Wartime Jewish hero says Warsaw ghetto uprising retains powerful message

Jerusalem Post ^ | Apr. 16, 2003 | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

[yonif]

Marek Edelman, the lone surviving commander of the Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazis 60 years ago, keeps its lesson fresh simply by looking at today's world.

The fight for freedom and against tyranny is never over, he says.

With a strong French cigarette in his hand and strong opinions in his mind, Edelman, 82, grows agitated when talking about war in Iraq.

"The war is not about oil, it's about defending man's freedom," Edelman said in an interview at his home. "As you can see, the world has not learned the lessons of the Holocaust."

Dictatorship is "a disease that can spread" if unchecked, whether in Iraq or in Europe, he said.

Warsaw's Jewish community is commemorating the April 19, 1943, start of the uprising Saturday night with prayers for the dead and a march to the rail platform where Jews were rounded up for transport to Nazi death camps.

An official ceremony with the Polish and Israeli presidents is set for April 30.

Edelman and a few hundred other young Jews faced impossible odds when they took up arms in the spring of 1943 against the Nazis, who had set about destroying Warsaw's ghetto and deporting the remaining 60,000 to 90,000 Jews to the gas chambers.

Before the Nazi invasion of Poland that touched off World War II, Warsaw's Jewish community of more than 400,000 was Europe's largest. By 1943, at least 350,000 Jews some brought to the ghetto from other areas had died there of starvation and disease or were deported to death camps where they perished.

After the Nazis deported some 250,000 people to Treblinka death camp in the summer of 1942, "the Jews began to understand that resettlement meant death, that we have no other solution than to die with honor," Edelman wrote in his 1945 book, "The Ghetto Fights."

The Jewish insurgents armed themselves with pistols, grenades and a few machine guns they bought from Germans or received from non-Jewish resistance fighters. Smuggling the weapons past Nazi guards and the 3-meter (10-foot) high ghetto wall was to risk death.

The struggle lasted three weeks and most of the fighters were killed, along with thousands of others as the Nazis systematically burned down the ghetto block by block.

Edelman and a few others escaped through sewers to the other side of the wall and went into hiding.

Edelman dislikes dwelling on his role in the resistance, but takes pride in the uprising's powerful message to the victims of Nazi oppression and brutality.

"It was the first time in occupied Europe that civilians put up armed resistance against Nazi occupiers," he says.

Polish resistance fighters stepped up pinprick attacks against the Nazis and in August 1944 launched an ill-fated revolt in Warsaw that took the Germans 63 days to put down.

There were also uprisings in several death camps the Nazis had set up on Polish soil, including Treblinka and Sobibor.

"In this dark Nazi night blanketing Europe, the ghetto constituted the first brick that was removed from the wall of hatred," Edelman said.

"Those 200 boys who were shooting there had no chance to win with the German army, but the fact that the struggle happened shook the dictatorship."

After fleeing the ghetto, Edelman returned to fight in the 1944 Warsaw uprising. When the war was over he stayed in his homeland and became a cardiologist in Lodz, a city about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of the capital in central Poland.

Edelman joined Poland's anti-communist opposition and was active in the Solidarity movement that toppled communism in 1989. During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, he urged NATO to send ground troops to Kosovo against the threat of a new European genocide, this time against ethnic Albanians.

Nowadays, he questions the sentiments of the large numbers of Europeans who oppose the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq that broke Saddam Hussein's rule.

"I did not see those protests when he was gassing 5,000 or more Kurds or Shiites to death," Edelman said. "No war is a good thing, but sometimes wars are necessary."

[Badray]

bttt

[El Sordo]

Yet he smokes French cigarettes..........

[El Sordo]

A good book for those interested in the Jews who did not go meekly into the night:

The Defiant

[valkyrieanne]

Thank you, God, that this witness was allowed to live long enough to tell us his view about the Iraqi war.

[KantianBurke]

big bump

[pachanga]

April 19 BTTT

[Larry Lucido]

Sarah Brady comments: "While we do not support the actions of the Nazis, we remain concerned about the easy availability of pistols, grenades and machine guns in ghetto areas."

