The artillery shell was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1992 by the Muzeum Wojska Polskiego.
Cylindrical, cast iron, hollow artillery shell with straight sides and a closed rear end. Near the rear is a narrow and shallow firing groove encircling the shell. Applied above the firing groove is a fixed copper band (called a rotating band) with short ribs encircling the shell. Stamped across the middle of the flat bottom is a series of partially illegible numbers. The top rim of the shell is jagged and broken. The shell is heavily corroded and the rotating band has wear from use.
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overall: Height: 7.000 inches (17.78 cm) | Diameter: 2.875 inches (7.303 cm)
Remains of a 75 mm artillery shell, found among ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto in the 1960s. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and Warsaw on September 29, after subjecting the city to heavy artillery bombardment. Warsaw had the largest Jewish population in Europe before the war. On October 12, 1940, German authorities in Warsaw decreed the establishment of a 1.3 square mile Jewish ghetto and required over 400,000 Jews from the city and nearby towns to relocate there. Between July 22 and September 12, 1942, approximately 265,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka killing center, and another 35,000 were killed inside the ghetto. That October, Jewish resistance groups made contact with the Polish Home Army, a Polish underground military movement that supplied them with a small number of weapons, including rifles, pistols, and grenades. On April 19, 1943, the resistance groups within the ghetto fought back against the scheduled liquidation, using hundreds of constructed bunkers around the ghetto. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted a month before the German military suppressed the resistance, razed the ghetto, and transported the remaining inhabitants to forced-labor camps, and killing centers. On July 19, 1943, the SS established Warschau concentration camp on the ruins of the former Warsaw ghetto, which camp prisoners were assigned to demolish and clean up. The impending arrival of Soviet forces led to the camp’s closure in July 1944. A second uprising erupted in Warsaw in August 1, 1944, which was defeated by German forces on October 2. The Soviet army liberated the city on January 17, 1945.
75 mm artillery shell found in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto