Shielding the Flame: An Intimate Conversation With Dr. Marek Edelman, the Last Surviving Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

by Hanna Krall, Marek Edelman, Lawrence Weschler (Translator)

Excellent Book

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Holocaust, Poland, Jewish, Memoir, World War II

124 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1986

About the author

Urodziła się w Warszawie w rodzinie żydowskiej. Podczas II wojny światowej zginęło wielu członków jej najbliższej rodziny. Wojnę przeżyła tylko dlatego, że była ukrywana przed Niemcami. Cudem została ocalona w czasie transportu do getta. Holocaust i losy Żydów polskich z czasem stały się głównym tematem jej twórczości.

Od 1955 r. pracowała w redakcji "Życia Warszawy", od 1966 r. w "Polityce", której korespondentem w ZSRR była w latach 1966-1969. Reportaże z ZSRR wydała w tomie Na wschód od Arbatu.W latach 1982-1987 była zastępcą kierownika literackiego Zespołu Filmowego "Tor". Na początku lat 90. związała się z Gazetą Wyborczą.

Światową sławę przyniósł jej oryginalny w formie wywiad z Markiem Edelmanem Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem (1977). Ostatnie zbiory reportaży to m.in. Trudności ze wstawaniem (1990), Taniec na cudzym weselu (1994), Dowody na istnienie (1996), Tam już nie ma żadnej rzeki (1998), To ty jesteś Daniel (2001). Cztery ostatnie w 2007 r. zebrała w książce Żal. Jest także autorką minipowieści: Okna, Sublokatorka, Wyjątkowo długa linia, Król Kier znów na wylocie.

Jej teksty były podstawą scenariuszy filmów Krótki dzień pracy Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego i Daleko od okna Jana Jakuba Kolskiego.

W 1999 r. otrzymała Nagrodę Wielką Fundacji Kultury, jedno z najbardziej prestiżowych wyróżnień przyznawanych w Polsce. Jej twórczość przetłumaczono na wiele języków. Jest członkiem Stowarzyszenia Pisarzy Polskich.

W 2005 r. została nominowana do Nagrody NIKE za książkę Wyjątkowo długa linia. Jej książka "Król Kier znów na wylocie" w 2007 roku została nominowana do Literackiej Nagrody Środkowoeuropejskiej Angelus. W tym samym roku okazał się wywiad - rzeka pt. "Reporterka. Rozmowy z Hanną Krall" Jacka Antczaka i książka pt. "Żal" zawierająca reportaże z pięciu poprzednich zbiorów. W 2008 "Król kier znów na wylocie" został uznany w plebiscycie księgarzy, czytelników i bibliotekarzy za Książkę Roku 2006.

Dzieła

* Na wschód od Arbatu, Iskry, Warszawa 1972
* Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 1977
* Sześć odcieni bieli, Czytelnik, Warszawa 1978
* Sublokatorka, Libella, Paryż 1985, Kraków 1985 (pierwszy przedruk w drugim obiegu)
* Okna, Aneks, Londyn 1987, Warszawa 1987 (przedruk w drugim obiegu)
* Trudności ze wstawaniem, Warszawa 1988 (w drugim obiegu). Wydanie oficjalne (łącznie z powieścią Okna), Alfa, Warszawa 1990
* Hipnoza, Alfa, Warszawa 1989
* Taniec na cudzym weselu, BGW, Warszawa 1993
* Co się stało z naszą bajką [opowieść dla dzieci], Twój Styl, Warszawa 1994
* Dowody na istnienie, Wydawnictwo a5, Poznań 1995
* Tam już nie ma żadnej rzeki, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 1998
* To ty jesteś Daniel, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2001
* Wyjątkowo długa linia, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2004
* Spokojne niedzielne popołudnie, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2004
* Król kier znów na wylocie, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2006
* Żal, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2007
* Różowe strusie pióra, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2009
* Synapsy Marii H., Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2020
* Jedenaście. Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2024

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read Tzvetan Todorov’s book Facing the Extreme, and commented that it had drawn my attention to some other books I planned to read. This was one of them. Marek Edelman was one of the tiny number of survivors of the ŻOB, the Jewish Combat Organisation, that fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. After WW2 he stayed in Poland and became a cardiologist and heart surgeon who apparently pioneered a new surgical technique that was adopted internationally. The title of the book is taken from his postwar desire to preserve life, to “shield the flame”. In the 1970s he was interviewed by the author, a young Polish-Jewish journalist.

