United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Personal History


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I also belonged at that time in the ghetto, before deportation, to the Jewish cultural group, and we had lectures with the ... Ringelblum, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum, and with, with the teacher Virovsky [ph], and we had some events, cultural events. I also recall that they sent me to talk to a group of Jews after the curfew in the ghetto. I spoke at that time about I. L. Peretz, Bontshe Shvayg [Bontshe the Meek or the Silent], and I recall being in a house afer the curfew, I have to go there before and sleep over the night, and it was big room, about 40 or 50 people, the tenants of the house, of the building. And they put me, and they asked two small children to be outside in case German are coming, to have enough time to disperse. And I was talking to the people about Peretz. I was a young girl, and I recall how the people were able to follow me, and it was at that time starvation and typhoid and hunger, and, and constantly terror in the ghetto. But neverthless such lectures took place in many pla... in many houses during the ghetto period, and the young people used to go there and they were asking questions. I don't remember the questions, but I do remember the atmosphere, the elevation, being together with the people and talking about the writer, and about the character, Bontshe Shvayg. And this still remains in my, remains in my memory.

I also belonged at that time in the ghetto, before deportation, to the Jewish cultural group, and we had lectures with the ... Ringelblum, the historian Emanuel Ringelblum, and with, with the teacher Virovsky [ph], and we had some events, cultural events. I also recall that they sent me to talk to a group of Jews after the curfew in the ghetto. I spoke at that time about I. L. Peretz, Bontshe Shvayg [Bontshe the Meek or the Silent], and I recall being in a house afer the curfew, I have to go there before and sleep over the night, and it was big room, about 40 or 50 people, the tenants of the house, of the building. And they put me, and they asked two small children to be outside in case German are coming, to have enough time to disperse. And I was talking to the people about Peretz. I was a young girl, and I recall how the people were able to follow me, and it was at that time starvation and typhoid and hunger, and, and constantly terror in the ghetto. But neverthless such lectures took place in many pla... in many houses during the ghetto period, and the young people used to go there and they were asking questions. I don't remember the questions, but I do remember the atmosphere, the elevation, being together with the people and talking about the writer, and about the character, Bontshe Shvayg. And this still remains in my, remains in my memory.

Vladka (Fagele) Peltel Meed
Born: Warsaw, Poland, 1921

Describes clandestine cultural activities in the Warsaw ghetto
[Interview: 1991]

Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.

— US Holocaust Memorial Museum - Collections


Referenced in the following Holocaust Encyclopedia article(s):

Spiritual Resistance in the Ghettos »