Five youngsters commanded the Ghetto uprising in 1943. Only Marek Edelman is still alive, today a practicing cardiologist in Lodz, , and a national leader of the Solidarity movement. For many years, Edelman lived in relative obscurity. Now, in a series of stunning interviews by , one of Poland's foremost jour• nalists, he has remembered and reflected on those days of horror and of heroism.

Photograph by 1. Joel Abromson: Site of Mi la 18 today We IP Why did you choose that very day, Well what? April 19th? Did you manage to find this We didn't choose it. The Germans hat day you were wearing daughter7 chose U. That was the day the liqui• a sweater made of red, fluffy wool. "It Yes, I did dation of the Ghetto was scheduled to was a beautiful sweater, made of an• Listen, we agreed that you would begin. There were phone calls from gora From a very rich Jew . . " Two talk, right? It is April 19th. They have the Aryan side-that they were getting leather belts crisscrossed the started shooting. You've gotten everything ready, that the walls were sweater, and in the middle, atop your dressed This guy from the Aryan side being surrounded on the outside On chest, a flashlight. "Hanna, I wish is talking about his daughter What the night of the 18th we met at you could have seen me then!" you next? Anielewicz's, all five of us, the whole told me when I asked you about that We went out to look around We command staff I was probably the day, April 19th . . . crossed the courtyard-there were a oldest one there, 22 years old; Is that what I said9 It was cold In few Germans there. Actually, we Anielewicz was a year younger. To• April, the nights are cold, especially should have killed them, but we hadn't gether, all five of us, we were 110 for those who haven't been eating had practice in killing yet, and be• years old. much So I put the sweater on It's sides, we were still a little afraid, so There wasn't much to talk about by true, I found it among some things we didn't kill them. that time anymore "Well9" "Have that belonged to this Jew One day After about three hours the shooting they called from the city9" Anielewicz they pulled his whole family out of died down. takes the central Ghetto, his - their basement, and I took an angora It got silent deputies-Geller and myself-we divvy sweater It was top quality. That guy Our area was the so-called Brush up Toebbens' Sheds and the Brush had loads of money Before the war Factory Ghetto-Franciszkanska, Factory. "See you tomorrow." We did he'd donated a plane or tank or some• Swietojerska, Bonifraterska streets say good-bye to each other, the only thing like that to the Fund for National We had mined the factory gate thing we had never done before Defense The next day, when the Germans Why was it Anielewicz who be• I know you like that sort of thing. approached, we plunged the plug in, came your commander? That's probably why I mentioned it and about a hundred of them got He very much wanted to be a com• Oh, no You mentioned it because wiped out I don't remember exactly, mander, so we chose him. He was a you wanted to show me something you'd have to look it up somewhere. little childlike in this ambition, but he The matter-of-factness and the calm. Actually, I remember less and less. was a talented guy, well read, full of That's what you were trying to About any of my patients, I could tell energy. Before the war he'd lived on demonstrate. you 10 times more. Solec Street. His mother sold fish I simply talk about it the way we After the mine's explosion, they When she had any left over, she all spoke about it at the time. started charging at us in an extended would have him buy red paint and Well, the sweater, the crossing line We loved it Forty of us, a hun• paint the gills so the fish would look belts . . dred of them, a whole column, in full fresh He was constantly hungry. Write also two guns The guns battle array, crawling along It was When he first came back to the completed the outfit, very de rigueur. obvious that now they were taking us Ghetto from Silesia and we gave him You figured in those days that if you seriously something to eat, he would shield the had two guns, you had everything Before the day had ended, they sent plate with his hand, so that nobody April 19th- You were awakened by over three men with their guns held could take anything away from him shooting, you got dressed . down, carrying white sashes. They He had a lot of youthful verve and No, not yet. The shooting woke called out that if we'd agree to a enthusiasm, only he had never before me up, true, but it was cold, and be• ceasefire, they would send us to a spe• seen an "action " He hadn't seen the sides, the shooting was far away, and cial camp. We shot at them. I later people being loaded into trains at the there was no reason to get up. found that scene in Stroop's reports: . And such a I got dressed around noon them, parliamentarians with a white thing-when you see four hundred There was one guy with us who had banner-us, bandits, opening fire By thousand people being sent off to gas smuggled in arms from the Aryan the way, we missed, but it doesn't chambers-can break a person side. He was supposed to have headed matter We did not meet on April 19th I back immediately, but it was already How come it doesn't matter7 saw him the day after. He was al• too late. When they started shooting, The important thing was just that ready a different man. Celina told me- he told me that he had a daughter in we were shooting. We had to show it "You know, it happened to him yes• Zamosc in a convent and that he knew Not to the Germans. They knew better terday He was just sitting and he would not survive, but that I than we how to shoot. We had to muttering: 'We're all going to would, so that after the war I was sup• show it to this other, the non-German die. . . '"He managed to get roused posed to take care of this daughter I world. People have always thought up again only once after that We got said: "All right, all right, stop talking that shooting is the highest form of a message from the [the nonsense." heroism. So we were shooting principal and largest clandestine anti-

