Marek Edelman

{{Short description|Polish socio-political activist and cardiologist (1919/1922–2009)}}

{{Infobox military person

| name = Marek Edelman

| image = Marek Edelman - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.jpg

| caption = Marek Edelman at around the time
of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

| birth_date = 1919 or 1922

| birth_place = Homel, Ukrainian People's Republic, or Warsaw, Poland

| death_date = {{death date|2009|10|2}} (aged 90 or 87)

| death_place = Warsaw, Poland

| placeofburial = Jewish Cemetery, Warsaw

| allegiance = 20px General Jewish Labour Bund
{{flagicon image|Flag of ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization).svg}} Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa
{{flagicon image|Socialist red flag.svg}} Armia Ludowa

| branch =

| serviceyears = 1942–1944

| rank = Deputy commander (ŻOB)

| battles =

| awards = French Legion of Honor
Order of the White Eagle
Yale University, honorary doctorate

}}

File:Skwer Marka Edelmana, widok na ul. Andersa, Warszawa.jpg

Marek Edelman ({{langx|yi|מאַרעק עדעלמאַן}}; 1919/1922 – October 2, 2009) was a Polish political and social activist and cardiologist. Edelman was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Long before his death, he was the last one to stay in the Polish People's Republic despite harassment by the Polish United Workers' Party authorities.Lucy S. Dawidowicz, [https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-curious-case-of-marek-edelman/ "The Curious Case of Marek Edelman"], Commentary Magazine, March 1, 1987

Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB). He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of Mordechaj Anielewicz. He also took part in the citywide 1944 Warsaw Uprising.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uQouAAAAQBAJ&q=%C2%A0Marek+Edelman+in+warsaw+uprising+1944&pg=PA7|title=Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising|last=Richie|first=Alexandra|date=2013-12-10|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux|isbn=9781466848474|language=en}}

After the war, Edelman remained in Poland and became a noted cardiologist. From the 1970s, he collaborated with the Workers' Defence Committee and other political groups opposing Poland's Communist regime. As a member of Solidarity, he took part in the Polish Round Table Talks of 1989. Following the peaceful transformations of 1989, he was a member of various centrist and liberal parties.{{cite news|url=http://www.rp.pl/artykul/372163_Marek_Edelman_nie_zyje.html|title=Marek Edelman nie zyje|last=Zychowicz|first=Piotr|date=2009-10-02|newspaper=Rzeczpospolita|language=pl|access-date=2009-11-03}} He also wrote books documenting the history of wartime resistance against the Nazi German occupation of Poland.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2wkNnwEACAAJ&q=%C2%A0Marek+Edelman+book|title=The Ghetto Fights|last=Edelman|first=Marek|date=2014-02-04|publisher=Bookmarks|isbn=9781909026391|language=en}} See the External Links, below, for the full text.

Early life

Details of Marek Edelman's birth are not known for certain; sources give two possible years of birth, either 1919 in Homel (present-day Belarus),Jerzy B. Warman, [http://amgathering.com/category/in-memoriam In Memoriam] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110707133615/http://amgathering.com/category/in-memoriam/ |date=2011-07-07 }}, American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants; accessed November 1, 2015. or in 1922 in Warsaw.{{citation|last=Scislowska|first=Monika|url=https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091002/ap_on_re_eu/eu_poland_edelman_obit|contribution=Warsaw ghetto uprising leader Edelman dies at 90|publisher=Associated Press|title=News|access-date=November 1, 2015}} His father, Natan Feliks Edelman (died 1924), was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (his father's brothers, also Socialist Revolutionaries, were executed by the Bolsheviks). His mother, Cecylia Edelman (died 1934), a hospital secretary, was an activist member of the General Jewish Labour Bund, a Jewish socialist workers' party.[https://archive.today/20130416114336/http://www.newsweek.pl/artykuly/sekcje/polska/marek-edelman---biografia,46737,1 "Marek Edelman - biografia"]; accessed November 1, 2015. When Edelman's mother Cecylia died, he was 14 years old, and was looked after by other staff members at the hospital where she had worked in Warsaw, the city he always called home.[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/6259900/Marek-Edelman.html Marek Edelman] - Daily Telegraph obituary. He said in 2001: "Warsaw is my city. It is here that I learned Polish, Yiddish and German. It is here that at school, I learned one must always take care of others. It is also here that I was slapped in the face just because I was a Jew."

