto was not informed about the real state of affairs. Only by the end of 1942 did they understand that the deportations, overseen by the
Jewish Ghetto Police, were to the
Treblinka death camp and not for the
purpose of resettlement. The sheer death toll among the Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto during the
Grossaktion would have been difficult to compare even with the liquidation of the Ghetto in the spring of the next year during and after the
Ghetto Uprising, during which around 50,000 people were killed. The
Grossaktion resulted in the death of five times as many victims. The actual razing of the ghetto did not result in the destruction of the Jewish population of Warsaw as much as had the
Grossaktion of the summer of 1942. For eight weeks the rail shipments of Jews to Treblinka went on without stopping: 100 people to a cattle truck, 5,000 to 6,000 each day, including hospital patients and orphanage children. Dr
Janusz Korczak, a famed educator, went with them in August 1942. He was offered a chance to escape from the deportations by Polish friends and admirers, but he chose instead to share the fate of his people. On arrival at Treblinka, victims were stripped of their clothes and directed to one of ten chambers disguised as showers. There they were gassed to death in batches of 200 with the use of monoxide gas (
Zyklon B was introduced at
Auschwitz some time later). In September 1942, new gas chambers were built at Treblinka, which could kill as many as 3,000 people in just 2 hours. Civilians were forbidden to approach the area. Many of the remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto decided to fight, and many were helped by the Polish underground. The
Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB, ) was formed in October 1942 and tasked with resisting any future deportations. It was led by 24 year–old
Mordechai Anielewicz. Meanwhile, the
Polish Home Army,
Armia Krajowa (AK), began to smuggle weapons, ammunition and supplies into the Ghetto for
the uprising. Von Sammern-Frankenegg was relieved of duty by
Heinrich Himmler on April 17, 1943, and replaced with SS- und Polizeiführer
Jürgen Stroop. Stroop took over from von Sammern-Frankenegg because of his unsuccessful offensive against the Ghetto underground. Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, in charge of the
Grossaktion, was court-martialed by Himmler on 24 April 1943 for his ineptitude and sent to
Croatia, where he died in a partisan ambush. Jürgen Stroop was awarded the
Iron Cross First Class by the supreme commander of the
Wehrmacht, Field Marshal General
Wilhelm Keitel, for his "murder expedition" (
Alfred Jodl). After the war, Stroop was tried for war crimes by the Americans, convicted, and sentenced to death. His execution was not carried out; instead, he was handed over to the Polish authorities for re-trial. He was again convicted and sentenced to death in
Poland and executed at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto on 8 September 1951. ==Timeline of events==