Marek Edelman's Bundist Humanitarianism: Theme and Variations from the Warsaw Uprising to Solidarity

ABSTRACT: This article discusses the multivalent identities of Dr. Marek Edelman—the last surviving commandant of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and its only leader to remain in Poland after the war. Imbued with the values of the Bund, especially its insistence on the primacy of human dignity, Edelman continued living by the Bundist ethos, pursuing his medical work and humanitarian activities, eventually translating this ethos into the values of Polish anti-communist dissidents embodied by the Solidarity movement. Based on multiple primary sources, this essay analyzes key aspects of Edelman's performed identities, such as his concept of patriotism (originating in the concept of doikayt or here and now ), his reinterpretations of the particular vs. universal significance of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, his contextualization and minimization of antisemitism in Poland, and his contentious and demonstrative relation to religion. It traces the development of these self-expressions within shifting political exigencies and implied expectations of Polish audiences for whom Edelman became a symbol of the Polish insurrectionary tradition. While Edelman's social and political activism was deeply rooted in his Bundist formation, he was also not immune from modifying his expressions of identity and his (re-)interpretations of historical events in the direction of more patriotic, "Polish" narratives that resonated with the Solidarity movement activists, who formed Edelman's milieu in his later life.