[Rhodes22-list] Gun Control - This Day In History

[Brad Haslett]

Rob,

I've probably posted this before-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4

We continue to stay out of New Orleans but I've met dozens of people on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast who returned to their homes after Katrina and were
met by looters. Some who were unarmed were run out of their own homes.
Others who were armed were able to 'pursuade' looters to find other targets.
The thin patina of civilization breaks down rather quickly after a disaster
of this magnitude, and quite frankly, I don't like being at the mercy of the
state for protection.  That's the gist of the story of Mila 18.

Brad

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 8:46 AM, Rob Lowe <rlowe at vt.edu> wrote:

> Didn't see until the day after it was posted.  This story has nothing to
> do
> with gun control.  How nice to be reminded about gun control on April 16.
> Speaking about days in history. - rob
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brad Haslett" <flybrad at gmail.com>
> To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 5:11 PM
> Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Gun Control - This Day In History
>
>
> One of my favorite books is Mila 18 by Leon Uris.  Here's to citizens who
> can protect themselves!  Brad
>
> ---------------------
>
> Ex-leader recalls Warsaw Ghetto uprising
> <http://www.breitbart.com/partner.php?source=ap>   Apr 15 02:48 PM
> US/Eastern
> By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
> Associated Press Writer   LODZ, Poland (AP) - Marek Edelman, the last
> surviving commander of the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw ghetto by a handful
> of scrappy, poorly armed Jews against the Nazi army, becomes emotional
> when
> he speaks of the fighters he led.
>
> "I remember them all—boys and girls—220 altogether, not too many to
> remember
> their faces, their names," says the 89-year-old doctor, who still works in
> a
> Lodz hospital. Edelman will lay a wreath in their honor at the Monument to
> the Heroes of the Ghetto on Saturday, the 65th anniversary of the
> uprising.
>
> The Nazis walled off the ghetto in November 1940, cramming 400,000 Jews
> from
> across Poland into a 760-acre section of the capital in inhuman
> conditions.
> On April 19, 1943, German troops started to liquidate the ghetto by
> sending
> tens of thousands of its residents to death camps.
>
> Several hundred young Jews took up arms in defense of the civilians—the
> first act of large-scale armed civilian resistance against the Germans in
> occupied Poland during World War II.
>
> "It was the first, most important and most spectacular" instance of Jewish
> armed resistance to the Nazi Holocaust, said Andrzej Zbikowski, head of
> the
> Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.
>
> In an interview with The Associated Press, Edelman said the Nazis "wanted
> to
> destroy the people, and we fought to protect the people in the ghetto, to
> extend their life by a day or two or five."
>
> Then 24 years old, Edelman took command of one of the revolt's three
> groups.
> His fighters, between the ages of 13 and 22, scraped together guns and
> ammunition that they and the Polish resistance managed to smuggle in from
> the outside.
>
> His brigade included 50 fighters known as "brush men" because their base
> was
> a brush factory.
>
> "There weren't enough guns, ammunition. There was not enough food, but we
> were not starving. You can live for three weeks just on water and sugar,"
> which they found in the homes of those deported to death camps, he said.
>
> They adopted hit-and-run tactics. With time, as supplies and forces began
> to
> run low, they resorted to attacks at night, for more safety.
>
> "Every moment was difficult. It was two or three or 10 boys fighting with
> an
> army," Edelman said. "There were no easy moments."
>
> But they were outnumbered and outgunned.
>
> "It lasted for three weeks, so this great German army could not cope so
> easily with those 220 boys and girls," he said with a grain of pride.
>
> The uprising ended when its main leaders—rounded up by the Nazis—committed
> suicide on May 8, 1943. The Nazis then burned down the ghetto, street by
> street.
>
> About 40 fighters escaped through Warsaw's sewers and joined the Polish
> partisans.
>
> "No one believed he would be saved," Edelman said. "We knew that the
> struggle was doomed, but it showed the world that there is resistance
> against the Nazis, that you can fight the Nazis."
>
> Edelman and a few others stayed in Warsaw to help coordinate and supply
> the
> Jewish resistance groups. Some fighters still live in Israel and Canada.
> Edelman is the last one in Poland.
>
> Despite the ghetto uprising's ultimate failure, "it was worth it," Edelman
> said. "Even at the price of the fighters' lives."
>
> After the war, Edelman chose to remain in Poland, becoming a social and a
> democratic activist, and guardian of the ghetto fighters' memory.
>
> "When you were responsible for the life of some 60,000 people, you don't
> leave and abandon the memory of them," he said.
>
> A service was held in Warsaw on Tuesday—to avoid conflicting with the
> Jewish
> sabbath—and drew a crowd of 1,000, including Israeli President Shimon
> Peres
> and his Polish counterpart, Lech Kaczynski, as well as U.S. Homeland
> Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Israeli and Polish flags fluttered in
> the afternoon breeze as Poland's chief orthodox rabbi, Michael Schudrich,
> read out the Kaddish, or Jewish prayer for the dead.
>
> Peres praised the young fighters, who he said displayed "a heroism that
> our
> children will proudly carry with them in their hearts."
>
> Edelman views the annual observances as "part of educating people and
> fighting genocide."
>
> He said people "have to be educated from childhood, from kindergarten,
> that
> there should be no hatred."
>
> "They have to be shown that all people are the same, that skin color,
> race,
> religion don't matter," he said. "We have only one life and we must not
> murder each other. We see the sun only once."
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