Michael Smuss, Warsaw Ghetto uprising fighter, dies at 99

Michael Smuss who fought Nazi soldiers with Molotov cocktails during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of World War II and became a painter after the war to process his trauma has died He was 99His wife in Israel confirmed his death on Thursday She said Smuss died on October 21 Yad Vashem the World Holocaust Remembrance Center said the funeral would take place on FridaySmuss was born in 1926 in what was then the Free City of Danzig now Gdansk Poland He later moved to Lodz and Warsaw In 1940 he became one of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people forcefully imprisoned within the walls of the Warsaw GhettoThe Warsaw Ghetto initially held some 380000 Jews who were cramped into tight living spaces and at its peak housed about half a million people Disease and starvation were rampant and bodies often appeared on the streetsSmuss joined the Jewish resistance in the ghetto and he was active in an underground group led by Mordechai Anielewicz according to Frank Steffens a family member living in GermanyWhile working to restore helmets Nazi soldiers used in battle Smuss had access to a thinning substance which could also be used to make Molotov cocktails He stole as much of it as he could and passed it to the resistanceWe filled up bottles which were then put up on the roofs of all the houses close to the entrance of the ghetto with the expectation that once theyre going to come well be throwing them down Smuss recounted three years ago in a video for the Sumter County Museum in South Carolina which exhibited his art at the timeWhen the Nazis entered the ghetto on April 19 1943 with the intention of razing it to the ground hundreds of Jews took up arms in a desperate attempt to fight backOn that day Smuss himself threw Molotov cocktails at the Nazi soldiers from the rooftops of the ghetto Paul Diedrich a family member living in Germany who spent a few months with the man in Israel earlier this year told The Associated PressHe was also one of the few resistance fighters to survive the almost one month of fightingSmuss was arrested by Nazi troops and was on his way to Treblinka when he was turned back by the Nazis themselves who needed workers according to Paul Diedrichs account He went on to spend time in other camps before surviving a death march in the spring of 1945After the war was over Smuss went to the US where he started a familyLater he moved to Israel where his process of dealing with the Holocaust trauma began in earnest He took up painting and met his second wife RuthyFrom then on Michael began to process his experiences artistically and went to German schools to show the descendants of his tormentors the unimaginable Diedrich saidDespite his experiences he retained an unmistakable sense of humor he added He grinned and laughed with me even at the age of 99This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever