'No Easy Moments' for a Leader Of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first armed Jewish revolt against Nazi troops during World War II, died Oct. 2 at a friend's home in Warsaw at the age of 90. The cause of death was not reported.

During four weeks in 1943, Dr. Edelman and a few hundred young residents of the walled ghetto in which Jewish residents of Warsaw were confined took up arms and waged one of the most heroic, if doomed, battles of the war. They braved overwhelming odds to make quick guerrilla strikes on Nazi forces, armed only with a few pistols, rifles and homemade bombs. For a time, they were able to halt the mass deportations that had sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis.

Dr. Edelman, who went on to have a long career as a cardiologist, hesitated to use the word "uprising" to describe the insurrection because he and other leaders recognized how hopeless their plight was.

"We knew perfectly well that we would never win," he said in 2007. "We were 220 poorly armed boys against a powerful army."

Even though the uprising ended in defeat, it held huge symbolic importance. Not only was it the first major Jewish insurrection of the war, but it was also the first organized urban resistance to German might. Word of the Warsaw uprising quickly spread to other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe and even inspired revolts inside the Treblinka and Sobibor concentration camps.

"We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths," Dr. Edelman said.

In 1940, the Nazi army segregated Jewish residents from the rest of Warsaw, and by 1942 almost 500,000 people were living an area of 840 acres, or about five square miles. A 10-foot-high brick wall was built around the ghetto.

Many people died of disease or starvation, and in July 1942 the Nazis began to ship more than 5,000 Jews a day out of the ghetto, under the pretense of working at factories outside Warsaw. In fact, they were being sent to concentration camps.

Dr. Edelman, who worked as a hospital courier, obtained waivers for some residents, certifying that they were too ill to travel or work. Instead, they joined his underground resistance movement.

On April 19, 1943, Nazi troops marched into the ghetto with the aim of ridding Warsaw of the last of its Jews. It was the eve of Passover, the holiday period commemorating Jewish freedom from slavery in Egypt. The Nazi forces, which numbered more than 2,000, met unexpected resistance, as Jewish rebels fired guns from windows and detonated mines in the streets under troop formations.

German-led troops marched through the streets with tanks, flamethrowers and artillery and razed the ghetto, building by building. Yet for four weeks, the resistance continued, as fighters struck quickly at Nazi troops, then escaped through alleys and sewers or across rooftops.

The resistance fighters knew the intricacies of the city's twisting streets and had dug out underground hiding places. On May 8, 1943, several resistance leaders were trapped in a bunker and, rather than submit to the Nazis, committed suicide.