Benjamin Meed
Benjamin Miedzyrzecki (later Meed) was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 19, 1922, the second of four children to Israel Isaac and Rivka (née Ribak) Miedzyrzecki. He had an older sister, Stella, and two younger siblings, Moti and Genia. The family was traditional, observing shabbat and other Jewish practices. Benjamin’s father Isaac had a small business trading leather and was also highly regarded for resolving business and personal disputes among members of the local Jewish community. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, more than 3 million Jews lived there, 380,000 of them in Warsaw, making it the largest Jewish population in Europe.
At the time, Benjamin was in business school, but Anti-Jewish laws were swiftly implemented that would derail his education, In October 1940, the Miedzyrechi family was among those crammed into the Warsaw Ghetto, an area measuring 1.3 square miles enclosed by a 10-foot-high wall topped with barbed wire. Benjamin was recruited into slave labor, which enabled him to leave the ghetto every day. He helped smuggle other Jews out to join the labor brigades and work in an underground resistance, including his future wife, Feyge Peltel (later Vladka Meed).
On April 19, 1943, when German troops attempted to liquidate the ghetto, Jewish partisans resisted in what came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After 27 days of valiant fighting and hiding under bunkers, the resistance was crushed; Benjamin witnessed the burning of the ghetto from outside its walls where he was stationed at the time.
In January 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Warsaw. Benjamin was reunited with his parents and younger sister but learned that his brother and older sister had been deported to Treblinka and murdered there. Vladka and Benjamin were married and stayed at a displaced persons camp in Germany before emigrating to the United States in 1946. They settled in New York City, where they Americanized the family name to Meed. They had a daughter, Anna, in 1948, and a son, Steven, in 1951.
The Meeds played an instrumental role in the creation of several renowned institutions dedicated to Holocaust education. In 1981, they helped organize the first World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Jerusalem, and in 1983, they founded the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Benjamin also served on the Advisory Board of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in 1978-79, which recommended the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He then sat on the museum’s board from 1980 through its opening in 1993, until 2004. He also helped establish the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York in 1997.
Benjamim passed away on October 24, 2006 at the age of 88. He and Vladka had five grandchildren, including Heschel graduates Jessica (MS 1992), Chava (MS 1995), and Jonathan (MS 2005) Meed.