12/June 1986 From the "Transporting onward" Nazi armed organization in Poland] to body who volunteered for hard labor wait in the northern part of the would get three kilograms of bread Ghetto. We didn't know exactly what and jam. it was all about, and in the end, it as it possible to see Listen, my dear Do you have any didn't work out anyway: The guy who anything beyond the wall on the idea what bread meant at that time in went there to check it out got burned Aryan side? the Ghetto? Because if you don't, you alive on Mila Street, we could hear Oh yes. The wall only reached the will never understand how thousands him screaming all day . Do you second floor. And already from the of people could voluntarily come for think that can impress anybody third floor one could see the other the bread and go on with this bread to anymore-one burning guy after four street. We could see a merry-go- the camp at Treblinka. Nobody has un• hundred thousand people? round, people, we could hear music, derstood it thus far. / think that one burned guy makes and we were terribly afraid that this They were giving out that bread a bigger impression than four hundred music would drown us out and that right here, in this very place Ob• thousand, and four hundred thou• those people would never notice a long, browned loaves of rye bread sand a bigger impression than six thing, that nobody in the world And you know what7 million. would notice a thing: us, the struggle, Those people would go, in order, by So, you didn't know exactly what the dead. . . That this wall was so fours, to get this bread, and then right this message was about . . . huge, that nothing, no message about onto the train car There were so many He must have thought that some re• us, would ever make it out. . . . such volunteers that they had to wait inforcements were being sent. We I would stand in this place. Exactly in line1 It was required that they send kept trying to dissuade him- "Let it go, here Only the gate was wooden two trains a day to Trebhnka-and the area there is completely dead, we then This cement post is the same, still, there was not enough space for won't get through." that barrack, and probably even those all those who were willing to go ... You know what? poplars. . . The action lasted from July 22nd till I think that all along he had actually By that time I was working as a September 8th, 1942-six weeks convinced himself of the possibility messenger at the hospital, and this was During those six weeks I stood by the of some sort of victory my job. to stand by the gate at the gate Here, at this spot I saw four Obviously, he never spoke about it Umschlagplatz and select out "sick" hundred thousand people off from this before. On the contrary "We are going people. Our people would pick out square I was looking at the same ce• to die," he would yell, "there is no those who should be saved, and 1 ment post you are looking at now. way out, we'll die for our honor, for would select them out as "sick " In the building of that vocational history. . . " All the sorts of things I was merciless One woman school over there, that was our hospi• one says in such cases But today I begged me to pull out her 14-year-old tal They liquidated it on September think that all the time he maintained daughter, but 1 was only able to take 8th, the last day of the action On the some kind of a childlike hope one more person and I took Zosia, upper floor there were a few rooms He had a girlfriend Pretty, blond, who was our best courier I selected with children As the Germans were warm Her name was Mira On May her out four times and each time entering the ground floor, a woman 7th he came with her to our place in ended up having to take her out all doctor managed to poison the kids. Franciszkanska Street over again You see, Hanna, you don't under• On May 8th he shot her first and At the beginning it was the people stand anything She saved these then himself. Jurek Wilner had ap• without life tickets who were being children from the Peo• parently declared' "Let's all die paraded past me The Germans had is• ple thought she was a hero together." Lutek Rotblat shot his sued these tickets, and those who got In this hospital, sick people were mother and sister, then everybody them were promised survival In those lying on the floor waiting to be loaded started shooting By the time we days everybody in the Ghetto had onto the train cars, and the nurses managed to get back there, there were only one goal to get a ticket But later, were searching out their parents in the only a few people left alive, eighty they were even taking out those with crowd and injecting them with poi• people had committed suicide "This is the tickets son They saved this poison for their how it should have been," we were Still later it was announced that the closest relatives And she, this doc• told later "The nation has died, its sol• right to live was being reserved for tor, had given her own cyanide to kids diers have died A symbolic death " employees of factories Sewing ma• who were complete strangers! You, too, probably like such symbols9 chines were necessary in these There was a young woman with factories, so people began thinking them, Ruth She shot herself seven that sewing machines might save their times before she finally made it She lives and they were ready to pay any was such a pretty, tall girl with a price for a sewing machine But after• peachy complexion, but she wasted ward, they started taking away even he movie Requiem for six bullets those with the machines 500,000 shows them filing in. One Finally, they announced that they can even see the bread loaves in their would distribute bread. That every• hands. A German cameraman stood

