MAREK EDELMAN

MAREK EDELMAN (January 1, 1919-October 2, 2009)

            He was born in Warsaw, Poland.  His mother Tsipora was an active leader in the Bund.  Marek Edelman studied in a secular Jewish school and for a time received his education at the Medem Sanatorium in Miedzeszyn.  In his youth he joined the Bundist children’s organization SKIF (Sotsyalistishe kinder farband, or Socialist children’s union) and later the youth organization “Tsukunft” (Future).  After the Nazis seized Warsaw, Edelman actively worked in the Bundist underground.  In the Warsaw Ghetto he continued his socialist educational work in SKIF and Tsukunft and contributed to the Bundist youth press, to relief and rescue work, and later for preparations for the uprising.  He was delegated by the central committee of the Bund to the united Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Ż.O.B.) command.  He organized the military intelligence unit, which informed the ghetto of Germans plans and actions; he organized the delivery of weapons for the ghetto and led the defense of the Brush District at the time of the ghetto uprising.  He was both a leader in the fighting and a heroic soldier, who inspired and transported by his personal example his fellow combatants.  He was mentioned on many occasions in the reports of the fighting for April-May 1943.  When the ammunition ran out and the ghetto was set on fire, Edelman and other surviving comrades left along the edges of the sewer system to the Aryan side of the city.  Later, at the time of the general Polish uprising in Warsaw (August 1944), Edelman organized a Jewish division which fought at the side of the Armia Ludowa (People’s army) in Żoliborz and the Old City, and with his relentless fighting he earned the admiration of his Polish comrades.  In November 1944 he miraculous survived in a bunker in Żoliborz, where he lay for several days under the rubble.  When the Red Army subsequently occupied Warsaw, Edelman went right back to Bundist party work.  He brought the first aid to comrades who were returning from the camps and forests.  Edelman later entered the medical school of Warsaw University, became a doctor, and practiced medicine.  In 1957 he visited the state of Israel and was a guest of Loḥame hagetaot (Fighters of the Ghetto) Kibbutz, where he met his fellow combatants from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; he also had a meeting with the Bundist organization at the Franz Kurski Library, among other sites, in Tel Aviv, and a farewell evening with the surviving ghetto fighters who were in Tel Aviv.  In 1963 he paid a visit to the United States.  He lived in Lodz and worked as a doctor [cardiologist] in a Lodz hospital.  After WWII he published articles in the Bundist youth press.  He wrote under such pen names as K. Malin and E. D. Tsipkin.  In book form: Di geto kemft (The ghetto fights), originally written in Polish, dedicated to the memory of the Bundist ghetto leader Abrasha Blum, with a foreword by the well-known Polish writer Zofia Nałkowska (Warsaw, 1945).  This pamphlet can be found in Yiddish in the collection In di yorn fun yidishn khurbn, di shtim fun untererdishn bund (In the years of the Jewish destruction, the voice of the underground Bund) (New York: Unzer tsayt, 1948), pp. 153-210; and in the anthology In heldishn gerangl (In a heroic struggle) (New York: Unzer tsayt, 1949), pp. 7-64.  He died in Warsaw.

  

       

    Around the time of the                                         April 2009

  Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Sources: Z. Likhtenshteyn, in Shikager forverts (Chicago) (April 20, 1946); Y. Pat, Ash un fayer (Ash and fire) (New York: Tsiko, 1946), p. 389; B. Goldshteyn, Finf yor in varshever geto (Five years in the Warsaw Ghetto) (New York: Unzer tsayt, 1947), pp. 315-19ff; editorial, in Yugnt-veker (Warsaw-Lodz) (April 1947); B. Mark, Dos bukh fun gvure (The book of valor) (Lodz: Dos naye lebn, 1947), pp. 287ff; Vladke (Feigele Peltel Miedzyrzecki), Fun beyde zaytn geto-moyer (From both sides of the ghetto wall) (New York: Arbeter-ring, 1948), p. 179; M. Noy-Nayshtadt, Khurbn un oyfshtand fun di yidn in varshe (Destruction and resistance of the Jews in Warsaw), 2 vols. (Tel Aviv, 1948), see index to second volume; Shmuel Niger, ed., Kidesh hashem (Sanctification of the name) (New York: Tsiko, 1946), see index; T. Bazhikovski, Tsvishn falndike vent (Amid falling walls) (Warsaw: Hakhaluts, 1949), pp. 100ff; Pinkes varshe (Records of Warsaw), vol. 2 (Buenos Aires: Argentiner IKUF, 1955), pp. 958ff; Y. Kermish, in Di goldene keyt (Tel Aviv) 27 (1957); Męczeństwo, walka, zagłada, żydów w Polsce, 1939-1945 (Martyrdom, struggle and death of the Jews in Poland, 1939-1945) (Warsaw, 1959), see index; Y. Tselemenski, Mitn farshnitenem folk (With the annihilated people) (New York, 1963), see index.

Leyb Vaserman