[mondonico]

Which raises the question, can anyone who says "Never again!" but doesn't support the RKBA really mean it?

[SauronOfMordor]

April 19th is also the anniversery of the "shot heard round the world" that started the American Revolution, as well as the Waco incident.

[axxmann]

Another great WWII Jewish resistance is "Fighting Back" by Harold Werner. Its obvioulsy not written by a professional author, but the story is very compelling.

[Larry Lucido]

can anyone who says "Never again!" but doesn't support the RKBA really mean it?

No, they can't.

[pawdoggie]

Which raises the question, can anyone who says "Never again!" but doesn't support the RKBA really mean it?

I assume this is a rhetorical question.

[GATOR NAVY]

Polish resistance fighters stepped up pinprick attacks against the Nazis and in August 1944 launched an ill-fated revolt in Warsaw that took the Germans 63 days to put down.

The article neglects to mention the uprising was timed to coincide with the arrival of the Red Army. However, the Soviets inexplicably stopped their advance outside Warsaw, ignored Polish pleas for assistance, and waited until the Germans to smashed the Polish resistance before resuming their drive on Warsaw.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

Yonif, when harsh gun laws were introduced into Australia back in '96, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation ran a story tangentially relevant to your thread. A blindfolded film crew were taken to a location north of Adelaide (South Australia) by a group of young Jews. The men placed (banned) SKS and SKK rifles, plus large amounts of ammunition into PVC plumbing pipes, and buried them in the forest. All this was recorded on camera and played on the ABC's 7:30 Report. Their argument, as expressed eloquently by their leader, was basically, 'Warsaw, never again.' Cheers, By

[Mean Daddy]

Check out the website www.jpfo.org. It's a Jewish gun rights website. They make the NRA look liberal. Their premise is based on this incident that if the Jews had been organized and armed, the holocaust wouldn't have happened.

[Ciexyz]

Some 30 years ago, I read Leon Uris' book "Mila 18" about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Jean Francois Steiner's book "Treblinka" about the Treblinka uprising. These are moving accounts of exceptional courage and well worth reading. They're both still in print.

In both uprisings, success depended on access to guns. A lesson well-worth remembering.

Also, "Escape from Sobibor" was a TV film from @ 1990 starring Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer, still available in some video stores. Same lesson: the Jews secretly attacked guards and stole their rifles, then a small portion of them fired at the guards while permitting the prisoners to flee under the barbed wire.

"Escape from Sobibor" has been broadcast on the History Channel.

[VOA]

"The war is not about oil, it's about defending man's freedom," Edelman said in an
interview at his home.
"As you can see, the world has not learned the lessons of the Holocaust."

You can say that again brother.

I noticed (with happy approval) when I first saw a commercial for "The Pianist"
when the voice over of Adrian Brody says something like "I'm going to stay and
take my chances", as the visual shows hands opening up a cloth to reveal a pistol.

I thought "very cool...maybe mainstream American Jews will start embracing the idea
that gun ownership is a good thing".

Funny, when the commercial campaign revived for the Oscar season...that part of the
commercial "went missing".

Like the old soldier says...most folks still haven't gotten the lesson yet.
Even the likely future victims.

[VOA]

Sarah Brady comments: "While we do not support the actions of the Nazis, we remain
concerned about the easy availability of pistols, grenades and machine
guns in ghetto areas."

I got a kick about Sarah Brady being annoyed about how much time it took her
to buy a high-powered rifle (.30'06, IIRC) with scope for her son a couple of
years ago. It sounded like one of those dangerous "straw man purchases".

I bet there was a general slow-down at the gun shop when the clerk saw the name
on the paperwork!

Myself, I just want the deal that Sean Penn has: drive around a gas-guzzling V-8 powered
car with a Glock and a .38 revolver to go with a California Concealed Carry
permit and a house in Marin County.

Of course, Mr. Penn hasn't been shamed into a public apology about his possession
and failing to stop the distribution of "weapons of mass destruction".

[Badray]

This deserves another bump back to the top.