As a child, Edelman was a member of Sotsyalistishe Kinder Farband (SKIF), the Jewish Labour Bund's youth group for children.Izabela Leszczyńska, Maciej Stańczyk, [http://www.kurierlubelski.pl/module-dzial-viewpub-tid-9-pid-77681.html "Zmarł Marek Edelman"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091004013749/http://www.kurierlubelski.pl/module-dzial-viewpub-tid-9-pid-77681.html |date=2009-10-04 }}, kurierlubelski.pl, March 10, 2009. {{in lang|pl}}

In 1939 he joined and became a leader in Tsukunft (Future), the Bund's youth organization for older children.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l-9PAnwdMHwC|title=Jews and the Sporting Life: Studies in Contemporary Jewry XXIII|last=Mendelsohn|first=Ezra|date=31 March 2009|publisher=Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem|page=27|isbn=978-0-19-538291-4}} During the war, he restarted these organizations inside the Warsaw Ghetto.Yitzhak Zuckerman, Barbara Harshav, [https://books.google.com/books?id=5_Ea_8g3X_oC&dq=Marek+Edelman+SKIF&pg=RA1-PA434 "A surplus of memory: chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising"], University of California Press, 1993, pg. 434.

The defiance and organization of the Bund made their mark on Edelman. As conditions for Jews worsened in the 1930s, Bund members preferred to challenge the mounting antisemitism rather than flee. Edelman later said: "The Bundists did not wait for the Messiah, nor did they plan to leave for Palestine. They believed that Poland was their country, and they fought for a just, socialist Poland in which each nationality would have its own cultural autonomy, and in which minorities' rights would be guaranteed."

World War II

File:Mural Marek Edelman Nowolipki 9b.JPG

File:Marek Edelman "Hate is easy, love requires effort and sacrifice.".jpg memorial. "Hate is easy, love requires effort and sacrifice."]]

In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland Edelman found himself confined—along with the other Jews of Warsaw—to the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942, as a Bund youth leader he co-founded the underground Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB). In the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April–May 1943, led by Mordechaj Anielewicz, Edelman was one of the three sub-commanders and then became the leader after the death of Anielewicz.

When the Germans had stopped their campaign of transporting Ghetto residents to Treblinka extermination camp in September 1942, only 60,000 had remained. Edelman and his comrades, however, had had little doubt that the Germans would resume the job. The Jewish Combat Organisation had begun acquiring weapons and organizing into units that would make up for lack of training and munitions with an intimate knowledge of the ghetto, both above ground and in its sewer network.

The Germans resumed their attack on the ghetto on April 19, 1943, with over 2,000 troops. According to Edelman: "The Germans weren't expecting resistance of any kind, let alone that we would take up arms." The outnumbered and outgunned Ghetto fighters' strong resistance forced the German troops to withdraw. It was on the second day of the Uprising, while protecting the retreat of Edelman and other comrades, that another prominent insurgent and Bundist, Michał Klepfisz, was killed.Israel Gutman, Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998, p. 214. Over the next three weeks, the fighting was intense. The Jewish fighters killed and wounded scores of Nazis but inevitably sustained far greater losses. On May 8, ŻOB's commander, Mordechaj Anielewicz, was surrounded by German forces. Anielewicz died during the final assault on the ŻOB's bunker on 8 May 1943, which meant that now Edelman was in charge. "After three weeks," he recalled, "most of us were dead."

The Germans proceeded to flush out the few remaining fighters by burning down the ghetto - Edelman always insisted, "We were beaten by the flames, not the Germans." At that juncture, couriers from the Polish underground outside the ghetto came through the sewers that still linked it with the rest of Warsaw.{{Cite web |title=Marek Edelman - charakterystyka - Hanna Krall |url=https://poezja.org/wz/interpretacja/4836/Marek_Edelman__charakterystyka |access-date=2022-06-02 |website=poezja.org}} On the morning of May 10, Edelman and his few remaining comrades escaped through the sewers and made their way to the non-Ghetto part of Warsaw to find safety among their Polish compatriots. At this point the Uprising was over and the fate of those fighters who had remained behind is unknown.