14/June 1986 at the train car's entrance and photo• him several things-how to die in a gas voked laughter. graphed the surging crowd, the chamber is by no means worse than But you know what? stumbling old women, the mothers to die in battle, and that the only At that moment I realized that the dragging their children by the hands. undignified death is when one at• most important thing on earth was They are running with this bread to• tempts to survive at the expense of going to be never letting myself be ward us and toward the Swedish somebody else. But he'd been unable pushed onto the top of that barrel. journalists who have come here to to explain anything, and instead he'd Never, by anybody. Do you Warsaw to gather material about the started yelling all over again Some understand? Ghetto; they are running toward Inger, woman who was in the room tried to Everything I was to do later, I was a Swedish journalist who is looking offer apologies on his behalf. "Ex• doing in order not to let myself get at the screen with dumbfounded blue cuse him, please," she'd pleaded in pushed up there. eyes, trying to comprehend why so embarrassment. "One has to excuse It was the beginning of the war and many people are running toward the him . " you could still have left the country. train car-and then, suddenly, the My dear, Edelman says, you have to Your friends were fleeing to places shots are heard. What a relief it is understand this once and for all without barrels . . . when they start shooting! What a re• Those people went quietly and with Those were different kinds of peo• lief it is when puffs of dust veil the dignity It is a horrendous thing, ple They were wonderful boys from running crowd and their loaves of when one is going so quietly to one's civilized families They had excel• bread and the narrator informs us death. It is infinitely more difficult lent grades at school, telephones in about the outbreak of the uprising, so than to go out shooting. After all, it is their houses and beautiful paintings that it now becomes possible to ex• much easier to die firing-for us it on their walls Originals, not some re• plain it all to Inger in a matter-of-fact was much easier to die than it was for productions. I was nothing compared way ("The uprising's broken out, this is someone who first boarded a train to them. I wasn't any member of the April '43") . . . car, then rode the train, then dug a high life. I had poorer grades, I I tell Marek about this scene and I hole, then undressed naked. . Do couldn't sing as well, I couldn't ride a 9 say how it's a really well-thought-out you understand now he asks. bicycle and I didn't even have a sequence. It's great how the explosions Yes, I say. I see. Because it is in• house because my mother died when I veil the people-and at that point he deed easier, even for us, to look at was 14. (Colitis ulceroza. It's odd: begins to scream. He screams that I their death when they are shooting Later, the first patient I had in my life probably consider the people who than when they are digging a hole for suffered from the same thing. Only, were surging into the train cars to themselves. . . by that time there existed prednisone have been worse than the ones who and penicillin, so we cured him in a were shooting. Of course, I do, abso• I once saw a crowd on Zelazna Street. couple of weeks ) lutely, everybody does, even that People on the street were swarming What were we talking about? American, the professor who recently around this barrel-a simple wooden That some friends did leave. visited Marek and told him, "You barrel with a Jew on top of it He was You see, Hanna, before the war I were going like sheep to your deaths." old and short, and he had a long beard. was telling my fellow Jews that their That American professor landed Next to him there were two Ger• place was here, in Poland That we once on some French beach, scram• man officers (Two beautiful, tall men should build here, and that bled for four or five hundred meters next to this small, bowed Jew.) And they should stay here. So when they under withering fire without swerving those Germans, tuft by tuft, were stayed, and the war began, and every• or even crouching down, got chopping off this Jew's long beard thing that was to happen to the Jews wounded, and now he believes that if with huge tailor's shears, splitting was beginning to happen-how was I one has run across such a beach, he their sides with laughter all the while. supposed to leave? later has the right to say "Men should The surrounding crowd was also After the war, some of those run," or "Men should shoot," or "You laughing Because, objectively, it friends turned out to be managers of were going like sheep." The profes• really was funny: a little man on a Japanese corporations, or physicists sor's wife added that those shots were wooden barrel with his beard grow• in American nuclear agencies or pro• needed by future generations: The ing shorter by the moment as it fessors at colleges. As I told you, death of people dying in silence disappeared under the tailor's shears. they were talented people. means nothing because it leaves