On Saturday, my National Gun Rights Examiner colleague David Codrea informed us of the sad news of the death, Friday, of Marek Edelman. Mr. Edelman was the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis. Mr. Codrea aptly described Mr. Edelman as "[a] man who knew first-hand about the ultimate need for an armed citizenry." In Mr. Edelman's own words:
"When you cannot defend freedom through peaceful means, you have to use arms to fight Nazism, dictatorship, chauvinism," Edelman said in the 2008 interview in his apartment in the central city of Lodz, which was filled with portraits of Jews and of scenes reminiscent of the Holocaust.
His fight against Nazism was, of course, stacked horribly against him.
"No one believed they would be saved," Edelman said. "We knew the struggle was doomed, but it showed the world there was resistance against the Nazis, that you could fight the Nazis."
"Every moment was difficult. It was two or three or 10 boys fighting with an army," Edelman said in 2008. "There were no easy moments."
They had few guns and no food but were driven by a goal.
The Nazis "wanted to destroy the people and we fought to protect the people in the ghetto, to extend their lives by a day, or two or five," he said.
Incredibly, Mr. Edelman survived the ghetto uprising, and escaped with a small group through the sewers.
Even then, his fighting days were not yet over. As part of a partisan group fighting in the Polish countryside, he did his best to make Nazi rule of Poland as difficult as he could. In the late summer and early fall of 1944, as the Soviet Red Army drove the Nazis back, he took part in the Warsaw Uprising. Intended to last only days, after which the Soviets were expected to arrive, the Uprising was crushed, and the resistance massacred. This happened because the Soviets, in a cynical, egregious betrayal, stopped short, to let the Nazis do their dirty work for them.
Once again, Mr. Edelman survived.
With the end of the war, Mr. Edelman's days as an active combatant also ended. What did not end, though, was his spirit of resistance, and his love of freedom and human dignity.
This time, the enemy was the communists, and as part of the Solidarity movement, Mr. Edelman helped to end communist rule in Poland in 1989.
Mr. Edelman and his compatriots were horribly handicapped in their nearly doomed-from-the-beginning resistance, by the simple fact of their almost total lack of weapons, and training in their use.
If genocidal tyranny ever raises its hideous head in the U.S., we will have no such excuse. For the moment, at least, and in theory, at least, we have a Constitutional guarantee of our fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms. If we lose that, through apathy, short sightedness ("that could never happen here, and now"), and lack of use, we will have only ourselves to blame.
There is a group dedicated to ensuring that such a calamity never happens. Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JPFO) is not part of the "gun lobby," at least not in the usual sense of the term. Rather than lobbying politicians, JPFO's mission is to educate the citizenry about the the dire threat to society posed by forcible citizen disarmament. They do so with hard-hitting documentaries such as "The Gang," about the abuses of the BATFE (available here), "Innocents Betrayed" (available here), about citizen disarmament and subsequent genocide, and many others.
JPFO is not a large organization, and producing this material requires resources.
And that brings me to the point of today's column. I am a life member of the NRA, Second Amendment Foundation (and it's sister organization, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms), Gun Owners of America, and the Illinois State Rifle Association--and I support the Firearms Coalition. I have been a member of JPFO, but, to my shame, have allowed my membership to lapse.
It occurs to me that the best way for me to honor the incredible courage of Mr. Edelman, not to mention his brothers in arms who never had the chance to see both the Nazis and the Communists defeated, and all the victims of oppression everywhere throughout history, would be to become a life member of JPFO. That happens today. "Never again" will I not be a member. Care to join me (one need not be Jewish in order to join)?
As Mr. Codrea says, "the only way 'never again' works is if you mean it."
Indeed.
Comments
Way ahead of you, pal. I donate to JPFO every month. And I got the other "materials" to back up what I believe. Never Again!
I'm not much of a "joiner," but most certainly have plenty of TEETH.
Reaching and teaching folks to use them, one class at a time.
If you are watching closely enough you can catch a glimpse of me in "Innocents Betrayed" in my buckskins and holding my black powder rifle. That is reason enough to buy a copy, right?
Oh, and I'm a life member of JPFO.
I only hope we don't have to learn the hard way.
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