Marek Edelman - Money dilemma (89/145)

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; date recoded: 2003] TRANSCRIPT: So my friend, who lived on Sapieżyńska Street, he was supposed to hand out this money. We already knew from various - this was meant to have been top secret but even in that resistance movement which was so careful, there was a leak somewhere, there are leaks today, but there were leaks there, too - the money's arrived! Except, where was it? Has it reached Sapieżyńska yet or not? It was hard to find this out. But finally, we got the information and we were able to get the money out of him. But the money hadn't arrived yet at that point. The first amount, the first $5,000 reached Bund because that Worker's Committee was a very powerful American institution and they kept a check. Not on us, but on London. As for London, there was nothing they could do. They sent the money, it reached us here but when they sent an 'iskrówka' to Mr Korboński, he held onto it for a bit but then he realised this was no joking matter, that this money wasn't to be pocketed by the government but that it needed to be passed on. So Zygielbojm sent us an 'iskrówka' at the same time because that's how everything was sent then and that's what it was called. Maybe it was sent by radio, I don't know, but that's what it was called, 'iskrówka'. So Feiner, who was a penny-pinching Cracovian, knew how to get his hands on this money. He got in there with those who - Mr Aristocrat, you've never seen him, you ought to see his photograph, the grand patron, with an aristocratic moustache, grey-haired, a white, starched shirt, a cravat or a bow-tie, altogether an aristocrat of the first order. He lives in Żolibórz, carries a cane when he walks, altogether a count. So he was trying to get his hands on this money and had got hold of some. He managed to get $5,000 and sent that over to us. I knew a guy who kept this $5,000 in his pocket, and that's what we had to buy weapons with. But for $5,000? Besides, those friends of mine were just kids and they thought this - there's no need to eat, no one else is eating so we don't need to eat, either, and things like that. They were only kids but they wanted the money. It wasn't so easy to give Bund money to these Zionist kids who had no idea of what everything was about, what it meant to eat dinner. In those kibbutz of theirs, people ate rough soap and nails instead, because that's what they felt they had to do if that was what the whole population was doing, then they had to die of starvation, too. I don't know what they lived off, that's what they said, but I have no idea of what they really ate but they wanted money. I was, we were in a difficult situation because how could we give them that money, yet we wanted to buy weapons.