Volume 33, Number 18 · November 20, 1986
The Survivor's Voice
By Norman Davies
Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation with Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
by Hanna Krall, translated by Joanna Stasinska, by Lawrence Weschler
Holt, 124 pp., $13.95
Marek Edelman is one of several key witnesses who do not appear in Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah, though he saw much more than most. In 1942 he had stood every day by the gate of the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw and watched 400,000 people walk by to their deaths. He still works as a heart surgeon in Lodz. Lanzmann interviewed him; but chose not to use what he said. Among other things, Edelman wonders whether the fighting in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 can really be called an uprising. He describes Zionism and the state of Israel as a 'historic failure'; and he calls the Poles, among whom he has lived all his life, 'a tolerant people.' Indeed, as a heart surgeon he has devoted his career to saving Polish lives. 'One is supposed to speak with hatred and pathos,' he says at one point. But he cannot.
Review, 3379 words
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