Vladka Meed

Vladka Meed (also known as Vladka Miedzyrzecki) was born in Warsaw, Poland, on December 29, 1921, the eldest child of Shlomo and Hanna Peltel. Her given name was Feigele and she had two younger siblings, Chaim and Henia. The Peltel family owned a small store and was traditional, observing shabbat and Jewish customs.

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. Anti-Jewish laws were swiftly implemented, and in October 1940, the Nazis established the Warsaw Ghetto. The city’s Jews, among them the Peltel family, were crammed into an area measuring 1.3 square miles, enclosed by a 10-foot-high wall topped with barbed wire. Overcrowding, starvation and privation led to the death of over 80,000 Jews, including Vladka’s father, who contracted pneumonia. 

Vladka joined youth resistance groups that were forming inside the ghetto, and in November 1942, she managed to sneak out on the first of many missions to purchase arms on the black market. With her fluent Polish and “Aryan” looks, she was able to pass as a Christian, and worked as a courier alongside her future husband, Benjamin Meed, who was smuggling Jews out of the ghetto. In the summer of 1942, the Germans began carrying out mass deportations. Vladka’s mother and siblings were sent to Treblinka where they were murdered. 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; Vladka and Benjamin witnessed the burning of the ghetto from outside its walls where they were stationed at the time.

In January 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Warsaw. 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 had a daughter, Anna, in 1948, and a son, Steven, in 1951.The Meeds dedicated their lives to teaching about the Holocaust, regularly lecturing and writing about their experiences. 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. In 1985, Vladka initiated a landmark program that brought American teachers to Poland and Israel to learn about the Holocaust. Her 1993 memoir On Both Sides of the Wall recounts her wartime experiences and in 2014, Scholastic published her story as a book for middle school students, The Girl Who Fought Back, Vladka Meed and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Vladka shared her story with the Heschel community at its first Yom HaShoah commemoration in 1997. She passed away on November 21, 2012, six years after her husband. They had five grandchildren, including Heschel graduates Jessica (MS 1992), Chava (MS 1995), and Jonathan (MS 2005) Meed.

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Benjamin Meed

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Rena Rosenbaum