noth• Just like a movie gag. But by that time you had already ing behind, whereas those who shoot At that time the Ghetto did not ex• pulled yourself up to their level. You leave a legend behind-for her and her ist yet, and one might not have sensed had hero status. They could accept American children. the grim premonition in that scene you in their glorious class. He'd very well understood why the After all, nothing really horrible was They would ask me to come But I professor-who still had the scars happening to that Jew. only that it had seen four hundred thousand peo• from his wounds, had medals and aca• was now possible to put him on a bar• ple off at the Umschlagplatz. I demic tenure-why he wanted to rel with impunity, that people were myself, me, in person. They'd all include those shots in his history. But beginning to realize that such activity passed by me while I stood there at he nevertheless tried to explain to wouldn't be punished and that it pro• the gate

Moment /15 From the Stroop Report "These bandits offered armed resistance" Listen, Hanna, do me a favor, stop floor, and from the second to the third, you know9 asking me those nonsense ques• but there were only four floors and on My word of honor. She is married, tions. "Why did you stay?" "Why the fourth floor their activity and en• has two kids, and is very happy. did you stay?" ergy would simply give out, because You were busy at the Umschlag• it was impossible to go any higher. platz . . . There was a big gym on this fourth And one day I selected out Pola floor, and several hundred people Lifszyc. The next day she went to her would be lying there on the floor. No• house and she saw that her mother was busy at the Umschlag- body would stand or walk, nobody wasn't there-her mother was already platz. With the aid of our people would even move People would just in a column marching toward the in the Ghetto police, I was supposed be lying there, apathetic and silent Umschlagplatz Pola ran after this col• to select out those whom we needed There was a niche in this gym umn alone, she ran after this column the most at the time. One day And in this niche one day several from Leszno Street to Stawki-her I pulled out a guy and a young Ukrainian guards-six, maybe fiance gave her a lift in his riksa so woman-he had worked in the printing eight-were raping a young girl They that she could catch up-and she made shop, and she had been an excellent waited in line and then raped her it. At the last minute she managed to liaison officer. They both died soon After the line was finished, this girl merge into the crowd so as to be able afterward-he in the uprising, and she left the niche and she walked across to get on the train with her mother. by way of a later trip to the the whole gym, stumbling against the Everybody knows about Korczak, Umschlagplatz-but before that he reclining people. She was very pale, right? [Janusz Korczak, ne Henryk managed to print an underground pa• naked, and bleeding, and she slouched Goldszmit, was a famous writer of per and she managed to distribute this down into a corner. The crowd saw children's books and director of a paper everything, and nobody said a word. Warsaw orphanage. Though exempted I know You want to ask, what Nobody so much as moved, and the from deportation, he chose to accom• sense did it have? silence continued. pany his young wards to Treblinka.] No sense at all. Did you see that yourself, or some• Korczak was a hero because he went Thanks to that, one wasn't standing body told you? to death with his children of his own on a barrel That's all. I saw it I was standing at the end free will. There was an emergency room at of the gym and saw everything But Pola Lifszyc, who went with the Umschlagplatz Students from You were standing in the gym "> her mother-who knows about Pola the nurses' college worked there-this Yes. One day I told Elzbieta about Lifszyc? was, by the way, the only school in this incident. She asked me, "And And Pola could have easily the Ghetto. Luba Blum was the head• you? What did you do then9" "I didn't crossed to the Aryan side because she mistress and she made sure that do anything," I told her. "Anyway, I was young, pretty, she didn't look everything there was run like a real, can see that it's no use talking to you Jewish, and she'd have had a hundred first-rate school, snow-white robes, about it You don't understand a times better chance starched caps, perfect discipline In thing'" Marek, you once mentioned the life order to pull somebody out from the / don't understand why you got so tickets. Who distributed them? lines at the Umschlagplatz, it was nec• mad Elzbieta's response was the reac• There were forty thousand tickets- essary to prove to the Germans that tion of any normal person. little white chits of paper with a the person was seriously ill. They I know. I also know what a normal stamp The Germans gave them to the would send those sick people home person is supposed to do in such cir• community council and said' "Dis• in ambulances: Till the last moment, cumstances. When a woman is being tribute them among yourselves. Those the Germans tried to maintain the il• raped, every normal person rushes to who have the tickets will stay in the lusion in people that they were leaving her rescue, right9 Ghetto. All the others must go to the m those trains to work, and only a If you'd rushed by yourself, they Umschlagplatz." healthy person could work, right? So would have killed you But if you had It was two days before the conclu• these girls from the emergency room, all gotten up from the floor, all of you sion of the liquidation action, in those nurses, would break the