Objects

Board from the comic strip about Marek Edelman (1919–2009), intertwining two themes: a mature man, cardiologist from Łódź, and a fighter from the Jewish Combat Organisation (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa) in the Warsaw Ghetto, shown in flashbacks. It is the opening board, based on one of the most memorable fragments of Hanna Krall’s reportage Shielding the Flame (1977) about the necessity to defend one’s dignity 'I once saw a crowd on Żelazna Street,' Edelman recalls.—People on the street were swarming around this barrel—a simple wooden barrel with a Jew on top of it. He was old and short, and he had a long beard.

Next to him were two German officers. (Two beautiful tall men next to this small, bowed Jew.) And those Germans, tuft by tuft, were chopping off this Jew’s long beard with huge tailor’s shears, splitting their sides with laughter all the while.

The surrounding crowd was also laughing. Because, objectively, it was really funny: a little man on a wooden barrel with his beard growing shorter by the moment as it disappeared under the tailor’s shears. Just like a movie gag.

At that time the Ghetto did not exist yet, and one might have not sensed the grim premonition in that scene. After all, nothing really horrible was happening to that Jew: only that it was now possible to put him on a barrel with impunity, that people were beginning to realize that such activity wouldn’t be punished and that it provoked laughter.

But you know what?

At that moment I realized that the most important thing on earth was going to be never letting myself be pushed onto the top of that barrel. Never, by anybody. Do you understand?

Everything I was to do later, I was doing in order not to let myself get pushed up there.'