I imagined that I was the last Jew in the ghetto, or in all of Warsaw.

From Jewish World, Last surviving fighter in Warsaw Ghetto uprising dies at 94.

The last surviving fighter from the doomed 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising by Jewish partisans against the Nazis died Saturday in Israel aged 94, President Reuven Rivlin said.

Simcha Rotem, who went by the nom-de-guerre Kazik, served in the Jewish Fighting Organization that staged the uprising as the Nazis conducted mass deportations of residents to the death camps.

“This evening, we part from Kozik, the young man who became Simcha Rotem, the last of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. Kozik went back to the ghetto in 1942, at the age of 18, three months after his parents sent him to Radom so he could escape the fate of most Polish Jews. He heard what was happening in the ghetto and had to be there," Rivlin said in a statement.

"When he got there, he found himself wandering amongst the ruins, searching in vain for voices and faces. He only found death and destruction. ‘I sat in those ruins,' he said in his testimony, ‘not knowing exactly where I was, but I knew I was in the ghetto. ….I imagined that I was the last Jew in the ghetto, or in all of Warsaw.’

"Kozik was not the last Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto. He joined the uprising and helped save dozens of fighters, including two of its leaders, Antek Zukerman and Zvia Lubetkin," Rivlin said.

"When he immigrated to Israel after the war, Kozik established a home and a family and served the country in a range of positions that he could only have dreamed of when he sat, head in his hands, desperate and terrified in the ruins of the ghetto. The man who thought he was the last Jew in the ghetto and in all of Warsaw, became the last living fighter of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Mila 18 by Leon Uris made a tremendous impression on me when I read it at age twelve or fourteen.