Lessons From the Warsaw Ghetto

Polish blogger Arthur Chrenkoff translates an interview with Marek Edelman. Edelman is the last surviving military leader of the heroic Jewish Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Edelman knows evil.

Interviewer: Not a day seems to go by in Iraq without a terrorist attack, and in the last few days two Polish soldiers and a Polish journalist have died.

Edelman: And do you know any war where nobody dies? I don't. Alas, it's in man's make-up; there's a fatal flow there that makes him kill, for pleasure or over some silly beliefs.

Interviewer: So this war is one over some silly beliefs?

Edelman: Now, now. Who started killing people? Americans didn't invade a wonderful democratic Iraq. There was a dictatorship there, torture, terror.

Interviewer: But there are people who say it's not our business.

Edelman: And whose business is it? Every war with fascism is our business. In 1939 there were also many people who said that the war in Poland was not their war, and what happened? Great nations fell because politicians listened to those who were saying that it's not worth dying for Gdansk [Danzig]. If only we'd intervened militarily after Hitler re-entered Rhineland we probably would not have had the war and the Holocaust.

Interviewer: Many people do understand that, but they don't understand why the Americans have to go to the other side of the world and fight over Iraq now.

Edelman: And why did they go to Europe then? Who defeated Hitler and saved Europe from fascism? The French? No, the Americans did. We thanked them then because they saved us. Today we criticise them because they're saving somebody else.

Interviewer: Returning to the question about having Polish soldier on the ground in Iraq. Many Poles don't want them there.

Edelman: If they don't want them there, let's just keep waiting and then let's see from which direction the rockets and the bombs will come from - will we in the end be lorded over by Saddam's viceroys or Bin Laden's, just as we were once lorded over by Hitler's viceroys.

Interviewer: Do you really believe in such a scenario?

Edelman: It's possible. If we will keep closing our eyes to evil, then that evil will defeat us tomorrow. Unfortunately there's more hatred in men than love. Those who murder understand only force and nothing else. And the only force that is able to stand against them is the American democracy.

The rest of this interview is at Chrenkoff. Go read the whole thing.

Hat Tip: My Hubby