Marek Edelman - The beginning of the war-time underground in Poland (50/145)

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 recorded: 2003] TRANSCRIPT: Everything was beginning here, we had to act, but what could we act with if the printers were locked and sealed? The Germans had come and had taken away all of the machines, the linotypes, so we began to wonder, should we print illegally? But we couldn't so we had to find another way of doing it. The school I'd attended on Karmelicka Street had a hand-operated duplicating machine. It was a roller and a net and a box where all of this was done. It was in a cupboard in the library. So I told Abrasza that maybe we should go and see it. The school was closed, too, and sealed but it was easy to get into in the night. We opened it and there it was, a beautiful, untouched duplicating machine. We took it and by October, the first issue of an illegal newspaper appeared which, if my memory serves me right, was probably called 'The Bulletin', carrying information from the front lines, and the political attitude towards the Germans and Russia, and all of those stories a political party writes in a situation like that, that we will triumph in the end so don't worry because the war won't last long on account of the English and the Americans, not the Americans but the English and the French will destroy the Germans which a few months later turned out not to be true, but never mind. That's when the underground action started. But that's not the whole truth because it started during the war, a social movement called ZSS [Jewish Social Self], I think, there was nothing to eat, but they got rations for the Jewish population from the town, from Starzyński for that area. It was forbidden to feed the people, the Germans would throw bread from the lorries and were supposed to save the population of Warsaw. The ZSS got together and began to form illegal kitchens where they handed out soup to people once a day and this was something great then because you couldn't buy anything, all of the shops were cleaned out and even if they weren't there was no food, no, the shop owners had hidden everything and weren't selling any of it.