legs of could have easily overpowered those September. The head doctor of our those people who had to be saved Ukrainians. hospital, Mrs Heller, got some 15 They would wedge a leg up against a Well, nobody got up. Nobody was tickets, and said. "I'm not going to wooden block and then smash it with any longer capable of getting up from pass these out." another block. All this in their shiny that floor Those people were capa• Any of the doctors could have dis• white robes of model students. ble of only one thing, waiting for tributed these tickets but everybody People who were waiting to be the trains. But, why are we talking thought that she would give them to loaded onto the trains were herded about it? those who deserved them most. together in a school building. They / don't know. You were saying before Listen to me- "Who deserved them would take them out floor by floor, so how it was necessary to keep busy. most " Is there any standard that can that from the first floor the people I was busy at the Umschlag• be used to decide who has the right to would tend to flee up to the second platz. . . . And that girl is still alive, live9 There is no such standard. But

Moment/17 delegations of people went to Mrs. doctor didn't say a thing to her. Not a search of a rabbi or anybody who Heller, begging her to distribute the word. And this nurse knew herself could marry them, and then they tickets, so finally she agreed to. what she was supposed to do would go to the Umschlagplatz as a She gave Frania a ticket. And I'm glad that you haven't asked me married couple Frania had a mother and a sister. All today, "And did this nurse survive?" Tosia's niece went with her those who had tickets were being the way you asked about the doctor boyfriend to Pawia Street-at 1 Pawia gathered together near Zamenhofa who gave cyanide to the children. Street lived some rabbi who married Street, and all about them a crowd of Yes, she did survive. She is a very them-and immediately after the people who didn't have tickets was famous pediatrician. wedding, some Ukrainians arrived scrambling Among those people, So what happened to Mrs. and wanted to take her away. One of Frania's mother was standing She Tenenbaum's daughter7 them put the barrel of his rifle up didn't want to leave Frania, even Nothing; she also died But before against her belly So he, her husband, though Frania had already joined the that she had a few really good months: pushed that barrel away, covering her ranks of the reprieved Frania kept She was in love with a guy, and in belly with his hand. She, by the way, saying: "Mother, go already " She was his presence she was always serene, ended up going to the Umschlagplatz pushing her away with her hand smiling She had some really good anyway, and he, with a blown hand, "Mother, go away " months managed to run away to the Aryan side Yes, Frania did survive. That French guy from L'Express and later died in the 1944 Warsaw She later saved the lives of a dozen asked me whether people in the Ghetto uprising or so people She carried one guy out fell in love Well . . But this was precisely what- of the In general, Excuse me. Did you also get a mattered, that there be someone ready she behaved extraordinarily. ticket7 to cover your belly with his hand One such ticket went to Mrs Yes. I was standing in the 15th row should that prove necessary Tenenbaum, the head nurse. She was of five, in the same column in which a friend of Berenson, the famous attor• Frania and Mrs. Tenenbaum's daugh• ney, the defense lawyer in the Brzesc ter were already standing, and I trial She had a daughter who hadn't noticed a friend of mine and her gotten a ticket So Mrs. Tenenbaum brother. So I quickly pulled them into hy did you become a gave her ticket to her daughter and the column Only, other people had doctor7 said, "Hold this for a second, I'll be been doing the same thing, so that in Because I had to continue doing right back," and she went upstairs and our crowd there were already not forty what I was doing before, in the swallowed a flaskful of Luminal. thousand but forty-four thousand Ghetto In the Ghetto we made the de• We found her the next day, she was people. cision for forty thousand still alive. Therefore the Germans simply people-there were forty thousand of Do you think we should have tried counted out the people and sent the them left in April 1943 We decided to save her? last four thousand to the that they would not voluntarily collab• What happened to the daughter who Umschlagplatz. Somehow I managed orate in their own deaths. As a doctor now had the ticket? to squeeze in with the first forty 1 could continue to be responsible for First, answer: Should we have tried thousand. the life of at least one person-so I be• to save her? So this French guy was asking came a doctor You know, Tosia Goliborska told me you . . . You would have liked me to an• that her mother also swallowed poi• . . . whether people fell in love. swer like this, right9 It would have son. "And that moron, my brother-in- Well, to be with someone was the only sounded good? But it didn't quite law, " she told me, "he saved her. Can way to survive in the Ghetto One happen like that What happened was you imagine such a moron? To save would secrete oneself somewhere with that the war ended The war-a vic• her just so that a few days later she the other person-in a bed, in a base• tory for everybody. Only for me it was could be dragged to the Umschlag- ment, anywhere-and until the next a lost war, and all the time I was platz. . . " action one was not alone anymore haunted by a feeling that I still had When the liquidation action started One person had had his