Warsaw Uprising Hero Dies

"When you cannot defend freedom through peaceful means, you have to use arms to fight Nazism, dictatorship, chauvinism"...

From AP:

WARSAW, Poland – Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the ill-fated 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt against the Nazis, died Friday at the age of 90.

Edelman died of old age at the family home of his friend Paula Sawicka, where he had lived for the past two years.

"He died at home, among friends, among his close people," Sawicka told The Associated Press.

Most of Edelman's adult life was dedicated to the defense of human life, dignity and freedom. He fought the Nazis in the doomed Warsaw ghetto revolt and later in the Warsaw city Uprising. And then for decades he fought communism in Poland.

His heroism earned him the French Legion of Honor and Poland's highest civilian distinction, the Order of the White Eagle.

Read More from AP

For more Information on the Uprising itself, and what brave men and women like Edelman put on the line so many years ago, see Mike V's Strippers, subtitled: 'Juden haben waffen!':

"I, myself, remained on the balcony and fired at the confused and embarrassed Germans with my Mauser. From my balcony, I could see them in all their helplessness and their loss of control. The air was full of wails and shouts. Many of them tried to run to the walls of the houses for cover but everything was barred and beyond that, death was pursuing them. In the noise, the fluster, and the cries of the wounded, we heard the astonished outcry of one of the Germans: 'Juden haben waffen! Juden haben waffen!' ('The Jews have arms!') . . .

The battle lasted for about a half an hour. The Germans withdrew and there were many corpses and wounded in the street."

Then repeat after me:

"Never Again."

R.I.P.

Fighting men and women will always be missed, but never forgotten.