Page 13 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana. Edelman. The Man

‘I was born here, I went to school here. Here I learned to
speak, read and write in Polish, here I learned to write and
speak in Yiddish. And here the Vistula River spoke Yiddish
to me… Here I learned what friendship is. Here I saw wealth
and poverty. And here I was taught the duty of supporting
the vulnerable ones, those who are beaten and persecuted,
and the duty to oppose violence…’

Marek
Edelman

‘Before the war broke out I was no one. A boy with
highschool qualifications to his name. An audacious
one. With no manners. I worked for a company called
Ogoldwicht. They made me add up long columns of
numbers, and I would always make mistakes. Later on they
fired me and I worked as a secretary for an assistance
committee for Jews who had been expelled from Germany
to Poland. On the eve of war, I returned to Warsaw from my
holidays. I was still no one, but this time, I didn’t have a job
either. I went to Dr Hellerowa, who had known my mother.
She employed me as an office boy. I was still a nobody,
for who is an office boy in the long-established hospital
hierarchy? (…)’
Marek
Edelman

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Marek Edelman, fifth from top: ‘during the excursion we were wearing blue
shirts and red ties’. SKIF’s summer camp, 1930s. From Paula Sawicka’s
collection