mother something to do, somewhere to go, and they were gathering up people taken away, somebody else's father that somebody was still counting on from the first floor of our hospital, one had been shot and killed, or a sister me and I had to go rescue him Some• woman upstairs was in labor. A doc• taken away in a shipment. So if thing seemed to propel me from one tor and a nurse were with her. And someone, somehow, by some miracle town to another and from country to when the baby was born, the doctor escaped and was still alive, he had to country, but when I'd arrive, it would handed it to the nurse, and the nurse stick to some other living human turn out that nobody was waiting, laid it on one pillow, and smothered it being. that there wasn't anybody counting on with another one. The baby whim• People were drawn to one another as me for help anymore, and that, in pered for a while and then grew never before, as never in normal life. general, there was nothing more to do. silent. Dunng the last liquidation action they So I came back. (People kept asking This nurse was 19 years old. The would run to the Jewish Council in me, "Do you want to look at those

18/June 1986 From the Stroop Report "To the Umschlagplatz" walls again, those empty streets?" Do you know what I remember best that patient and I knew that yes, indeed, I had to from this period? From that moment I took up medi• come back here and look at them ) So Mikolaj's death The one who was a cine, and from then on the stuff you I came back and I lay in bed and sim• member of the Zegota (the Council to were wanting me to say at the outset ply stayed like that. I slept I slept for Aid the Jews) as a representative of applies But I only understood it days and weeks. From time to time our underground. much, much later, how by being a friends would wake me up and tell Mikolaj got sick and died doctor I could continue to be responsi• me that, after all, seriously, I had to do He died-Hanna, do you under- ble for human life. something about myself For a while, stand9-normally, in a hospital, in bed' Why actually do you feel you have it seemed to me I might study econom• He was the first of the people I knew to be responsible for human life'' ics I don't remember why anymore who simply died and was not killed. Probably because everything else But finally Ala registered me in medi• The day before, I'd visited him in the seems to me less important. cal school hospital and he said. "Mr Marek, Perhaps it was a question of your Ala was already my wife I'd met should anything happen to me, here, having been 20 then? If one has lived her when she came with a patrol orga• under the pillow is the notebook and the most important moments of one's nized by Dr Swital from the Home everything is accounted for there, to life by the age of20, afterwarditcan Army to lead us out of a bunker in the the last penny. Folks may ask about it get rather difficult finding an equally Zohborz district We'd been left one day, so please, remember that it's significant job . . . there, on Promyka Street, after the all balanced and there is even a slight You know, Hanna, in the clinic general Warsaw uprising in 1944- surplus " where I later worked, there was a Antek, Cehna, Tosia Gohborska and Can you imagine, Hanna, what he big, tall palm tree there in the hall I I, among others-and in Novem• had there? It was a thick notebook would stand underneath that palm ber they sent this patrol around to with a black cover in which through• tree sometimes-and I'd look out over fetch us (Promyka Street runs out the whole war he'd been the rooms where my patients were ly• along the Vistula River, so it was recording how he was spending all the ing This was a long time ago, when still the front line, and everything dollars. The dollars we'd received in we didn't yet have today's medica• was mined I remember Ala's taking the drops to buy arms Almost a hun• tions or operations or devices her shoes off and crossing the mine dred was left, and the bank notes available, and the majority of the field barefoot, because she imagined were all there in the back of the people in those rooms were in effect that if she happened to step on a mine notebook. simply condemned to death My as• barefoot, for some reason it wouldn't Did you give the cash and the signment was to save as many as go off ) notebook to those union leaders in possible-and I realized, that day un• As I was saying, Ala registered me America, those hosts who seemed so der the palm, that actually it was the in medical school, so I started going profoundly moved in 1963? same assignment as I'd had there, at there But I wasn't the least bit inter• You know, I didn't even take this the Umschlagplatz. There, too, I ested, and when we'd get back home, notebook from the hospital. I told would stand at the gate and pull out I would throw myself back onto the Antek and Cehna about it and-I individuals from the throngs of those bed. Everybody else was studying remember-we laughed a lot about condemned to die. assiduously, and because I was lying the whole thing, about the notebook And all your life you have been there with my face to the wall all the and how Mikolaj was dying in such a standing at this gate, right? time, some of my friends began draw• bizarre way, you know, lying between Actually, yes. And when I can't ac• ing things for me on this wall, so that clean sheets, in bed. We almost split complish anything else, there is at least I would be memorizing some• our sides laughing, and Cehna finally always one thing left: to assure them thing One day, for instance, they had to remind us that, after all, such the most comfortable death possible