A Memory of Heroes

DURING World War II, the Nazis herded more than 400,000 Polish Jews into a 3.5-sq.-mi. area of Warsaw, sealing them off from the rest of the city with a great brick wall. There, in 1943, thousands of Jews perished in a desperate 28-day uprising against the massed might of the German army. Those who survived the fight were shipped off to concentration camps.

Last week, the Polish government commemorated the 30th anniversary of the resistance with a 25-minute wreath-laying ceremony at a massive black Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto. Said Marek Edelman, 53, the only leader of the uprising who still lives in Poland: "We proved that a few people, hungry and poorly equipped, could resist, and that the Germans were not a superhuman force."

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