obituaries Obituaries from page 68 Warsaw Ghetto Hero Ynet News V ladka Meed, 90, a weapons smuggler and courier during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, who published a book about the struggle, died Nov. 21 at her daughter's home in Arizona, the Washington Post reports. According to her son, the cause of death was Alzheimer's disease. Meed posed as a Polish gentile woman during World War II, smuggling weapons and documents into the ghetto and finding hiding places for children from the ghetto on the outside. "To remain a human being in the ghetto, one had to live in constant defiance, to act illegally:' Meed told the Forward in 1995. "We had illegal synagogues, illegal classes, illegal meetings and illegal publications" Meed was born Feigel Peltel in Warsaw in December 1921. Her father died of pneumonia in the ghetto, and her mother and two siblings perished at the Treblinka death camp. She joined the Jewish Fighting Organization, using the code name Vladka — a name she kept for the rest of her life. As the war continued, she immediately reporter, "We didn't have any possibility chose armed resistance. Using forged iden- the outside world is going to come and lib- tification papers and with her Aryan looks erate us. So it was doomed from the begin- and fluency in Polish, she lived for extend- ning ... We didn't want to die. No. But we ed periods amid the ethnic Polish popula- said, 'This is the way to act. This we have tion and worked on both sides to do."' of the ghetto walls to obtain Her son, Steven Meed, said weapons and ammunition "quiet resistance" was what on the black market and find his mother most profoundly hiding places for children and taught him, namely how to adults. "maintain your dignity, edu- She also acted as a courier cate your children and con- for the Jewish underground, tribute to society — doing hiding documents in her shoe. all those things that made In an interview to the you a person in the face of Washington Post in 1973, Meed said it was horrify- "We were trying to live Vladka Me ed ing to discover the apathy of through the war, the hard most Poles to the fate of the Jews. "I lived times, in the ways which were known to among them for a quite a while as a Pole. us before the war:' she told the Forward. Most of them were indifferent. Quite a "Nobody imagined any gas chambers. large number of them were openly anti- Jewish resistance took different forms Semitic and even, in a way, having satis- and shapes under Nazi occupation. Our faction" with the ghetto extermination. defiance of the Germans, who wanted to The uprising was launched on April 19, dehumanize us, expressed itself in varied 1943. It lasted 27 days until the ghetto was ways." completely annihilated. Meed survived and remained in Poland In 1993, Meed told a Knight-Ridder until it was liberated by the Russians. In 1945, she married Benjamin Miedzyrzeck, another resistance member. A year later, they immigrated to the United States with $8 between them. They officially changed their names to Benjamin and Vladka Meed in the 1950s. According to the Washington Post, Meed's husband started an import- export business and served on a board that helped establish the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. They had two children and five grand- children. Benjamin Meed died in 2006 at the age 88. While her husband often played a more public role in Holocaust remembrance, Vladka Meed achieved a strong legacy through the force of her writing and lec- turing for six decades. She became a vice president of the Jewish Labor Committee and in 1984 started a national teacher-training pro- gram on the Holocaust that highlighted the role of the Warsaw resistance. In a book she wrote in 1948, On Both Sides of the Wall, she provided an eyewit- ness account of the Warsaw ghetto and uprising. ❑ WHEN YOU NEED US, YOU'LL REALLY TALK TO US In our more than 70 years, we have never employed an answering service. Our commitment to this community is to be available 24/7. Whether inquiring about details of a funeral or reporting a death, you will always speak to a member of our staff, who is a member of this community and always available. We are proud to be the only Jewish funeral home in Metro Detroit that will not turn you over to a call center. We choose to be there for you and your family at all times. THE IRA KAUFMAN CHAPEL Bringing Together Family, Faith & Community 18325 W. 9 Mile Rd Southfield, MI 48075 • 248.569.0020 • IraKaufman.com 1773060 70 December 13 • 2012 Obituaries