would draw a stomach, another day a behavior was slightly improper. So that they might not know, not suf• heart-always with great precision, Did your friends eventually stop fer, not be afraid. So that they need by the way, you know, the ventricles, having to draw those hearts on the not humiliate themselves the auricles, the aorta. . . . wall? You have to provide them with a Things continued more or less like Yes way of dying such that they don't be• this for about two years. Occasion• One day I happened to pop in dur• come like those-the ones from the ally people would call and invite me to ing some lecture-probably only to get fourth floor at the Umschlagplatz participate in a panel discussion some forms signed-but I heard a pro• People have told me, Marek, that about the Ghetto . fessor say: "When a doctor knows when you're taking care of simple and You'd already acquired hero what his patient's eyes look like, and not terribly serious cases, you do it in status? his skin, and his tongue, he should be a way out of a sense of duty, that you Sort of. Or they would come by able to tell what's wrong with him." I only really light up when the game and say: "Mr. Edelman, please tell us, liked that I realized that a patient's ill• begins, when the race with death tell us how it was." But I was rather ness is like a puzzle, and if one put begins. subdued, and I tended to prove rather the pieces together correctly, one This is, after all, my role. pale and ineffectual on those panels. should know what's going on inside God is trying to blow out the

207 June 1986 candle and I'm quickly trying to shield the flame, taking advantage of His brief inattention. To keep the flame nickering, even if only for a little while longer than He would wish. It is important He is not terribly just. It can also be very satisfying, be• cause whenever something does work out, it means you have, after all, fooled Him . . . A race with God? How delicious! You know, when you've had to see all those people off on the trains, later on you can have some things to settle with Him And they all passed by me because I stood there by that gate from the first day till the last All of them Four hundred thousand people passed right by me Of course, every life ends in the same way, but what counts is postponing the sentence for eight, ten, or fifteen years. That's not noth• ing When, thanks to that ticket, Mrs. Tenenbaum's daughter lived Marker at the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw today those extra three months-that was a lot because she managed to get to street. When the entire hospital was street, piled onto a platform cart and know love during those three being taken to the Umschlagplatz, transported down to Stawki Street to• months And the girls we cure of Irka had swallowed a bottle full of ward the Umschlagplatz The cart was stenosis or of narrowed valves, they Luminal, put on a nightgown and being pulled by two horses, a Jewish have time to grow up and make love gone to bed He'd found her in this policeman was sitting next to the and have babies-then how much pink gown and brought her to a house driver and there was a German at the more do they manage to live than Mrs where everybody else had already back Tenenbaum's daughter9 been taken away, and now he wanted They were already passing to tell the others that if she was to sin - Nowolipki Street when Marek sud• vive, it would be necessary to get her denly noticed Mietek Dab walking out of there. down the street. He was a member of There was a wall just across the the Socialist party, he had been as• e have to write about street at Nowolipki Street-on the other signed to serve in the Ghetto police, he one more thing," he says side it was already the Aryan part happened to live on Nowolipki Street Why he is alive All of a sudden an SS man leaned out and he was heading home from work When the first soldier of the liber• from behind that wall and started "Mietek, I got caught," Marek ating army came m, he stopped him shooting He shot more than 15 yelled, and Mietek came running up and asked, "You're Jewish-so how times-each time, less than half a me• close, told the policeman that Marek come you're alive''" The question ter to his right Perhaps the SS man was his brother, and they let him off the seemed laced with suspicion Per• was astigmatic-it is the sort of visual cart haps he'd turned somebody in7 defect that can be corrected by Then they went to Mietek's house. Perhaps he'd taken somebody else's glasses, but the German apparently Mietek's father was there-short, bread7 So I should ask him now had an uncoirected astigmatism, so he thin, hungry. He looked at them with whether by chance he didn't survive missed distaste on somebody else's account, and if "Is that all7" I ask "Simply that the "Mietek managed to save somebody not, then why he actually did survive German soldier didn't have the right from the cart again, right7 And as And then he will try to explain him• glasses7" usual, he didn't take a penny for it? self For instance, he will tell me But there comes another story, this "He could have made thousands about the day he went to Nowolipki one about Mietek Dab already. Street, No 7, where their conspiracy One day, the contingent of people "He might at least have been able had a local safehouse, to tell some• in the Umschlagplatz was a little short to buy some rationed bread with the body that Irka, a woman doctor from of the required ten thousand, and money the Leszno hospital, was lying uncon• some people, Edelman included, were "But what does he do 7 He gets peo• scious in an apartment across the simply gathered up from a nearby ple off for free."