After World War II, the Ghetto Uprising was sometimes given as an unusual instance of active Jewish resistance in the face of the horror perpetrated by the Germans. However, Marek never saw a difference in the character of those who fought in the Uprising and those who were sent to the death camps, as, in his view, all involved were simply dealing with an inevitable death as well as they knew how.

{{quote box|quote="We knew perfectly well that we had no chance of winning. We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths. We knew we were going to die. Just like all the others who were sent to Treblinka.... Their death was far more heroic. We didn't know when we would take a bullet. They had to deal with certain death, stripped naked in a gas chamber or standing at the edge of a mass grave waiting for a bullet in the back of the head.... It was easier to die fighting than in a gas chamber."}}{{Clear}}

In mid-1944, Edelman, as a member of the leftist Armia Ludowa (People's Army), participated in the citywide Warsaw Uprising, when Polish forces rose up against the Germans before being forced to surrender after 63 days of fighting.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/europe/03edelman.html?em|title=Marek Edelman, Commander in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Dies at 90|last=Kaufman|first=Michael T.|date=3 October 2009|newspaper=The New York Times|page=A21|access-date=2009-10-05}} After the capitulation, Edelman together with a group of other ŻOB fighters, hid out in the ruins of the city as one of the Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw before being rescued and evacuated with the help from the centrist Armia Krajowa (Home Army).{{cite book|title=Żydzi w Powstańczej Warszawie|last=Engelking|first=Barbara|author2=Libionka, Dariusz|year=2009|publisher=Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów|location=Warsaw|isbn=978-83-926831-1-7|pages=260–293}}

Later life

File:Marek Edelman Fot Mariusz Kubik Warsaw April19 2009 02.jpg

Edelman's hospital upbringing had proven invaluable in the Warsaw Ghetto. After World War II, he studied at Łódź Medical School and became a noted cardiologist who invented an original life-saving operation.{{cite journal |last1=Lichterman |first1=Boleslav |title=Marek Edelman |journal=British Medical Journal |date=28 November 2009 |volume=339 |page=1257 |doi=10.1136/bmj.b4992 |s2cid=220116107 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240965729}} In 1948, Edelman actively opposed the incorporation of the Bund into the Polish United Workers' Party (Poland's Communist party), which led to the Communists disbanding the organization.{{Cite web |url=http://www.jewishinstitute.org.pl/pl/info/info/69.html |title="Marek Edelman 1919-2009", Żydowski Instytut Historyczny |access-date=13 October 2009 |archive-date=23 June 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120623145448/http://www.jewishinstitute.org.pl/pl/info/info/69.html |url-status=dead }} In 1976, he became an activist with the Workers' Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników)"Rz" Online, "Pożegnanie Marka Edelmana" (Farewell to Marek Edelman), Rzeczpospolita; accessed November 1, 2015, [http://www.rp.pl/artykul/375276_Pozegnanie_Marka_Edelmana.html rp.pl] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150626130934/http://www.rp.pl/artykul/375276_Pozegnanie_Marka_Edelmana.html |date=2015-06-26 }} and later with the Solidarity movement. Edelman publicly denounced racism and promoted human rights.

File:Wojewódzki Specjalistyczny Szpital im. M. Pirogowa w Łodzi.JPG in Łódź where Marek Edelman worked as cardiologist for over 30 years]]

In 1981, when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law, Edelman was interned by the government. In 1983, he refused to take part in the official celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising sponsored by Poland's Communist government,.{{cite news|url=http://www.dziennik.pl/wydarzenia/article450759/Zmarl_Marek_Edelman.html |title=Marek Edelman nie żyje |date=2 October 2009 |publisher=Dziennik |language=pl |access-date=2009-10-05 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091004012251/http://www.dziennik.pl/wydarzenia/article450759/Zmarl_Marek_Edelman.html |archive-date=October 4, 2009}}

In an open letter dated February 2, 1983, he wrote of his refusal of invitation:

Forty years ago we fought not only for our lives. We fought for life in dignity and freedom. To celebrate our anniversary there where social life is dominated throughout by humiliation and coercion would be to deny our fight.

