should read about the Warsaw ghetto uprising, "one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people" according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The fact that a few Jewish resistance fighters with almost no weapons managed to resist the Nazis from theth April to theth May has something of incredible.
I'm glad that Marek Edelman lived to tell their story, Please notice that this is his first report, written as Edelman was onlyyears old, a kind of report from the battlefield, He will write more about his experience later, The Ghetto Fights by Marek Edelman with an introduction by John Rose is a remarkable first hand account of jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Marek Edelman was part of the Bund's youth organization the bund along with the communists and Jewish Zionists went on to form the Jewish Combat Organization ZOB of which Edelman was a commander.
The bulk of the book is Edelman account of his experiences resisting Nazi extermination in the Warsaw ghetto fromto, which is followed by two appendixes.
The first appendix contains reports from the Jewish Underground while the second appendix covers some of the controversy surrounding John Rose's introduction that also points to some of the greater issues of historical memory.
The brutal crimes of the Nazi's are well known and can be found in history book after history book, but there is something categorically different when reading about what happened from someone who witnessed it, resisted it, and survived it.
Grim, at times hard to get through but important, A true hero. My greatgrandfather lived and worked on Nowolipie Street, so this book has a personal albeit tragic connection for me, Exceptionnel témoignage quasiment heure par heure de la résistance héroïque et tragique du ghetto de Varsovie, où l'on découvre la lucidité rapide de l'analyse politique des combattant.
e. s juif. ve. s de l'irrationnalité de l'Etat nazi d'exterminer tout un peuple "sans intérêt" alors que la faim et la peur ne peuvent faire qu'espérer une paix rapide ou du travail au sortir des convois au reste du ghetto.
L'auteurcombattant, grande figure du syndicat laïc yiddishophone Bund, retrace par sa rédaction dèstous les premiers éléments indiquant dès le début de la guerre les exécutions systématiques suivant la ghettoïsation des Juif.
ve. s il mentionne aussi la liquidation de Tziganes mais ne se contente pas d'un récit
chronologique terrible car il honore avec génorosité la mémoire d'hommes et de femmes résistantes jusque dans la mort parfois la plus terrible, qu'ils ou qu'elles soient resté.
e. s célèbres ou non, Edelman est bien sûr sans pitié avec les responsables de la police juive du ghetto mais aussi l'implication énorme des Ukrainiens et des Polonais dans le massacre programmé.
La préface de VidalNaquet, même si un peu chargée de trop nombreuses citations ou comparaisons, reste incontournable, an account of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, written by the only surviving commander of the Jewish Combat Organization ZOB, Marek Edelman,
This is horrifying and beautiful, written in the unadorned prose of a fighter, The Israeli government and its supporters try to coopt this heroic struggle for their own colonial project, But the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was led by socialists, The fighters all sang the Internationale on May Day and saw themselves as part of a worldwide workingclass struggle against fascism, Edelman himself stayed in Poland after the war, even though he was persecuted under the Stalinists, and remained critical of Zionism until his death.
Things I learned about the uprising that I hadn't realized before: many of their early actions were directed against Jewish police, as collaborators made up the first line of repression in the Ghetto, and SS men were only rarely seen.
In these initial actions, something like four fifths of the ZOB fighters ! were killed, The uprising was not a success in any military sense: few or no lives were saved, Yet the uprising sent out a call for resistance that resonated around the world, and until today,
The Nazis' plans for genocide were delayed by the uprising, But more than that: potential victims of the Nazis, who often felt confused and hopeless, now saw that they could fight back, Morale is the most important resource in the struggle against oppression, and the ZOB suffered a terrible military defeat but won an unprecedented moral victory.
Let's remember their example. As Bertolt Brecht put it, loosely translated: "If all is lost, then fight!"
Great little book! Read it! AppendicesReports of the ghetto uprising sent out of Poland by Bund organisations.
This remarkable memoir by Marek Edelman, member of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance fiveperson command team, tells firsthand of the struggle of Warsaw's Jews against the Nazis in the spring of.
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