# data[].attributes.body
"But I still remember the atmosphere, the uplift, that in the ghetto with so much

starvation, and the typhoid epidemic which started and the hunger and misery,

we were talking about literature. And a young girl was talking to older people

and they were listening, and somehow it was, they thought, the hope that this

will pass, it is a time that will not remain forever. And this kind of hope was

constantly in the life of the ghetto."

# data[].attributes.body
Vladka and benjamin met during the holocaust because she and hired him to help, but during the time they knew each other they fell in love, even around all the chaos and destruction.

# data[].attributes.body
Vladka Meed was a Jewish resistance fighter during the Holocaust who famously smuggled weapons and supplies into the Warsaw Ghetto by passing as a Christian on the "Aryan" side of the ghetto walls, acting as a courier for the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) while primarily based in Warsaw, Poland during World War II; she was able to do this due to her fluent Polish and "Aryan" appearance. So, when vladka went disguised as a polish woman, she needed a new ID so they didnt know who she was. So she made this fake ID and changed her name to "Vladka Meed". Her real name is Feigele Peltel.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the Germans condemned the Jews to live in ghettos, they cut them off from the world. To have any chance of surviving, it was vital to resist the Germans in any way possible. To have any chance of fighting back against the Germans, it was crucial to smuggle in secret information and weapons.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‎The Human Spirit in the Holocaust: One Fierce Female - VLADKA MEED on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the Germans condemned the Jews to live in ghettos, they cut them off from the world. To have any chance of surviving, it was vital to resist the Germans in any way possible. To have any chance of fighting back against the Germans, it was crucial to smuggle in secret information and weapons.

# data[].attributes.body
Vladka attended a Yiddish secular school supported by the Democratic Socialist Movement; participating in several youth organizations, such as the Bund Youth when the holocaust started.

# data[].attributes.body
Vladka had this kind of hope for the holocaust, She said much of that initial hope felle in the deportations from Warsaw began, and, building by building, block by block, the Germans began clearing out the ghetto. Between july and September 1942, the nazis deported more than 265,000 jews from the warsaw ghetto to the treblinka death camp. Vladkas mother, her younger sister, and her little brother were among those forced out of their homes and taken away in cattle cars.

By october 1942, when deportions paused, more than 20 youth groups and underground units had coalesced into a united front.

She when disguised as a polish woman to smuggle information, supplies, etc. into the ghetto, she also took information out of the ghetto to other people helping.

Then she met Benjamin Miedzyrzecki (later shortened to meed), whom she recruited to work for the resistance. The two of them fell in love, even among the death and despair around them.

When the nozis restarted deportations from warsaw in janurary 1943, Jewish defiance disrupted German efforts. The resistance received word of a final deportation just before Passover, and on April 19, 1943, some 700 young Jewish fighters fought back at the German troops entering the ghetto.

When the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising started, Vladka was outside the ghetto, still disguised. She managed to get in contact with uprising leaders, and she began working to distribute appeals for help to resistance organizations outside the ghetto. But in the process, she and uprising leader Abraham Blum were arrested. With the help of her polish collaborator, Vladka was able to get away. Abraham Blum was murdered by the Gestapo.

After weeks of hand-to-hand combat, the Germans began burning and leveling buildings. From the balcony of an apartment outside the ghetto walls, Vladka heard the gunfire, saw black smoke, and watched people jumping from windows.

The warsaw Ghetto Uprising was squashed after 27 days. Some 7,000 Jews had been killed, and 42,000 were deported. On May 16, the Nzazis blew up the Great Synagogue of Warsaw, once the largest jewish house of worship in the world. The entire ghetto had been destroyed.

Over the following months, Vladka and Benjamin worked to extricate fighters from underground bunkers in the rubble and those in hiding outside of the ghetto. They helped get money and provisions to Jews in hiding, to partisan units, and to resistance cells in camps and ghettos around poland.

In August 1944, Vladka fought alongside Poles in the Polish Uprising in Warsaw, a two-month bettale between the Polish Home Army and the Germans. Vladka, Ben, and his parents survived disguised as christians for the remaining few months of the war in small village, leaving the ghetto on December 5, 1942.

After the war, Vladka and ben went back to Warsaw to find the few Jews who had survived in hiding, and then moved to Lodz, where Vladka became the director of the Jewish Cultural Department, which was responsible for organizing the Jews who were trickling back in to city to look for lost family members.

Among those survivors in Lodz, Vladka saw the same signs of hope she had seen in the early days of the Warsaw ghetto--survivors still willing to pray, still wanting to live, to love, to sing.

# data[].attributes.body
A series of 27 articles Vladka wrote for the Yiddish Daily Forward became one of the earliest chronicles of the holocaust. In 1948. she published a book, On Both Sides of the Wall, which was translated from Yiddish in 1972.

For all the valor Vladka saw among the resistance fighters, in her testimony it was her mother, and other mothers, she wanted to honor.

# data[].attributes.body
She got a Star to show she is apart of the holocaust remembrance.

# data[].attributes.body
With her light complexion and high cheekbones, Vladka was asked to operate outside the ghetto, disguised as a Polish woman. Over the next few months, Vladka bribed guards and used secret passages to sneak in and out of the ghetto. She smuggled weapons in phony bottles and dynamite wrapped in greasy paper to look like butter. What she smuggled out of the ghetto was just as important: information that had come through the underground, including the first reports that nearly everyone deported to Treblinka was killed on arrival — a devastating realization for Vladka about her own family’s fate.

# data[].attributes.body
“One Fierce Female - VLADKA MEED.” yadvashem the world remembrance holocaust center, Yad Vashem. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/lesson-plans/human-spirit-podcast/vladka-meed.html Accessed 4 March 2025.

“She Smuggled Love, Hope, and Dynamite Over the Ghetto Walls.” USC Shoah Foundation, https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2021/06/31356-she-smuggled-love-hope-and-dynamite-over-ghetto-walls Accessed 4 March 2025

# data[].attributes.body
Vladka Meed smuggled dynamite into the Warsaw Ghetto, and also helped children escape out of the Ghetto.