PLEASE READ THIS EXERPT FROM MOSHE AREN’S BOOK “FLAGS OVER THE WARSAW GHETTO
Flags over the Warsaw Ghetto, by Moshe Arens
Gefen Publishing
ISBN 978-965-229-527-9
On Sunday, April 18, 1943, the day before the uprising, Walewski [Dr. Ryszard] and Leon Rodal [Pawel Frenkel’s Deputy of ZZW] were in the ZZW headquarters at Muranowsky 7, making last-minute preparations. Walewsky, who survived the fighting in the ghetto, later recalled Rodal’s words:
“We will all fall here. Those in battle, weapons in hand, and those as vain victims. But it is important that the memory of our battle will be retained, that the world will know that there was a battle. A tough bloody battle. And should it happen that you, of the two of us, will survive…and sometime, someplace, you were to meet my comrades, please tell them what I said, tell them that not for a moment did I doubt that Hitler’s Germany would be defeated, not I, nor my comrades…that we are fighting for our people and shall die for them. That we believe that a Jewish State will arise in a struggle with our enemies there in that distant land..During that far-off period of slavery, when the Roman legions trampled almost the entire ancient world, and the whole world kneeled before them, only one small Roman province, Judea, took up arms, rose up to fight for freedom and in defense of the honor man, against a world of injustice. And that is the reason that Judea is inscribed in the history of man as a symbol of the fight for the spirit of man…Maybe some day, after many years, when the history of the struggle against the Nazi conquerors is written, we also will be remembered, and, who knows, we will become–like small Judea in its day, which fought mighty Rome–the symbol of man’s spirit that cannot be suppressed, whose essence is the fight for freedom, for the right to live, and the right to exist.” (22)
Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto by Moshe Arens (Nov 1, 2011)
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