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Marek Edelman (1919-2009) was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He had remained in Poland following the Nazi defeat and was active in domestic and international politics while at the same time becoming one of Poland’s leading cardiologists. [Listeners: Anka Grupinska, Joanna Klara Agnieszka Zuchowska, Joanna Szczesna; date recorded: 2003]
TRANSCRIPT: When did we find out in Warsaw about Treblinka? Where are those people? When Zygmunt went, he got into a train and together with the train driver he went to Treblinka where he saw that 10,000 people were entering the camp, no food was supplied there, no one came out of there, only an empty train and the following morning there was nothing there. And then in the night, he was in the market place where he met Mr Wałach who was a sort of... there was a housing co-operative on Żeromski Street in Żolibórz and he was the director there. He was in his underwear when they met and he says: 'I'm on my way back from Treblinka from the camp, everyone's been killed' he says, 'but I hid under the train and when the train moved off, there was one door open in the carriage so I jumped in and carried on for about two kilometres or something, and then I jumped off and here I am'. We knew this person, we trusted him, you understand? But yes, people were being transported, everyone knew by then that in all of those small towns people had been deported a long time ago, yet nobody believed this because even during that massive action when 6,000 people were being deported daily, what did the Germans do? The hunger was terrible, nothing changed, the hunger was the same. So when the Germans said they were giving out three kilograms of bread for the journey and marmalade, everyone went, meaning, what are you talking about, we're not going to our death otherwise why would they be giving out bread and marmalade? The human psyche is dreadful because it doesn't know what death is, that those who inflict death don't feel that this is what they're doing but are only carrying out some ordinary job.
