- published: 09 Feb 2015
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Marek Edelman (Yiddish: מאַרעק עדעלמאַן, born 1919 in Homel or 1922 in Warsaw – October 2, 2009 in Warsaw) was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist.
Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization. He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of Mordechaj Anielewicz. He also took part in the city-wide 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Before his death on 2 October 2009 Edelman was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
After the war he remained in Poland and became a noted cardiologist. From the 1970s he collaborated with the Workers' Defence Committee and other political groups opposing Poland's communist regime. As a member of Solidarity, he took part in the Polish Round Table Talks of 1989.
Following the peaceful transformations of 1989, he was a member of various centrist and liberal parties. He also wrote books documenting the history of wartime resistance against the Nazi German occupation.
Actors: Andy Nyman (actor), David Schwimmer (actor), Pavel Landovský (actor), Miguel Herz-Kestranek (actor), Zoltán Gera (actor), Anton Lesser (actor), Martin Brambach (actor), Dietrich Hollinderbäumer (actor), Georg Friedrich (actor), Itzhak Finzi (actor), Hank Azaria (actor), Cary Elwes (actor), Jesper Christensen (actor), Marek Vasut (actor), Donald Sutherland (actor),
Plot: Using radically refashioned archival footage of the Warsaw ghetto, this interview with Jon Avnet the director of Uprising talks about Marek Edelman who is an evocative memoir of his role in the rebellion that held back the Nazis for almost a month in 1943. The film begins with the growing list of prohibitions and regulations leading to the virtual imprisonment of about half-a-million Polish Jews in an old slum district of Warsaw with inadequate space and plumbing. An overhead tracking shot shows the number of people assembled in the first months of the relocation. The daily struggle against hunger and disease, especially among the dispossessed arrivals seen in their pitful rags, is aggravated by the German demands for "deportations to the east" that many begin to suspect are camouflaged mass murders. By the close of 1942, people living in the ghetto realize they are doomed, and the rudiments of resistance are planned by a handful of the young, including Edelman. Following some sporadic, spontaneous fighting at the ghetto railhead, the Umschlagplatz, in January, led by Moredecai Anielewicz, the scene is set for the more famous and prolonged battle that will begin on 19 April 1943. In the intervening time, many of the ghetto residents construct hidden shelters or bunkers in the basements and cellars of the buildings, often with tunnels leading to other buildings. The handful of fighters who have weapons take to these shelters, giving the uprising the advantage of defensive positions.
Keywords: 1940s, anti-fascism, anti-fascist, anti-nazi, ballet, bare-breasts, bread, bunker, candelabra, chairman