The Friendship of a Bund-member and a Zionist

Joanna Szczesna

Gazeta Wyborcza, April 26-27, 2003

English translation in FORUM, www.forum-znak.org.pl

Icchak Cukierman and Marek Edelman always differed fundamentally. They lived right next door and must have known each other by sight, however they each had their own business to attend to and did not pay much attention to each other. The threat of the extermination of the Warsaw ghetto joined them together.

The former was a tall, strapping blond, who spoke with a touch of the Vilnius dialect. "100 percent goy," "safe-looking" - one might say. He moved freely around Warsaw; he was a Zionist who for years dreamt of Palestine. The latter was small and dark haired. Whenever he went over to the Aryan side, he felt the scrutinizing looks of passers-by and he never even attempted to remove the Star of David from his arm. Later, when he left the ghetto after the uprising, he usually avoided being seen in the city and if he had to go there - he always wore the cap of a power plant station worker that covered half of his face. He was a member of a youth organization affiliated with the socialist Bund party and dreamt of a just Poland, free of anti-Semitism - a Poland that had a place for Jews.

Marek Edelmann grew up in a secular family with leftist traditions of the Bund. He was born in 1919 and as a baby, along with his parents, repatriated from Homl to Warsaw, where his father soon died. His first language was Russian; Yiddish was spoken at home and sometimes Polish. He attended a modern Jewish school providing modern - i.e. anti-Zionist and anti-Hebrew - education.

Icchak Cukierman was born in 1917 in Vilnius; he was brought up in a large, traditional family that celebrated Jewish holidays. Its members prayed in the Synagogue, sent their children to religious schools with Yiddish as the language of instruction. Later Icchak was sent to an exclusive Hebrew grammar school where most of the teachers were Zionists. He lost his faith soon after his bar mitzvah. He spoke Polish fluently, as well as Hebrew and Yiddish. In Warsaw, Antek lived at 34 Dzielna Street, while Edelman at 36 Dzielna. The were not forced to move, when the ghetto walls had been erected - their street was already within the ghetto walls. Cukierman and Edelman lived right next door and they must have known each other from sight, however they had their own business to attend to and did not pay much attention to each other. This was the time when the Zionists and members of the Bund lived their lives separately, organizing aid, education, cultural activities and illegal publishing within their own political groups.

When major transports of Jews from the Ghetto began in July 1942, all groups met in Leszno for an improvised conference. This was the first time Edelman became aware of Cukierman's existence. Antek in desperation proposed to gather a few hundred Jews and make them walk thorough the streets of the ghetto shouting: "Treblinka means death!" It was suggested that the men dress like Jewish policemen, but this idea was rejected by those who believed that "one has to protect the substance of the Nation" (The Zionists) and those who were of the opinion that "God gives and God takes away" (the religiously orthodox). Despite numerous differences Edelman and Cukierman became friends. Edelman recalls that they became friends because he noticed that at the ZOB meeting they were of the same opinion. "We shared everything except for his Zionist views".

During the uprising, Antek Cukierman - because of his looks - became the representative of ZOB on the Aryan side. Throughout the entire uprising Marek Edelman was in contact with Antek's girlfriend Cywia Lubetkin. He saved her life three times. Cukierman approached the ghetto wall every day. He was disturbed by the fact that he was not fighting - in particular because all attempts to free his friends from the ghetto turned out unsuccessfully. What Cukierman was unable to accomplish, Kazik Ratajzer - an urchin from Powisle - managed to achieve. With the help of intimidated and bribed sewage workers and by confusing the "king of the szmalcowniks" - who was convinced he was saving the members of the Polish underground - almost 40 members of the ZOB were lead out of the ghetto (during the daytime!) thorough a sewage manhole at Prosta Street. Later a truck took them to a forest near Lomianki. However Marek Edelman wanted to go back to Warsaw; he was convinced this was the place where the remnants of ZOB should operate, and he managed to get back to the city. In Warsaw Marek and Cywia (who also had the "wrong looks") were hiding in an apartment, while all errands were in the hands of Antek, Kazik and female liaison officers. The most valuable help turned out to be the sisters Maria Sawicka and Anna Wachalska - who became acquainted with some of the members of the ZOB prior to the war. "There was such closeness on the Aryan side," Edelman recalls, "that was not present even in the ghetto, one that can hardly be imagined. There was one room, one bottle of vodka, one hunger and one threat. This was one grand unity".

Later the Warsaw uprising had started in which the ZOB-survivors from the ghetto also participated. Along with the fall of the Warsaw ghetto began - for its Jewish participants - an entirely new ordeal. They could not surrender to the Germans, they did not want to leave the city along with the civil population - being afraid of denunciation as Jews. A group of a few dozen people - including Edelman, Cukierman and Cycwia Lubetkin - started to hide in the basement of a house at Promyka Street 41 in the Zoliborz district. They stayed there for many weeks until, on November 15th, came relief in the form of nurses with Red Cross armbands - among whom was Marek's future wife Alina Margolis. Marek had a most "unsatisfactory" look, hence he was placed on a stretcher and his face was covered with bandages. Whenever a German approached him the nurses shouted "typhus, typhus!". This way he reached the hospital near Grodzisko, where all found shelter for a few days. Marek and others - as Jews in hiding. Antek - as a Pole.

Jak bundowiec z syjonistą (Like a Bund-member With a Zionist), Joanna Szczęsna,

Gazeta Wyborcza April 26-27, 2003, p. 20-22