Hanna Krall, "Shielding the Flame"

A couple of days before the official event, on April 17, 1983, several hundred Solidarity members staged a commemoration of their own, gathering spontaneously at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial. Edelman was then prevented from being present at this occasion because he was being held under house arrest back in Lodz. Edelman sat in his house surrounded by the police cars, at a table set for a fancy dinner which included empty places because the police were not letting the guests in, except the journalist Hanna Krall.{{Cite book |last=Krall |first=Hanna |title=Shielding the Flame — An Intimate Conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising |publisher=Henry Holt & Company |year=1986 |isbn=0-03-006002-8 |location=New York |language=English}}

Edelman was a lifelong anti-Zionist.{{cite book |last1=Boyarin |first1=Jonathan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hq0gC1PIO9sC&pg=PA53 |title=Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture |last2=Boyarin |first2=Daniel |author-link2=Daniel Boyarin |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-8166-3596-X |location=Minneapolis, MN |page=53}}{{cite book |last=Kaye/Kantrowitz |first=Melanie |author-link=Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dox90pPztBMC&pg=PA214 |title=The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-253-34902-6 |location=Bloomington, IN |page=214}}{{cite book |last=Zertal |first=Idith |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bQEAmjk4Wh0C&pg=PA34 |title=Israel's Holocaust and the Politics Of Nationhood |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2005 |isbn=0-521-85096-7 |location=Cambridge |pages=34–35}} In a 1985 interview, he said Zionism was a "lost cause" and questioned Israel's viability.{{cite news |last=Grupinska |first=Anna |year=1985 |title=Talk with Marek Edelman |work=CZAS}} He remained firmly Polish, refusing to emigrate to Israel. In his old age, Edelman spoke in defence of the Palestinian people, as he felt that the Jewish self-defence for which he had fought was in danger of crossing the line into oppression.{{cite news |date=October 5, 2009 |title=Marek Edelman: death of a great man |url=http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timcollard/100012403/marek-edelman-death-of-a-great-man |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091008133608/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timcollard/100012403/marek-edelman-death-of-a-great-man/ |archive-date=October 8, 2009 |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |location=London, UK}}

In post-Communist Poland, Edelman was a member of several centrist liberal parties: the Citizens' Movement for Democratic Action, Democratic Union, Freedom Union and Democratic Party – demokraci.pl. He supported the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia as well as the 2003 Iraq war, both of which he saw as instances of American democracy saving countries from fascism again.Andrzej STYLINSKI, [http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/warsaw/w_pages/warsaw_stories_marek.html "Marek Edelman; Wartime Jewish hero of Warsaw ghetto uprising"], eilatgordinlevitan.com; accessed November 1, 2015.[http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2004_05_30_chrenkoff_archive.html "Every war with fascism is our business". Interview by Polish Channel TVN24, re-published in a Polish weekly Przekroj (translated by Arthur Chrenkoff)], May 30, 2004; accessed November 1, 2015.[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E2DD143AF932A15757C0A96F958260 Letter to the Editor], nytimes.com; accessed November 1, 2015. On April 17, 1998,[http://www.prezydent.pl/archiwum/rok-2000-i-starsze/art,446,order-orla-bialego-dla-marka-edelmana.html Official website of the President of Poland, Archives] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201044513/https://www.prezydent.pl/archiwum/rok-2000-i-starsze/art,446,order-orla-bialego-dla-marka-edelmana.html|date=1 December 2020}}, accessed November 1, 2015, Edelman was awarded Poland's highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle. He also received the French Legion of Honour.{{cite news |date=2009-10-03 |title=Warsaw Ghetto uprising leader Marek Edelman dies at 90 |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/6256830/Warsaw-Ghetto-uprising-leader-Marek-Edelman-dies-at-90.html |access-date=2009-10-04 |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |location=London, UK}}

