Marek Edelman - A luxury bunker in the ghetto (104/145)

To listen to more of Marek Edelman’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Marek Edelman - Recollecting my parents (1...   Marek Edelman (1919-2009) was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He had remained in Poland following the Nazi defeat and was active in domestic and international politics while at the same time becoming one of Poland’s leading cardiologists. [Listeners: Anka Grupinska, Joanna Klara, Agnieszka Zuchowska, Joanna Szczesna] TRANSCRIPT: When they began to find these bunkers, the atmosphere became heavy. I can't say what it was like at Miła 18 which is where Anielewicz was because that's where they had all those crooks, the thieves, the pimps, who'd built a luxury bunker in which those big fat strong lads protected all of that. But the girls were beautiful prostitutes but they were lovely. There was one brunette who was the lover of the guy who was in charge of those prostitutes, she was little and she was always sitting on his arm with no knickers on, here on his forearm. If any of the others smiled at him, she'd slap their faces. It was fantastic. But they kept everything in order, they had food, they had water, they had electricity, they had everything you could have wanted. It was a real underworld. They'd made that bunker, it was in the ruins of a house but they had - when our boys had retreated from Zamenhof Street, the one who was in charge had come out and had taken them into the bunker and said you're here and so are we and together we'll show them. You should have seen him. Today, perhaps I just imagined it then that he was so huge because all three of you together make up only half of him. If she was sitting on his forearm and had her arms around his neck and still couldn't reach him, then I don't know how big he must have been, and he was in charge there. He addressed us with total respect. They had no weapons but we did. He addressed us with total respect. He must have been counting on us defending him because he asked us: 'Do you want to defeat the Germans or do you want to defend us?' We replied: 'We don't want to defeat the Germans because we can't but we want to defend you as long as we're able to.' So he said: 'So come and join us and we'll be together. We've got food, we've got light, we've got water' - they'd done everything in that bunker and there was a place to sleep. The conditions were really luxurious. When I went there for the first time I felt like I was in the Radziwiłł Palace compared with my cellar.