Warsaw (Poland), 23 October (LaPresse/AP) – Michael Smuss has died at the age of 99. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in World War II, he fought Nazi soldiers with Molotov cocktails and after the war became a painter to process his trauma. His wife in Israel confirmed his death on Thursday, stating that he passed away on 21 October. Yad Vashem announced that the funeral will be held on Friday. Smuss 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 hundreds of thousands of Jews forcibly imprisoned within the walls of the Warsaw ghetto. Smuss joined the Jewish resistance in the ghetto and was active in an underground group led by Mordechai Anielewicz, according to Frank Steffens, a family member living in Germany. While working on restoring helmets used by Nazi soldiers in battle, Smuss had access to a thinner that could also be used to make Molotov cocktails. He stole as much as he could and passed it on to the resistance.
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