Marek Edelman

The late Marek Edelman, one of the three commanders of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and a prominent dissident during the communist period, is to have his mini-museum dedicated to him in his home town of Łodz, central Poland.

The City Council has approved a plan to set aside a small section of the Historical Museum and arrange it as Edelman’s apartment, with the furniture, books, photographs and objects of everyday use recreating the atmosphere of his home in Łódź.

The exhibit is to open in October, on the second anniversary of Edelman’s death.

It will be the third such special exhibit devoted to the most famous citizens of the city, after the ones honouring Jan Karski, the legendary war-time courier who reported to allied leaders and Western societies about the Holocaust, and the pianist Artur Rubinstein.

Marek Edelman was a co-founder of the Jewish Combat Organization during World War Two. Having miraculouly survived the liquidation of the Ghetto, he managed to escape, joined the underground Home Army and fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

After the war, he settled in Łódź and graduated from the city’s Medical Academy, developing a career as a cardiologist.

In 1976 he joined the Workers’ Defence Committee KOR and later was one of the activists of the Solidarity movement. He was interned by the communists under martial law and was an activist in Solidarity’s clandestine structures.

Following the partially-free elections in June 1989, he served as a Member of Parliament until 1993. His book ‘Ghetto Fights’, first published in 1945, was re-issued by an underground publishing network in the 1980s.

In addition to the highest Polish state distinction, the Order of the White Eagle, he received the French Legion of Honour. (mk)