A friend of mine in Warsaw emailed me earlier today with the sad news that Marek Edelman (zichrono livracha) - the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising - has passed away at the age of ninety.
In 1942, Edelman was one of the founders of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) which united Bundists, Zionists, communists and others to confront the Nazi threat. The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto the following year was the first act of mass civilian resistance in Nazi-occupied Poland - a salient fact that should be remembered by those who portray the victims of the Holocaust as having passively accepted their fate.
When German troops began their operation to liquidate the Ghetto in April 1943, they met with a fierce response from the resistance fighters. Here’s a good account of what happened:
ZOB commander Mordecai Anielewicz (who was a leader of the Socialist-Zionist Hashomer Ha’tzair movement - BC) commanded the Jewish fighters in the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Armed with pistols, grenades (many of them homemade), and a few automatic weapons and rifles, the ZOB fighters stunned the Germans and their auxiliaries on the first day of fighting, forcing the German forces to retreat outside the ghetto wall. German commander SS General Jürgen Stroop reported losing 12 men, killed and wounded, during the first assault on the ghetto. On the third day of the uprising, Stroop’s SS and police forces began razing the ghetto to the ground, building by building, to force the remaining Jews out of hiding. Jewish resistance fighters made sporadic raids from their bunkers, but the Germans systematically reduced the ghetto to rubble. The German forces killed Anielewicz and those with him in an attack on the ZOB command bunker on 18 Mila Street, which they captured on May 8.
Though German forces broke the organized military resistance within days of the beginning of the uprising, individuals and small groups hid or fought the Germans for almost a month.
At the annual memorial ceremony for the Uprising in 2008, Edelman paid a simple, moving tribute to his fallen comrades: “Remember them all — boys and girls — 220 altogether, not too many to remember their faces, their names.”
For Edelman himself, the struggle against totalitarian rule did not end with the defeat of the Nazis. After the war, with Poland under a communist regime, he established himself as a cardiologist in Lodz. In 1968, when the communist regime embarked on a campaign of antisemitic persecution officially dressed as “anti-Zionism,” Edelman’s wife and son fled the purges for Paris. Edelman could not abandon Poland though: he stayed put. In the 1980s, he became an activist with the Solidarity movement and was imprisoned when the regime of General Jaruzelski imposed martial law.
Marek Edelman led an extraordinary life, one that is humbling to those of us who can only marvel at what he survived and what he achieved. Just as he exhorted us to remember the valiant fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, so must we now remember him in the same spirit.
I did not know about his post WW2 record, it is impressive in it’s own right. I do recall that he himself was not a Zionist, and the union he and Anielewicz led, was based on common socialist philosophies, right wing groups such as Beitar fought separately in a different part of the ghetto.
I read (as I was young!) the book ,entitled “The Wall” (Name of autor I have forgotten) and it made an overwhelming impression on me. Since then my commitment and compassion with the vicissitudes of the jewisch people in the past and present was evoked.
I will always remember the courage and spirit of him and his comrades,may God bless them.
Edelman was also instrumental in supporting intervention to stop the slaughter of innocent civilians in Bosnia.He signed petitions, wrote article and helped rally European support for stopping Milosevic,Mladic et al.
Marek Edelman should certainly be remembered.
One thing that can be mentioned is that are some anti-Zionists who would like to believe, and this was a theme of the anti-Zionist play Perdition, that the Zionists were not interesting in fighting Hitler. The argument runs along the lines that maybe some Zionists did fight Hitler but this was in spite of their Zionism not because of it. As far as this warped section of the anti-Zionist community are concerned, the Zionists collaborated with Nazism and did not fight against it.
This is of course nonsense, Zionists such as Mordecai Anielewicz, an activist in Hashomer Hatzair bravely fought in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was not just the socialist Zionists amongst the Zionists in the Warsaw Ghetto that fought. As Moshe Arens points out (Israel Affairs, Vol.14, No.1, January 2008):
Even in the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) they were delighted to hear of the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto. An editorial in Davur in October 1942 headlined “The Zionist Underground” mentioned “There is also quiet bravery…the defense of honour….There is dedication to the people fighting.” In April 1943 an editorial in one paper commented on the Jewish resistance “An eternal symbol of a people which refuses to be destroyed by the Gentile – the symbol of life. The honour and the glory of this heroism, enacted on the front line of the war against Nazism, has perhaps no parallel.” A further note of pride of the Warsaw ghetto uprising was expressed in Hapoel Hatzair in an article entitled “Defence Filled With Glory.” As far as the editor, who wrote the article, was concerned it proved “Jews are not always led like sheep to the slaughter.”
I have taken the above examples of press reports from the following essays:
Yechiam Weitz, “The Yishuv’s Response to the Destruction of European Jewry, 1942-1943″ Studies in Zionism, Vol. 8, No. 2 Autumn 1987 and
Yoav Gelber, “Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry, 1943-1944,” Studies in Zionism, Issue 7. Spring 1983.
None of this takes away from the Bundists who were very active in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The vast majority of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were wiped out. Edelman was one of the few who managed to survive and as a result we have his published account, The Ghetto Fights, a memoir that is well worth reading for anyone interested in this terrible period of history.
Read also Marek Edelman The last Bundist By Moshe Arens
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118610.html
Thank you Ben for this nice appreciation.
Michael Ezra’s comment above is interesting and important. The myth, that Lenni Brenner in particular is responsible for spreading, that Zionists did not resist fascism is clearly false. Many anti-Zionists on the left, such as the SWP who published Edelman’s wonderful book, used his Bundism and anti-Zionism as a stick with which to beat Zionism, which is deeply insulting to the socialist Zionists and others who fought alongside him in the Ghetto.
Readers might be interested in this post I wrote about some of the Zionists and others who fought fascism in Spain: http://poumista.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/jews-versus-stalinists-in-the-spanish-civil-war/
Edelman, a true hero.
Today at 11 CET was Marek Edelman’s funeral. Day was sunny, sky was blue, the jazz band played “When the Saints Go Marching In.” on our way to jewish cemetery along Mordechaj Anielewicz Str. But it was very sad day. Marek Edelman certainly went to heaven even if it does not exist for He cannot go away forever.