A few minutes before the holiday of Sukkot was ushered in with the sunset that brought the Sabbath on Friday evening, an historical era drew to a close. Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, passed away at the age of 90. Edelman died at the home of family friends in Poland.
After fighting the Nazis during the Holocaust, both during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and a later revolt in the city of Warsaw, Edelman spent decades fighting the communist regime in Poland while working as a cardiologist in a hospital in Lodz.
He earned Poland's highest civilian honor, the Order of the White Eagle, for his lifetime struggle for human rights. He was also given the French Legion of Honor.
Israel's Foreign Ministry released a statement honoring Edelman. “The Jewish people and the State of Israel mourn the death of the last leader of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt. Marek Edelman was one of the leaders of the heroic rebellion of the ghetto's Jews against the Germans, a rebellion that restored human dignity during the dark days of the Holocaust,” the statement said.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place in April, 1943 as the Nazis began to liquidate the ghetto and send its roughly 60,000 inhabitants to death camps. Hundreds of young Jews with few weapons resisted the Nazi soldiers and managed to inflict heavy damage. After two and a half weeks the Nazis gave up on house-to-house fighting and ended the resistance by setting fire to the ghetto.
Edelman was among a small group that managed to escape through the city's sewer system. He fled to beyond the ghetto walls and continued his resistance activities from within Warsaw.
After the war, Edelman returned each year to pay his respects at the Warsaw monument to the ghetto fighters. He called on the world to remember them, and to honor their fight for human freedom.
In an interview with AFP in 2007, Edelman explained that the ghetto fighters were not trying to save their own lives. “We knew we were going to die,” he said, “Just like all the others who were sent to Treblinka. But it was easier to die fighting than in a gas chamber.”
Edelman expressed respect in that interview for those who were murdered without the chance to fight back. “Their death was far more heroic. We didn't know when we would take a bullet. They had to deal with certain death,” he said.
Edelman is survived by his children Aleksander and Anna, and grandchildren Tomek and Liza.
