Marek Edelman, Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Leader

[grunion]

The last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance movement (he preferred not to have it known as an "uprising," because he thought that word implied that there was at least a little hope of victory, which he knew there was not) died yesterday at the age of 87.

Because of his contacts with the Polish Underground, he knew that the Nazi story of "resettlement" was just a lie, a pretext to get Warsaw's Jews to passively board a train to their death. As a worker in a ghetto hospital, he was able to use that pretext to help save lives - bringing documentation to the boarding sites that one resident or another was sick and thus was not fit enough to survive resettlement. The Nazis kept up the charade by giving him a certain number of exemptions for sick people, which he used, heartwrenchingly, to select those which would be most useful for the resistance movement, denying the pleas of mothers begging him to save their children.

Having been a resident of Warsaw for several years leading up to its ghettoization by the Nazis, Edelman was aware of the escape routes and secret passageways which he put to good use, allowing his team of 220 to keep the Nazis at bay for 45 days in their attempt at final liquidation of the ghetto. It permitted him and his unit to escape encirclement at the end and survive the war.

He remained in Poland where he became a renown cardiologist, and authored a cardiology textbook, until official anti-Semitism drove him out of his practice in the 1960s. Subsequently he became active in the Solidarity movement.

In one account of his life that I read, he shunned the description of the resistance movement as "heroes." "These people went quietly and with dignity,” he told his biographer, speaking of the millions killed in the Nazi gas chambers. “It is an awesome thing, when one is going so quietly to one’s death. It is definitely more difficult than to go out shooting.”

“God is trying to blow out the candle, and I’m quickly trying to shield the flame, taking advantage of his brief inattention,” he said. “To keep the flame flickering, even if only for a little while longer than he would wish.”

[Simon39759]

I never heard of his name before, but it sounds like, regardless of his own opinion, he was a true hero.
I will have to dig up a biography.

[grunion]

Edelman became politically conscious as a member of the Jewish Labor Federation (The "Bund") before the war. Yet his frequent clashes with party authorities in Poland after the war caused him much personal strife, as he became a devout anti-Stalinist, spent some time in prison, and later, was a leader in the Solidarity movement.

Edelman had an ongoing antipathy with Zionists who resented him for remaining in Poland, where they considered the Jewish community dead, rather than emigrating to Israel. Though he criticized the terrorist tactics of some Palestinian organizations, he condemned the Israeli treatment of Palestinians up until his death. He resented the Zionist tendency to brand the Warsaw Ghetto resistance as a model of Jewish liberation that led to the creation of the Jewish State, and declared that the model of ghetto fighters in Warsaw more closely resembled the Palestinians than the Israelis.

[parky76]

He resented the Zionist tendency to brand the Warsaw Ghetto resistance as a model of Jewish liberation that led to the creation of the Jewish State, and declared that the model of ghetto fighters in Warsaw more closely resembled the Palestinians than the Israelis.

well, then I'm sure many Zionists wish the Nazis hadn't missed one.

[gtc]

I very much doubt that but I guess there are crazies everywhere.

[UnrepentantSinner]

I hadn't heard of him before but after hearing his story was saddened by his passing. That was tempered by being glad he passed away in 2009 rather than killed in 1943.

[Skeptic]

well, then I'm sure many Zionists wish the Nazis hadn't missed one.

Take me, for example. I, naturally, wish a cruel death on everybody on this forum who disagrees with me.

(What's wrong with you?)

[parky76]

Take me, for example. I, naturally, wish a cruel death on everybody on this forum who disagrees with me.


you're a Truther????

:p

[Skeptic]

You say "many zionists" think "The Nazis missed one" because he wasn't a zionist.

Go ahead. Find one such zionist.

P.S.

You do know that, a year or two ago, Israel's largest newspaper had a four-page, very considerate abd polite (from both sides), interview with him?

So I guess we scratched the workers in that newspaper as being some of the "many" zionists who wish he were killed by the Nazis.

But that still leaves a few million Israelies, some of them with nasty zionist tendencies; who knows what evil lurks in their heart?

[pakeha]

Thank you, Marc Edelman (what an apt sirname) for a life dedicated to human dignity.

[Eddie Dane]

Respect.

[Cleon]

*sigh* Sad news indeed. My grandfather knew Edelman, as part of a documentation project he was working on. As someone interested in the Warsaw resistance and the Bund, I'd read a lot about him myself. The world has lost someone very special. :(

(parky and Skeptic - take it somewhere else, FFS.)

[dropzone]

There's a helluva movie in the Warsaw Ghetto resistance.

[UnrepentantSinner]

There's a helluva movie in the Warsaw Ghetto resistance.

I didn't watch all of it, but the parts of Uprising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprising_(film)) I caught were well done and well acted.

[grunion]

As a child I watched the movie Ulica Graniczna (Border Street) which told the story of the Warsaw Ghetto through the eyes of children growing up in Warsaw. It was made shortly after the war, so suffers from some dated production values, but I recall being deeply affected by it. Not a documentary by any means but a good story.

[dropzone]

I've heard of a couple of sisters who played on their blonde, blue-eyed, kinda-stupid looks to gather intel from the Germans who thought they were Polack bimbos one could speak in front of with impunity. They gave a LOT to the cause, but I don't know their names nor their fates. Anyone know who I'm talking about?

[Cleon]

I didn't watch all of it, but the parts of Uprising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprising_%28film%29) I caught were well done and well acted.

It wasn't bad, really, but it was a bit difficult to take it seriously; those ghetto-confined Jews looked awfully healthy and well-fed.

Having Hank Azaria play Mordechai Anielewicz was like having Danny Devito play George Washington. It just did not compute.

At the same time, though, I thought David Schwimmer was pretty good. I was surprised by his ability to act.

[fleabeetle]

I've heard of a couple of sisters who played on their blonde, blue-eyed, kinda-stupid looks to gather intel from the Germans who thought they were Polack bimbos one could speak in front of with impunity. They gave a LOT to the cause, but I don't know their names nor their fates. Anyone know who I'm talking about?

There comes to mind the novel "Mila 18" by Leon Uris (who I find an embarassingly bad and heavy-handed writer; but he dealt with some stirring themes, enough for me to have read a few of his books). Novel concerned tells in fiction form, of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. I recall two sisters, fitting the above description, as minor characters in the book; wouldn't know, though, whether this matter was Uris's invention, or whether he was making-over into fiction, people who factually existed and took part in these events.

[dropzone]

Yeah, I heard about them through my wife, who has read "Mila 18."

ETA: OTOH, Hedy Lamarr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr) was dismissed by her husband and his Nazi friends as a pretty face who could not possibly understand what they were talking about. :)

ETAA: Not that she did not have an EXCEPTIONALLY pretty face. :eek:

[fleabeetle]

I seem to recall that in the novel anyway, the girls' luck runs out, and they come to an unpleasant end at the hands of the SS.

Seeming not very bright, can indeed be a valuable accomplishment as regards intelligence-gathering. One thinks of the Tom Clancy novel in which the US's leading spy in Moscow, is a guy who is in fact brilliant; but cultivates the persona of a very dull, rather intellectually-challenged twerp. Most people on both sides take it for granted that someone so outright thick, can't possibly have anything to do with espionage -- so they ignore him, and are not at all on their guard in his company.