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Vladka Meed (her actual name was Feigele Peltel) was a member of the Jewish underground organization in the Warsaw Ghetto. Her parents were Shlomo and Hanna Peltel, and born on Dec. 29, 1921 in Warsaw.

She had two younger siblings: Chaim and Henia.

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What Happened to Her Family and What Was the Warsaw Ghetto?

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What Happened to Her Family and What Was the Warsaw Ghetto?

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Oct. 1940, Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto

1.3 square miles with 10 foot walls and barbed wire

Overcrowding and starvation caused many deaths (80,000+ Jews), including her father.

Mother and siblings were sent to Treblinka, a killing center, where they were murdered...

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Vladka joined a youth resistance group (Zukunft) formed inside the ghetto

Nov. 1942, she snuck out to get weapons from the black market to the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB)

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Being fluent in Polish and having a typical “Aryan” appearance, she would act as a Christian outside and work as a courier with her future husband, Benjamin Meed, who helped smuggle Jews out the ghetto

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Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943): German soldiers were planning to kill the people, but the Jews resisted

27 days of fighting and hiding in bunkers, the resisters lost

Vladka could see the smoke from the fire that was burning the ghetto outside the walls....

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Famously known to snuck in dynamite/weapons into the ghetto, and sneak out young Jews out of the ghetto and into safe hiding with non-Jewish families.

After the Holocaust, lived in New York City, where she wrote books to educate people about the Holocaust.

1993: she wrote On Both Sides of the Wall

Scholastic publishes her story named, The Girl Who Fought Back, Vladka Meed and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

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1981: helped organize a World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Jerusalem

1983: found the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

1985: launches a landmark program where American teachers go to Poland and Israel to learn about the Holocaust

Vladka Meed made so much impact to our world because of the acts she did to educate society about the horrors of the Holocaust, but to also give us hope about standing up for what is right.

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“'I would like also to say to people not to take for granted – not freedom, not justice. You have to stand up for it. You have to defend this...To remember that the other needs, too, your help. Not to be passive when things are going on around you. Not to be indifferent. To be a participant in life, and to defend the rights of humanity.'”

“'Even in the very shadow of death, our people continued to create. They studied, they wrote, they learned...the souls of the tortured could not be stifled. Poetry still spoke through our lips, and music still came from our throats. Even as the smoke rose from the ovens, our children painted on scraps of paper and wrote poems about butterflies which could no longer be seen in the ghetto. Our people struggled to preserve their love of goodness-of humanity-of God'”

-Vladka M.

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Interview with Vladka Meed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcqgClGTt60

Article:

https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/lesson-plans/human-spirit-podcast/vladka-meed.html

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Illegal Education in the Warsaw Ghetto | Vladka Meed | Women’s History Month | USC Shoah Foundation