Marek Edelman. Being on the Right Side: Everyone in the Ghetto was a Hero

by Witold Bereś

The first biography of Marek Edelman (1919-2009): one of the commanders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, renowned physician, and defender of human rights. Zbigniew Brzezinski has written about Edelman to the authors: ‘A Jewish fighter and Polish soldier during the World War 2. A leftist who never believed in communism. A critic of Israel who refused to recognize the Palestinians' resistance movement until they relinquished terrorism. A doctor who saved human lives with pioneering heart surgeries. An activist of Solidarity, arrested under the rules of the martial law in Poland. A hero’.

The authors, active in the democratic opposition under communism, interviewed Edelman for the first time on behalf of an illegal paper they published clandestinely. From that moment on, meetings with Edelman became a part of their lives. They ended up devoting no fewer than three books to Edelman. Each one was a bestseller in Poland, and translations were published in Israel, Germany, and Russia.
The English-language version of this biography is based on all three of these books and many conversations with Edelman.

I am incapable of writing about those times without poignancy and exclamation points. Edelman dismissed emotionality with a wave of his hand. “Don't keep going on and on about it,” he tells Bereś and Burnetko. “Nobody can understand it anyway.”
So I won't go on and on about it either. This is a book that must be read.
Prof. IRENA GRUDZIŃSKA-GROSS, Princeton University

Marek Edelman was my commander during the uprising in the ghetto and a great friend of mine. He was not an easy man to get along with and we did not agree on everything, but he was an honest, brave man. I am happy that there are Poles who attach importance to remembering our struggle and Edelman himself.
SYMCHA ROTEM, the last living soldier from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Jerusalem 2016

“Marek Edelman: Being on the Right Side”, part biography, part extended interview, offers a rare insight into the mind of a complex man whose life was marked by both Nazism and Communism. A hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a political activist, a cardiologist, and most of all a humanist, Edelman never shies from speaking his mind on what matters to him the most: the plight of another human being in need. An important book!
EVA STACHNIAK, novelist, the author of the international bestseller “The Winter Palace”

This biography which tells the incredible life-story of that hero of our times, is a must-read, and should be taught in schools worldwide. Some of the passages in this moving, sad, funny, sometime rude book are no less than sublime.
prof. IDITH ZERTAL – historian, author of Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography

534 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Szymon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nie jest to książka idealna, autorzy literacko nie do końca dają radę. Ale jest to książka wielka wielkością swojego głównego bohatera, postaci niezwykłej. Nie zawsze czytając zgadzałem się z nim, ale nie o to w tym chodzi - mam wrażenie, że takich ludzi jak Marek Edelman jest już wokół nas coraz mniej.
Teraz czas odświeżyć jeszcze ponownie "Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem".

[DW Rowlands · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very interesting, if non-traditional, biography of an important figure in Polish and European Jewish history: Marek Edelman, a Bundist (non-Zionist socialist) and the only officer of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to survive. Edelman then participated in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, worked in Communist Poland as a cardiologist, where he was a political dissident and then significant member of the Solidarity movement, and was then an advocate for intervention to protect the Muslim populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo during the Balkan Wars.

The book is unusual in that it contains long quotes from Edelman—often his responses to questions posed by the authors—although it is not simply an interview or recounting of his experiences, and consistently draws on other sources to verify or contradict his accounts. It's also translated from Polish and I'm not sure to what degree that may affect some of the conventions.

[Michał Leszczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trzy rzeczy zirytowały mnie w tej biografii. Po pierwsze i najważniejsze, obraz Edelmana jest niepełny bez zagłębienia się w wątek jego najbliższej rodziny, która wyemigrowała do Francji, jest to zbyt definiujące wydarzenie z jego życia, żeby zostawić je bez choćby rozdziału, w którym opisano by próby zgłębienia motywacji i ocen po latach tych decyzji. Domosławski wyznaczył standard pisząc trudną prawdę o Kapuścińskim w bezkompromisowy sposób. Po drugie, w początkowej części książki zupełnie niepotrzebne i wybijające z rytmu są obszerne fragmenty podziemnej prasy. Po trzecie wreszcie, za zbędne uważam przecinanie postaci tego formatu nawiązaniami do bieżączki politycznej (czytałem wydanie z 2019 r.). Książka jest porywająca siłą i magnetyzmem jej bohatera, stawiałem wobec niej niemożliwe wymagania.

[Iwona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bardzo potrzebna ta książka ale spodziewałam się więcej Edelmana w Edelmanie.

[Agnieszka Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars?
No - 100!!!!!!!!
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

[Aneta Huggler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book describing great men!