THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

Edelman’s place in history:Edelman did not become the ultimate hero of the Warsaw ghetto afterthe war. But then, as today, he is the hero and the voice of thehundreds of thousands quiet, unknown heroes who were notcommemorated in studies or in memorials. 9We did not listen to the poet of the period, our own Natan Alterman, who wrote thepoem “Memorial Day and the Rebels,” published in Davar, his daily, on ShoahRemembrance Day, 1954. The poem created a great controversy. On one side werethose who wanted the uprising to become the temple of Zionist heroism, and on theother, Alterman spoke for those who understood the much greater complexity of thematter. Alterman reinforced his arguments in prose:One foundation of that picture which the rebellion created...ispresented by us . . . as the sole response . . . so natural and righteousthat all other forces and instincts are rejected by us from it and areintertwined in the same veil of blindness and error or of treason andcrime. 10A few years ago, Ehud Barak, then still a promising prime ministerial candidate,aroused passions when he said that if he were a Palestinian teenager, he would havejoined a terrorist organization for his land’s independence. Such a remark is natural toa native who grew up in Israel and knows only weapons and insurgency as the soleinstruments of national expression. As for myself, if I lived in a ghetto today, I am notcertain that I would resort to arms. I would ask myself until my last moment on earthwhether rebelling is like lighting a flame to the gods of war; once lit, the flames mightgo out of control and destroy everybody. I would have pondered day and night thesame question that must have tormented the people in the ghettos from day one ofthe siege to the end: “Can we take responsibility for all Jews, risking their lives, andeffectively aid the destruction process if we fail?” It seems more likely to me that Iwould have survived or died by my faith against armed resistance. I can imaginestanding beside Mordechai Tenenboim, the young commander of Ghetto Bialystock,who said with supreme restraint during a meeting with the Ghetto chiefs:“I tell the assembly that if an Akzion (depor tation) ta kes place . . .