Vladka Meed

Vladka Meed (2005)

Vladka Meed (born Feigele Peltel on December 29, 1921 in Warsaw ; died on November 21, 2012 in Paradise Valley , Arizona ) was a Polish - American survivor of the Holocaust . She was of Jewish descent and was in the era of National Socialism , during the German occupation of Poland , along with her family from the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto deported. There she joined the armed Jewish resistance and was u. a. involved in the preparations for the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as an arms smuggler .

Later - together with her husband Benjamin Meed, who had also fought in the Jewish resistance - after emigrating to the USA, she was involved as a contemporary witness in passing on the memory of National Socialism and the Holocaust to the following generations.

Life

Vladka Meed was born Feigele Peltel in the Warsaw district of Praga . Her parents were called Hanna and Shlomo, and their father was a textile worker. Meed had a brother named Chaim and a sister, Henia. She attended a secular Jewish elementary school ( Folkshul ) with Yiddish as the language of instruction and, at the age of 14, joined the Tsukunft (youth organization of the General Jewish Workers' Union ). Meed and her parents and siblings had to live in the Warsaw ghetto under the pressure of the National Socialists from autumn 1940, but she was able to leave the ghetto because she had to work as a forced laborer outside the walls in a tailor's shop and sew uniforms. During this time Meed attended literature courses. She described these meetings as internal preparation for the later uprising of the Jews. In the ghetto, Vladka Meed met her future husband Benjamin Międzyrzecki, who also fought in the Jewish resistance.

Meed's mother, brother, and sister were killed in the Treblinka concentration camp after they and 254,000 other people had been deported from the Warsaw ghetto in the second half of 1942. Shlomo Peltel died of pneumonia in the Warsaw ghetto.

After losing her entire family, Vladka Meed joined the armed Jewish resistance (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa) in 1942 and began working as a courier under the Polish alias Władka. They smuggled out Jewish children and information and brought weapons, money and dynamite into the ghetto. She paid for the weapons and explosives with money, watches and jewelry that she had transported out of the ghetto. The rescued children were hidden with non-Jewish families whenever possible. Meed spoke fluent Polish and had light hair, so outside the ghetto she did not arouse suspicion. During the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, which lasted from April 19 to at least May 16, 1943, Meed was outside the ghetto walls. She later reported that she watched the smoke from the final battles against the Germans from a carousel in an amusement park.

Vladka and Benjamin Meed survived the Holocaust and World War II outside Warsaw and married in 1945. The following year they emigrated to New York , where Benjamin, aboard the Marine Flasher , a ship that brought surviving Jews from Europe to the USA founded a successful import / export business. The couple, who took the name Meed, had two children, Steven and Anna, who both became doctors.

In 1948 Vladka Meed published her autobiography , in which she mainly describes the period from 1942 to 1944, in Yiddish. The book was translated into English in 1972 ( On Both Sides of the Wall , foreword by Elie Wiesel ) and was published in German in 1999 under the cover name Vladka - A Resistance Fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto .

Vladka and Benjamin Meed helped found the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization and the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors , and were committed to educating children about the Holocaust in schools. Vladka's husband died in 2006 and she herself, after suffering from Alzheimer's disease, died in 2012 at the age of 90.

Publications

Vladka Meed: alias Vladka. A resistance fighter in the Warsaw ghetto. With a foreword by Elie Wiesel . From the American by Susanne E. Krämer. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-434-50468-0 (German and Yiddish; autobiography 1942–1944; original title: On Both Sides of the Wall. Memoirs from the Warsaw Ghetto , 1979).

Web links

Commons : Vladka Meed - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Vladka Meed in the catalog of the German National Library
Literature by and about Vladka Meed in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Biography on the website Echoes and Reflections - A Multimedia Curriculum on the Holocaust of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute , University of Southern California (USC), as of 2007; English, accessed December 30, 2014.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f David B. Green: This Day in Jewish History / A woman who smuggled guns in and children out of Warsaw Ghetto is born . In: Haaretz of December 29, 2014; English, accessed December 30, 2014.
↑ ^a ^b ^c Vladka Meed . In: The Telegraph, February 21, 2013; Obituary, accessed December 30, 2014.

personal data
SURNAME	Meed, Vladka
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Peltel, Feigele (maiden name); Peltel Międzyrzecki, Feigele
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Polish-American survivor of the Holocaust, Jewish resistance fighter in Poland
DATE OF BIRTH	December 29, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH	Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH	November 21, 2012
Place of death	Paradise Valley

[USC-1] Biography on the website Echoes and Reflections - A Multimedia Curriculum on the Holocaust of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute , University of Southern California (USC), as of 2007; English, accessed December 30, 2014.

[Haaretz-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f David B. Green: This Day in Jewish History / A woman who smuggled guns in and children out of Warsaw Ghetto is born . In: Haaretz of December 29, 2014; English, accessed December 30, 2014.

[Telegraph-3] Vladka Meed . In: The Telegraph, February 21, 2013; Obituary, accessed December 30, 2014.