Page 45 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana. Edelman

talking and singing,” he later remembered. The ideals
Marek Edelman was awarded
with the highest distinction
in Poland – the Order of the
White Eagle (1998), he was
also a Honorary Citizen of the
City of Lodz (2000), Honorary
Citizen of the Capital City of
Warsaw (2001); honoris causa
doctor of Yale University
(1989), Medical University
of Lodz (2007), Université
Libre de Bruxelles (2007) and
Jagiellonian University (2009).
In 2008 he also received
French Legion of Honor.
of fellowship, brotherhood and equality guided him
his entire life.
Shortly before the war, Marek Edelman passed his
high school exams. In September 1939, he followed
the call of lieutenant Roman Umiastowski, the head of
propaganda of High Staff of the Supreme Command
of the Polish Army, to leave Warsaw, but he soon
returned to the occupied city. He started working as
a courier in Berson and Bauman Children Hospital. It
is there he learned how to care for the sick and dying
– despite the inhumane conditions, the doctors and
nurses took care of their patients to their best ability.
“It was an enclave in a world of atrociousness,” he
recalled.
In the autumn of 1939, Edelman and a group of his
friends from Cukunft started printing Za Naszą i Waszą
Wolność (For Freedom Ours and Yours) magazine and
other journals, meant to oppose the Germans. When
the ghetto was locked down and isolated from the
rest of the city on November 16, 1940, he was still
working in the hospital and as a printer. In order to
transport sick children’s blood samples from the
hospital to the lab, he was provided with a permanent
pass to the Aryan side. He always returned – a sense
of responsibility for his friends from the organization
prevented him from escaping. Despite the hunger and
despicable conditions in the ghetto (a small area had
to maintain almost 450 thousand people!), life still
went on: books were written, newspapers were pub-
lished, poetry readings were held, as were concerts
and children’s games. People also discussed what the
world after the war should look like. “We created an
atmosphere that led to the birth of our resistance,
called by some the uprising, and by others – a fight
for dignity…” he said later.
In 1942, a great displacement action began and
Germans started relocating Jews from the ghetto to
Treblinka. Edelman watched thousands of people
hurried to the wagons every day. “I walked 400 thou-
sand people to Umschlagplatz. Me, in person, they
all passed me on their way when I stood near the
gate,” he recalled. That sight and the awareness that
almost all of them were murdered in the gas cham-
bers by the Germans stayed in his memory and heart
forever.
“Nothingness is behind me,” he said in 2005. “Noth-
ingness that swallowed hundreds of thousands of
people, people who I walked to the wagons. I have no
right to speak in their name, because I don’t know if
they died with hatred or forgiveness in their hearts.
And no one will ever know. But it is my duty to have
them remembered.”
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