This is a very short book, only 124 pages of text, organised in a rather unusual way. Hanna Krall says in the book that she isn’t writing history, she is “writing about remembering”. As the subtitle states, the book is the record of a conversation. It switches back and forth between Edelman’s years in the Ghetto and his postwar medical career, and Edelman goes off at various tangents during the discussion.

It’s not uncommon for those regarded as “heroes” to play down their role, but Edelman seems to be an extreme example. After he escaped the Ghetto he told members of the Polish Home Army that the ŻOB should have performed better, that they suffered from being untrained whereas the Germans were experienced fighters. He says the ŻOB had only 220 fighters and questions whether their actions could even be classed as an “uprising”. On several other occasions he seems to go out of his way to tell an “antiheroic” narrative. Possibly this was because he didn’t want to portray himself as somehow more noble than the other Jews of the Ghetto. After the War he has a conversation with a Jewish-American D–Day veteran who tells him the ŻOB preserved the dignity of the Jews, so many of whom went to the gas chambers without resisting. Edelman reacts furiously to this kind of suggestion. At another point he illustrates how it is one thing to fight bravely when you have a weapon in your hand, quite another when the other side have guns and you don’t. The only Ghetto resident he really criticises is Adam Czerniakow, Chairman of the Jewish Council in the Ghetto, who committed suicide in July 1942 when he found out what was really happening to those deported from the Ghetto to “work camps”. Edelman doesn’t blame Czerniakow for committing suicide, but for doing so without warning his people about what was happening. The ŻOB tried to tell residents that deportation meant death, but few believed them. Edelman says that Czerniakow would have been believed.

Edelman’s descriptions of life in the Ghetto are every bit as harrowing as the reader would expect.

Obviously a great deal has been written about the Holocaust, but Edelman’s experience was a unique one, and in my opinion the unusual style of this book does it no harm. He was a remarkable man.

[John Gaynard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this short book, first published in 1977 but now out of print, for the second time yesterday and it has lost nothing of its fascination. Although Hanna Krall chose a clumsy format, in which easy-to-flip-over passages of Marek Edelman's postwar career as a doctor, in which the focus is on saving life, alternate with an interview in which he describes the terrible times he lived through in the Warsaw Ghetto, where the focus is on death and mass murder and how he and a few people survived extinction when 400,000 other people did not, the book is a must-read for anybody interested in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

In the last days of the Ghetto, Marek Edelman was one of the leaders of the ZOB, the Jewish Combat Organization. After the war he eventually decided to stay in Poland, where for a long time he was forgotten until his interview with Hanna Krall and subsequently becoming one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement. During and after WWII, and during the communist anti-Semitic actions of 1968, the memory of a Jewish presence in Poland was nearly eliminated and the great majority of the surviving remnant of Polish-born Jews wanted nothing more to do with the country. The divorce of Polish and Jewish memory obscured the centuries of common history up until 1939.

The interview with Edelman, by Hanna Krall, that appeared in a Polish literary journal in 1976, was, according to Timothy Garton Ash in the preface, the moment when Jewish and Polish memory began to become aware of each other again. In today's Poland, where the Jewish presence is still largely non-existent, the whole country seems now to be fascinated with all things Jewish. Krall's interview with Edelman was made into a book in 1997, and it has since sold many copies in Poland.

Here is an excerpt from Timothy Garton Ash's introduction to the 1986 American translation of the book:

"By the beginning of 1943 there was only one real question for those still left inside the Warsaw Ghetto: "How should we die?" Edelman and his friends, most of them barely turned twenty, discussed it: "The majority of us favored an uprising. After all, humanity had decided that dying with arms was more beautiful than without arms. Therefore we followed this consensus." But was humanity right?

"Well, one thing is certain," says Edelman now, "It's much easier to die shooting. Anyway, people have always thought that shooting is the highest form of heroism. So we were shooting."