Edelman lent public support to anti-fascist initiatives and to organisations combatting antisemitism. In 1993, he accompanied a convoy of goods into the city of Sarajevo while that city was under siege.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l-9PAnwdMHwC|title=Jews and the Sporting Life: Studies in Contemporary Jewry XXIII|last=Mendelsohn|first=Ezra|date=31 March 2009|publisher=Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem|page=34|isbn=978-0-19-538291-4}} Edelman strongly condemned international indifference during the Bosnian Genocide in the early 1990s, calling it a disgrace for the rest of Europe and "a delayed victory by Hitler – a victory from the grave."[https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/a-delayed-victory-by-hitler-britains-response-to-bosnia-has-uneasy-resonances-for-germans-says-steve-crawshaw-1461847.html "A delayed victory by Hitler...]", independent.co.uk, August 18, 1993.Tilman Zülch, [http://www.gfbv.de/pressemit.php?id=2606&stayInsideTree=1&backlink=land.php?id=232&PHPSESSID=3d5391b70eb3cec6f98b1bc41b7ed3ca "A disgrace for Europe!'] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140425041343/http://www.gfbv.de/pressemit.php?id=2606&stayInsideTree=1&backlink=land.php%3Fid%3D232&PHPSESSID=3d5391b70eb3cec6f98b1bc41b7ed3ca |date=2014-04-25 }}, gfbv.de, March 2, 2011.

In August 2002, Edelman wrote an open letter to the Palestinian resistance leaders. Although the letter criticised the Palestinian suicide attacks, its tone infuriated the Israeli government and press. According to the late British writer and activist Paul Foot, "He wrote [the letter] in a spirit of solidarity from a fellow resistance fighter, as a former leader of a Jewish uprising not dissimilar in desperation to the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories."{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/21/comment.israelandthepalestinians|author=Paul Foot|title=Palestine's partisans|date=August 21, 2002|newspaper=The Guardian|location=London, UK}} He addressed his letter "To all the leaders of Palestinian military, paramilitary and guerrilla organizations – To all the soldiers of Palestinian militant groups."{{cite news|title=Anti-Zionist Legacy of Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Fighter Marek Edelman|url=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/16/793916/-Anti-Zionist-legacy-of-Warsaw-Ghetto-resistance-fighter-Marek-Edelman|access-date=April 19, 2013|newspaper=Daily Kos|date=October 15, 2009}}

Family life

Marek Edelman was married to Alina Margolis-Edelman (1922–2008). They had two children, Aleksander and Anna. When his wife and children emigrated from Poland to France in the wake of the 1968 Polish political crisis and antisemitic actions by the Polish Communist authorities, Edelman decided to stay in Łódź. "Someone had to stay here with all those who perished here, after all." He published his memoirs, which have been translated into six languages.{{cite news |author=Yossi Melman |date=2009-10-02 |title=Hero of Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Marek Edelman, dies at 86 |newspaper=Haaretz |url=https://www.haaretz.com/2009-10-04/ty-article/hero-of-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-marek-edelman-dies-at-86/0000017f-e1ae-df7c-a5ff-e3fe79d40000 |access-date=2023-12-25}} Each April he laid flowers in Warsaw for those he had served with in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Edelman's wife Alina, likewise a Warsaw Ghetto survivor, died in 2008. They were survived by their son and daughter.

Death

File:Marek Edelman's funeral Warsaw October09 2009 04.jpg]]

Edelman died on October 2, 2009.{{cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8288156.stm|title=Warsaw ghetto uprising head dies|date=2009-10-02|access-date=2009-10-04|publisher=BBC}} He was buried in Warsaw with full military honours on October 9, 2009. His coffin was covered with a Bund banner inscribed "Bund - Yidisher Sozialistisher Farband," and a choir sang the Bund anthem, "Di Shvue."Moshe Arens, "Requiem for the Bund", Haaretz, [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1122230.html] The Polish President Lech Kaczyński and the former President Lech Wałęsa were present at the funeral, attended by about 2,000 persons.{{cite news|url=http://lebnsfragn.com/bin/articles.cgi?ID=721|title=פֿון "אַרבעטער־רינג" אין ישׂראל די בונדישע "שבועה", די פֿאָן און אַ קראַנץ (Di Shvue, the banner and a wreath of the Arbeter-ring in Yisroel)|date=September–October 2009|publisher=Lebns Fragn (bimonthly of the Bund Israeli branch)|language=yi|access-date=2009-11-03}}

