“Our commitment must be to remember the victims who perished, respect the survivors still with us, and reaffirm humanity's common aspiration for mutual understanding and justice.”
-- Declaration of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust
Marek Edelman
13.10.2009
On October 2, Marek Edelman, the last living commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, passed away at the age of 90. A member of Bund, Edelman represented the party in the Jewish Combat Organization (Yiddishe Kampf Organizatsye). Edelman was among those who confronted the German forces with the first armed resistance in January 1943 and, in April, opposed mass deportation of the Jewish population, which initiated the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
He later fought in the 1944 Rising launched in Warsaw by the Polish Home Army. After the war, Marek Edelman was a reputable cardiologist and an active member of the anti-communist opposition movement. He always stood up against injustice, discrimination and degradation of human dignity. The burial ceremony took place on October 9 in the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery. Thousands of people, including the President of Poland, Mr. Lech Kaczyński, the former President Lech Wałęsa, the Speaker of the Senate Mr. Bogdan Borusewicz, as well as numerous ministers and state officials, paid respect to the great Polish-Jewish hero.