I remember Warsaw

Thanks to On this Deity I was reminded about Marek Edelman, an extraordinary human being.

And it reminded me of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, one of the most extraordinary places I’ve ever been.  Fucking Nazis. Fucking Stalinists. Gah.  Horror, courage, remembrance. If you are ever with in a thousand miles of Warsaw, make the detour to that museum…

But back to the Ghetto uprising…

We knew perfectly well that we had no chance of winning. We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths. We knew we were going to die. Just like all the others who were sent to Treblinka…. Their death was far more heroic. We didn’t know when we would take a bullet. They had to deal with certain death, stripped naked in a gas chamber or standing at the edge of a mass grave waiting for a bullet in the back of the head…. It was easier to die fighting than in a gas chamber.

David Rovics sings it well here.