Published: 28 April 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
The 80th commemoration comes with a greater sense of urgency, as authoritarian regimes are on the rise and Holocaust denial and falsehoods are spreading like a contagion.
Last week, April 19, 2023, marked the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, an extraordinary act of resistance, courage, and defiance. It is a day when we reaffirm the need to stand up to and call out racism, antisemitism, and acts of genocide in all its forms.
This year we commemorate the uprising with a greater sense of urgency, at a time when authoritarian regimes are on the rise, and Holocaust denial and falsehoods are spreading like a contagion on social media sites. As one whose grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, and extended family were murdered during the Holocaust, these hate-filled posts fill me with horror.
In Warsaw, members, and friends of Open Republic, the Polish Association Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia, gathered to commemorate the uprising, and they marched through the streets of the city as they do on this day every year. Open Republic documents and calls out acts of racism throughout Europe.
Many marchers carried yellow flowers in honour of Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the uprising, who died in 2010; in his final years, Edelman would lay a bunch of yellow daffodils in honour of his fallen comrades, at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes, located in the area where the first armed clash of the uprising took place.
I was privileged to meet Marek Edelman in Warsaw in 2006, in the home of Paula Sawicka, the founder of Open Republic. Like Edelman, my parents were members of the Jewish Labour Bund. I grew up in Melbourne, among survivors, hearing tales of the uprising and the heroic deeds of the fighters, many of whom were teenagers and young adults; and children who smuggled in dynamite and pistols through the sewers.
Edelman was 21 years old at the time. As a commander in the Jewish Fighting Organization, he led three battalions in the brush-makers district. He was known as a daring fighter, and a calm and calculating strategist who valued human life. His credo was simple and understated. He was wary of romanticising the deeds of the fighters. "We fought to protect the people in the ghetto," he said, and "extend their life by a day, or two, or five."