Moment/21 "Daddy," saidMietek, "don'tworry. Ghetto" meant. They burned him on Marek Edelman is one of thefew survi• It wdl count to my credit as an act of Mila Street and he screamed the whole vors of the uprising kindness and F11 go to heaven." day; and Masza, who spent that day who chose to remain in Poland after "What heaven? What God? Can't in a nearby bunker, today, in Jerusa• the war. His interviewer, Hanna you see what's going on? Don't you see lem, a town 3,000 kilometers away Krall, is especially known in Poland that there hasn't been any God for a from Mila Street and from that bunker, for her incisive interviews, which ap• long time? And even if there is," the lurks and waits for Pnina to go shop• peared in Polityka until her little old man lowered his voice, "He ping and then whispers- "Listen, I resignation from that journal after is on THEIR side." heard him again today. Very clearly ") imposition of martial law. She now The next day they took Mietek's Or, the super knocks at the door of publishes exclusively in underground dad. Mietek didn't get back in time to Abrasza Blum's landlady, hisses, publications and abroad. This year get him off the cart, and soon there• "There is a Jew in your apartment," she received the Solidarity Cultural after, Mietek escaped into the forest, to locks the door, and goes to the tele• Prize of 1985for Sublokatorka (The join the partisans. phone (the Home Army later Sub-Tenant,), her work of autobio• This is the second example, when he sentenced this super to death, Abrasza graphical fiction . should have died for certain, and jumped out the window to a roof, he again some coincidence saved him In broke his legs and lay crumpled like the first case, he was saved by the SS that until the Gestapo came); or a man's astigmatism, in the second, by patient dies on the operating table be• the fact that Mietek Dab happened to cause it was a circumferential be walking down the street on his way infarction, which gave no picture on home from work either the coronography or the EKG So you well remember all these tricks and even when the operation seems to end, well-you wait There will be long days of waiting, because only gradually will it be re• he only thing that matters vealed whether the heart will adapt to is to shield the flame. the patched-up veins, to the new But, as we have said, He sits above, aortas and to the medication Later, carefully observing all these efforts, gradually, you get calmer, you become and is capable of lashing out so sud• more confident . And as this ten• denly that it is then too late to do a sion and later this happiness gradually thing leave you, only then do you finally re• Marek Edelman So you never know who's alize the proportion, one to four Her book Shielding the Flame sold outsmarted whom Sometimes you are hundred thousand 60,000 copies m Poland and then was happy that you've succeeded, you I 400,000 published in 10 other countries. have checked everything thoroughly It is simply ludicrous These selections are taken from the and you know that nothing bad But every life is a full one hundred first English translation, done by should happen anymore, and then percent for each individual, so that Joanna Stasinska, formerly a journal• Stefan, Marysia's brother, dies be• perhaps it makes some sense after ist with the Solidarity Press Agency, cause he was overwhelmed with all * and Lawrence Weschler, a staff writer happiness, or Celina, the one who at the New Yorker and author of 'The got out with them through the sewers Passion of Poland. on Prosta Street, lies dying and all he From the book Shielding The can promise her is that she will die in a Flame by Hanna Krall Translated by dignified manner and without fear Joanna Stasmska and Lawrence (Edelman later went to Cehna's fu• Weschler Copyright © 1977 by Hanna neral m a faraway land and there Krall Translation copyright © 1986 were three of them therefrom that by Henry Holt and Co , Inc Ex• sewer on Prosta Street, he, Masza cerpted by arrangement with Henry- and Pnina And Masza, the moment Holt and Co she noticed him, whispered. "You know, I heard him again today " The photographs on pages 13, 16 "Whom9" heasked "Don't try to pre• and 19 are from the report to Hitler by tend that you don't know," she got Juergen Stroop, the commander of angry He was later told that Masza the Nazi troops that destroyed the War• kept hearing the scream of that boy saw Ghetto The captions are left as who' d gone to find out what the mes• they were in the original, English sage "Wait in the northern part of the translations have been added. Hanna Krall

22/June 1986