Władysław Bartoszewski, former Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs and an Auschwitz survivor, led the tributes to Edelman, saying: "He reached a good age. He left as a contented man, even if he was always aware of the tragedy he went through." Bartoszewski denied that the activist was "irreplaceable," before acknowledging that "there are few people like Marek Edelman." Roman Catholic Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek said: "I respect him most for the fact that he stayed in this land, which made him fight so hard for his Jewish and Polish identity. He became a real witness, he gave a real testimony with his life."{{cite news|author=Gabriela Baczynska|url=http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-42879120091003|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160110210628/http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-42879120091003|url-status=dead|archive-date=10 January 2016|title=Last leader of Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising dies at 87|date=2009-10-03|access-date=2009-10-04|work=Reuters India}} The former Polish Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, was also present and said Edelman had been a role model for him.

Former head of Israel's parliament and former Israeli ambassador to Poland Shevah Weiss said: "I'd like to offer my condolences to Marek Edelman's family, to the Polish nation and to the Jewish nation. He was a hero to all of us."{{cite news|url=http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26159222-12335,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091006183113/http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26159222-12335,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=6 October 2009|title=Marek Edelman of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising dies|date=2009-10-03|access-date=2009-10-04|newspaper=The Australian}} Ian Kelly, official spokesperson for the United States, expressed sympathies and affirmed that the United States "stands with Poland as it mourns the loss of a great man."{{cite web|url=https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/oct/130233.htm|title=Poland: Death of Marek Edelman|date=2009-10-03|access-date=2009-10-04|publisher=United States Department of State}}

In popular culture

In the 2001 television film Uprising, he was portrayed by American actor John Ales.

The documentary Marek Edelman... And There Was Love in the Ghetto, directed by Andrzej Wajda and Jolanta Dylewska, was released in 2019.

Notes

External links

[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/warsaw-uprising.html The Ghetto Fights by Marek Edelman]
[http://www.diapozytyw.pl/en/site/ludzie/marek_edelman Edelman Biography]
[http://www.webofstories.com/gl/marek.edelman Marek Edelman's Life Story] on [https://web.archive.org/web/20171020103457/http://www.webofstories.com/ Web of Stories (video interview in Polish with English subtitles)]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20091016083126/http://thethirdestate.net/2009/10/a-true-mensch/ A True Mensch - Obituary to Marek Edelman]
[https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/marek-edelman-star-of-resistance-among-nazi-horror/ Marek Edelman — star of resistance among Nazi horror] by John Rose (socialist), ''Socialist Worker]], January, 2006
[https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/marek-edelman-the-ghetto-fighter/ Marek Edelman: The Ghetto Fighter] obituary by John Rose (socialist), Socialist Worker, October 2009
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120429104554/http://ejpress.org/article/news/eastern_europe/16128 Last Warsaw ghetto revolt commander honours fallen comrades]
[http://www.forward.com/articles/116259/ A Life of Resistance: Marek Edelman, 90, Last Ghetto Uprising Commander], Michael Berenbaum and Jon Avnet, The Forward, October 7, 2009
{{langx|yi|Isaac Laden}}, [http://lebnsfragn.com/bin/articles.cgi?ID=709 געשטאָרבן דער לעצטער קאָמאַנדיר פֿון װאַרשעװער געטאָ - מאַרעק עדעלמאַן (Marek Edelman, 1919-2009. Death of the last commandant of the Warsaw ghetto)], Lebns Fragen, September–October 2009
Marci Shore, [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/the-jewish-hero-history-forgot.html "The Jewish Hero History Forgot"], New York Times, April 19, 2013.