may 11, 1943 - Szmul Zygielbojm died by suicide

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Szmul Zygielbojm was a political activist, member of the Central Committee of the Bund – Jewish socialist party. In 1940 he left for Brussels and then – through
France – travelled to the United States. In 1942 he was appointed a member of the National Council of the Republic of Poland in London. He tried to attract the attention of key western politicians to the tragedy of Polish Jews in the country occupied by Nazi Germany. After the defeat of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, convinced that his mission had been a failure, he committed suicide. Before dying he wrote farewell letters – to his brother Fajweł, a Bund representative in the United States as well as to emigration authorities of Poland. In the latter he said:
"I cannot remain silent or alive when last representatives of the Jewish people are perishing in Poland, and I am one of them. My comrades in the Warsaw Ghetto died with weapons in their hands, in their last heroic effort. I did not have the chance to perish like them, together with them. But I belong to them, to their mass graves [...]. I intend my death to become a sign of my deepest protest against the passivity with which the world is looking at us and allows the eradication of the Jewish people”.

11th/12th 1943

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