But on the upper floor of his hospital a mother was giving birth just as the Germans cleared people out of the lower floors, in the "liquidation action". The doctor handed the newborn baby to the nurse, who immediately smothered it with a pillow. The nurse was nineteen years old. "The doctor didn't say a thing to her. Not a word. And this woman knew herself what she was supposed to do." Elsewhere on the upper floor there were several rooms with sick children. As the Germans were entering the ground floor, a woman doctor managed to poison them all. "You see, Hanna," says Edelman, "you don't understand anything. She saved those children from the gas chamber. People thought she was a hero."

So what, then, in that world turned upside down, was heroism? Or honor? Or dignity? And where was God? Edelman's answer to this last question is startling. God, he says, was on the side of the persecutors. A malicious God. Even today (in 1986), every time he has a heart patient on the operating table, he feels that he is competing with a malicious God to shield the flame of human life. "God is trying to blow out the candle and I'm quickly trying to shield the flame, taking advantage of his brief inattention."

Marek Edelman died on October 2, 2009 in Warsaw

[Magila · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm going to guess, based on the name that this is an english version of 'zdazyc przed panem bogiem,' or 'make it before god' or idiomatically 'time for the lord god.' this is the single best work i've read on the warsaw ghetto and nazi occupied poland. the memoir is stirring, and at times begs questions on human nature. it feels intimate, like your grandfather is sitting and telling you about the hardest time of his life in the most hellish circumstances imaginable. heavy, but quick.

[Anthony Valletta · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting perspective on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising from one of its leaders, but also glimpses into the fascinating story of his life afterwards. Granted, Dr. Edelman's perspective can be bleak at times, but at the same time its oddly inspiring.

[Callan ✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

History is a dialogue, shaping people as much as people shape it; Krall artfully illustrates this point in her long-form interview with Marek Edelman, the last surviving member of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Through their conversations, they weave together past and present, examining the ways the Jewish genocide has shaped Poland and pondering what this implies about heroism, humanity, and God. This collection of painful, intimate vignettes offers an opportunity to look closely at history instead of turning away -- it is at once heart-rending and inspiring.

[Kiril · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about a rare case of uprising of Jewish people during WW2. The style of the booking is unusual, rather like a chaotic conversation, but quite original

[Hale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edelman’s account of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising represents a unique and often unheard perspective. He diverts many of the assumed notions regarding survivors and resistance fighters, going so far as to reject assertions of his own bravery by others. He creates a nuanced picture of the dynamic within the ghetto and post-war Poland without falling into a homogenized portrayal of either Jewish life or the non-Jewish Polish public. Although often bleak and sardonic in his language, Edelman’s outlook maintains a level of hope in the resilience of humanity and its ability to “shield the flame” of life. Edelman’s accounts of life in the Warsaw Ghetto are enlightening and deeply personal; they delve bluntly into his introspections and the process of healing after the war. The insights of both Marek Edelman and the interviewer, Hanna Krall, brilliantly illuminate the complexities of Jewish identity and national belonging in Poland.

[Ross Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The text was quite scattered (I'm sure it was deliberate) but managed to focus on some really interesting concepts. Edelman's insistence that he was not a hero and had tried to take the easy way out by choosing a beautiful death was very poignant. For a book about the Holocaust it remained fairly drawn back from the horror, in the foreward this is attributed to the author's wish to detach the work from the themes of heroism and suffering, which I think it achieved.

[Katie Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Because the truth is there had always been the main road of the Polish resistance movement, and alongside it had run this honored though seldom-used path (because who would ever travel it?) of the fight of the Jews...he had the feeling of belonging to the world, to that world of fair and brave people, and beautiful, and calm."

[Mindee Berkman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book in translation. Really it is a record of an interview. It was difficult to follow at first as the book progresses much like natural conversations do, flitting from one topic to the next, skipping years at a time only to go back and revisit an event again.

[Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking first-hand account.

[Stick · Rating 5 out of 5]

this dialogue seriously hits hard.

[Nicht Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

an amazing book that has stuck with me for many years now. the language is clean, precise, devastating. an incredible insight into the warsaw ghetto, with very existential themes. a must read for anyone willing to stomach real tragedy.