Resisting Oppression
KUGLER, ISRAEL
Resisting Oppression On Both Sides of the Wall: Memories of the Warsaw Ghetto By Vladka Meed Translated by Moshe Spiegel and Steven Meed Ghetto Fighters House and Hakibbutz Hameuchad. 343 pp....
...At the same time, it is a refreshingly honest account that does not attempt to cover up the occasional weaknesses and betrayals or indulge in false heroics...
...With few exceptions, little support came from Polish liberal and Socialist organizations outside the walls...
...6.00...
...Meed's account, one can almost chart the decline from widespread hope of survival or escape to mass frustration and fear to organized resistance and death...
...On Both Sides of the Wall deserves wide reading both as an important work in the literature of Jewish survival dating back before Masada and as a testament to the universal resistance of humanity against oppression...
...Originally published in Yiddish and Hebrew by the Workman's Circle in 1948, it has now been translated into English by Moshe Spiegel and Steven Meed, the author's son...
...She vividly recaptures the stench of the fire-ravaged buildings, the cries of children and parents separated from each other, the psychological hardening and joylessness of the youth, and the determined audacity of the ghetto fighters...
...Meed's book bristles with passionate outrage and on many pages becomes a most personal document about people with whom she grew up and worked as a young Jewish Socialist in the Zukunft group...
...In the end, it was the unity of Jews of all political persuasions that enabled some to survive and the rest to hold off the German siege for an incredible six weeks...
...Named after the leader of the revolt, the kibbutz was settled by refugees from the Warsaw Ghetto, who soon found themselves facing the onslaught of the Arabs in the struggle that gave birth to Israel...
...25 East 78th Street...
...Vladka Meed was an operative for the beleaguered Jews, who, by masquerading as a gentile, was able to pass in and out of the ghetto...
...This museum will supplement the present exhibit at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, just north of the Gaza Strip...
...Reviewed by Israel Kugler Deputy President...
...working in a ghetto factory, it was believed, would bring "exemption...
...After I had finished speaking to them about Yiddish organizations in America, I watched the pain and disbelief on their faces as they read aloud to each other the first sheaf of letters received from Poland...
...Though not a literary masterpiece...
...Reading Mrs...
...On Both Sides of the Wall is the story of that revolt, as seen through the eyes of a young participant, Vladka Meed...
...Then the refugees stood up and sang the Bund anthem, Die Shvuoh (The Oath), in honor of their relatives and friends who had died heroically in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising...
...Meed recounts the exploits of the handful of selfless gentile humanitarians who did not hesitate to provide succor and refuge, at considerable risk to themselves...
...The new edition also carries a moving fore-ward by Elie Wiesel...
...Once the hopelessness of escape or reprieve was generally realized, those who were left began preparing to fight back...
...The Jews had to rely heavily on bribery to secure weapons and supplies, to get agents in and out of the ghetto, and to harbor children with gentile families in Warsaw and its suburbs...
...Years earlier they had fled across the Soviet Union to Siberia and later made their way from Vladivostok to Kobe, Japan...
...10021) are being donated to the Ghetto Fighters Organization in Israel toward the erection of a museum to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising...
...Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York In 1945, as a sailor stationed in Shanghai, a city that had just been liberated from the Japanese...
...The book stands as an enduring refutation of the old Hannah Arendt thesis that something inherent in the Jewish people makes it difficult if not impossible for them to resist oppression and even extermination...
...She was familiar with the world outside the walls and knew many Nazis, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and hidden Jews...
...and many tried to buy their release by bribing officials with money, jewelry or other valuables -until this, too, proved futile...
...They employed all the usual ruses of secret rooms, codes, disguises, false papers, and other tactics employed by underground movements...
...New York...
...Thus she is uniquely qualified to report "both sides" of the uprising...
...At first every development was rationalized away: Trips in trucks were said to be "really" for labor deployment elsewhere ?until word of the extermination camps filtered back...
...When the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S...
...I met a group of Jewish refugees from Poland, including members of the Jewish Labor Bund...
...The hard news told of the total destruction of all Jewish life there, particularly the institutions associated with the Bund-the Yiddish schools, the Vladimir Medem Sanatorium for children, the unions, the party-as well as the people who had worked for these causes...
...It also has an unusual historic purpose, for all proceeds from the book (available from the Jewish Labor Committee...
...into the War, they were forced to move to a Japanese-run concentration camp in Shanghai...
Vol. 56 • April 1973 • No. 7
