On this day in 1943, Rabbi Menachem Ziemba was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto.Rabbi Ziemba was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1883. He was raised by his grandfather who was a Hassidic rabbi. As a young man, Ziemba was a Torah scholar but struggled his entire life to make a decent living. He was married by 18 years old and wrote over 10,000 pages of Torah thoughts over the next few decades while teaching at Mesivta Yeshiva. Because of his brilliance, Ziemba was offered the role of the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, but he turned down the offer. However, at his rabbi’s request, Ziemba took on more responsibility within the community and was involved in Agudat Yisroel, an Ashkenazi Orthodox group. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Ziemba was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. The ghetto covered about one and a half square miles and was home to 400,000 Jewish people. During his time in the ghetto, Ziemba was a source of happiness and hope, despite the loss of his wife. He held Torah studies, smuggled kosher provisions, and continued to teach about Judaism. During Sukkot in the ghetto, Ziemba broke open the roof of his apartment so that people could fulfill the mitzvah of sitting in the Sukkah. The Jewish kapos, or the prisoners assigned administrative tasks by the SS, in the ghetto reported him to the council of authorities and he was forced to move. Rabbi Ziemba was a person who favored passive resistance to the Nazis over open rebellion. However, when mass deportations from the ghetto killed thousands of Jews, Ziemba recognized that there was no way to continue to be passive in this situation. So he began to support an uprising by donating money to purchase weapons. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on April 19, 1943, when SS troops entered the ghetto for liquidation on Erev Pesach, or the first night of Passover. The uprising continued for months and Ziemba was killed when German troops lit a portion of the ghetto on fire and then shot him when he attempted to flee the building he was in. After his death, Ziemba’s family was taken to Treblinka’s death camp, where they were killed. In 1958, his body was exhumed and he was flown to Israel where he was laid to rest. May Rabbi Ziemba's memory, his family's, and of all of the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising be a blessing