70th Anniversary of the Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto Recorded for Web of Stories by the Last Surviving Commander of the Uprising, Marek Edelman

London, United Kingdom, April 17, 2013 --(PR.com)-- The Warsaw Ghetto uprising took place in 1943 in Nazi-occupied Poland. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II, resisting Nazi Germany’s final effort to transport the occupants of the ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp. The rebellion began on 19 April, and ended on 16 May when the resistance was crushed by the German army. To mark the 70th anniversary, a mural of the last commander of the uprising, Marek Edelman, will be erected in Warsaw.

Just a few years before his death in 2009, Edelman made a series of exclusive recordings for Web of Stories where he describes his memories of the harsh conditions of the ghetto, and later, his leadership of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Viewers can watch Edelman recount how he first discovered that Jews were being deported from the ghetto, and how he and others were determined to spread the word by creating a newsletter: "We printed 500 copies of a newsletter, 500 copies which, it has to be said, were read by thousands of people… If three or four thousand people are reading this, it can't remain hidden… But people didn't believe it because everyone was saying, 'What do you mean they're killing? For no reason? But we're working, we're making the uniforms for the German army, we're making brushes for hiding the tracks of the military transports, we're making fur-lined boots for them for the winter on the Russian front, and they've got a free workforce for the cost of a bowl of soup, so why would they be killing us?”’

He also describes the beginning of the uprising: "I think it was around 5 o'clock in the morning that they came in as usual, marching as though they were on parade, 2000 Germans… We positioned our militant groups in four corners of that place, one in each corner. So when those German columns marched in… the shooting broke out from every window. The Germans were really surprised that there was any kind of organised resistance because they thought that they'd come in, fire a few shots and that everyone would run away."

This footage of Marek Edelman’s life story can be watched as a number of separate videos, with a fully searchable transcript. All Web of Stories videos are easy to share with friends and colleagues, and may be embedded into personal blogs and websites.