Jewish Polish Hero Who Led Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Mourned

Israel and the entire world mourned the death of Mark Edelman, 90, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, who passed away Friday. Edelman was among the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, suppressed by the Nazis in 1943. He was considered a moral authority since the end of World War II, unofficially taking part in the Solidarity movement, a Polish trade union federation which acted to overthrow the Communist party in Poland during the 1980s.Lech Walesa, the former Polish president who was also the leader of Solidarity spoke about Edelman, saying, “He was an upright, unequalled human being. There are no words to express the loss.”

Israel’s foreign Ministry also mourned Edelman: “The Jewish people and the State of Israel are mourning the death of the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Marek Edelman was one of the commanders of the heroic rebellion of Jews against Germans; a rebellion which salvaged human dignity at the Holocaust’s time of complete darkness. Half a million Jews were held prisoners in Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in Europe built by the Germans.

“After 300,000 Warsaw Jews were taken from the Ghetto to their deaths in Treblinka, the remaining 60,000 Jews, led by Mordechai Anielewicz, managed to form a miraculous revolt against the German army. Following the German suppression of the uprising and the burning down of the ghetto and its inhabitants, some of the survivors, Marek Edelman among them, joined the wide scale Polish rebellion that fought the Germans in the summer of 1944. Marek Edelman, who was a trained physician, lived in Lodz after the war and worked at the hospital until his last days.”

The government of Israel sent the Polish government a condolence letter in which is stressed “the moral obligation to remember the horrors of the Holocaust and the magnitude of heroism. To remember, and never forget.”

{Ynet/Yair Alpert-Matzav.com Israel}