Marek Edelman - Early Life

Early Life

Details of Marek Edelman's birth are not known for certain; sources give two possible dates of birth, either 1919 in Homel (now Belarus), or in 1922 in Warsaw. His father, Natan Feliks Edelman (died 1924), was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. His mother, Cecylia Edelman (died 1934), a hospital secretary, was an activist member of the General Jewish Labour Bund, a Jewish socialist workers' party.

After Edelman's mother died when he was 14, he was looked after by other staff members at the hospital where she had worked in Warsaw, the city he always called home.

"Warsaw is my city,” he said in 2001, “It is here that I learned Polish, Yiddish and German. It is here that at school, I learned one must always take care of others. It is also here that I was slapped in the face just because I was a Jew."

As a child, Edelman was a member of Sotsyalistishe Kinder Farband (S.K.I.F.), the Jewish Labour Bund's youth group for children. In 1939 he joined and became a leader in Tsukunft ("Future"), the Bund's youth organization for older children. During the war, he restarted these organizations inside the Warsaw Ghetto.

The defiance and organization of the Bund made their mark on Edelman. As conditions for Jews worsened in the 1930s, Bund members preferred to challenge the mounting antisemitism rather than flee. Edelman later said: "The Bundists did not wait for the Messiah, nor did they plan to leave for Palestine. They believed that Poland was their country, and they fought for a just, socialist Poland in which each nationality would have its own cultural autonomy, and in which minorities' rights would be guaranteed."