"Carrot Greens or Red Painted Fish Gills: When Anielewicz Was the Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" – the title of my blog post today is admittedly a bit sarcastic.
Yes, today’s title is somewhat sarcastic, but the matter is serious.
First: There was only one Commander of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – Mordechai Anielewicz. He fell along with his loyal companions in the bunker at Miła 18 on May 8, 1943.
Second: The legend of the red gills was born and became rooted in literature and historical consciousness over 30 years after the war. However, thanks to accounts from people who knew Anielewicz in the pre-war years, we understand that the Anielewicz family ran a small vegetable shop, not a fish shop. Although the young Mordechai helped his mother with the trade, the story about painting gills with red paint to make fish look freshly caught is simply untrue.
This anecdote gained its greatest popularity thanks to Hanna Krall’s book Shielding the Flame (1977). This very work, published just a few years after the March 1968 Jews emigration from Poland, introduced this deceptive legend into the public consciousness.
Immediately after the book’s first edition, a male school friend of Anielewicz’s (who lived next door at Solec 113) wrote a letter clarifying the matter to Krall. However, instead of correcting this false information and stopping a legend that maligned not only Anielewicz’s memory but the entire Zionist movement in Poland, Krall repeated this nonsense in subsequent editions. By 1982, the book had reached 22 editions, and the myth took on a life of its own. As you can see, a single "literary oversight" is enough to turn a national hero into a petty swindler in the public mind. Does non-fiction literature have the right to such simplifications at the expense of human truth? Repeated simplifications! This is a typical historical myth that, despite evidence of its falsehood, still thrives in radio, television, newspapers, textbooks, and among a new generation of historians.
The myth of the painted gills is proof of the power of the written word (read: propaganda) and the immense responsibility of the author. In my opinion, Hanna Krall should have corrected this error immediately after the intervention of Anielewicz's friend! Many ask: Was this just a literary oversight? In my view, there is a hidden agenda. I see this as a deliberate attempt to deconstruct Anielewicz's persona, initiated by Marek Edelman and continued to this day. As the only survivor of the ŻOB command, Edelman became the primary, unquestionable narrator of the uprising after the 1968 emigration. Cywia Lubetkin died in 1978; Yitzhak Zuckerman survived her by only three years, passing on June 17, 1981.
Previously, for years, Marek Edelman had to face the person, and later the legend, of Anielewicz—a leader he could not match in many respects. Introducing such a petty and morally ambiguous thread as cheating with "painted fish" looks like calculated revenge on a political and ideological rival. By striking at young Mordechai’s image, Edelman tried to bring the hero down from his pedestal to the level of a bazaar hustler. In the context of the ghetto tragedy and the heroism of Miła 18, this is exceptionally painful.
Why did we allow such an important figure to be defined by a lying anecdote for decades? Is it possible that personal animosities and political divisions (Bund vs. Zionists) survived even death in the bunker at Miła 18?
"He only felt uneasy when he had to shoot. He was a romantic man," Marek Edelman recalled of Yitzhak Zuckerman in his peculiar way. Again, personal animosities similar to those toward Mordechai Anielewicz?
"And from all this, only one Anielewicz will remain, because in history, those ten don't stay [...]. Only this one. From the ghetto, Anielewicz will remain. And he is the symbol"—this is another quote from Hanna Krall’s book, and it is, of course, again the opinion of Marek Edelman.
The fact that Edelman emphasizes that history remembers individual symbols, making Mordechai Anielewicz the hero-commander, I perceive as a fear haunting Edelman that he might be forgotten (which is likely why this dictated book was created). Edelman's jealousy regarding famous figures in the Warsaw Ghetto knows no bounds. There are videos and interviews online of Edelman talking about Janusz Korczak. In them, there is plenty of inaccurate and untruthful information, naturally interspersed with true facts! Not to mention Edelman’s shouting when the reporter didn't nod in agreement fast enough.
Just as with Anielewicz, Edelman often stressed that although Korczak became a symbol and legend, he wasn't the only guardian who chose to go with the children to Treblinka. His dislike of Korczak may have stemmed from the fact that Korczak was a universally known, apolitical, and "saintly" figure, which irritated Edelman. Edelman, as a hospital courier, took the side of Dr. Anna Braude-Hellerowa, a legendary figure of the Bund (Edelman's party). The conflict over resources in the ghetto was tragic—Korczak fought for every calorie for the children, not just in the Orphans' Home (Dom Sierot) but in other children's care institutions as well. Edelman evidently remembered Braude-Hellerowa’s remarks about Korczak as "troublemaking," whereas it was actually a desperate struggle for the lives of all children.
There is hard evidence against the "painted fish" myth and Edelman’s narrative, a.o. The testimony of Anielewicz’s School Friends: The most crucial rebuttal came from Tola Elblinger (or sometimes cited as friends from the Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza'ir movement). They confirmed that the Anielewicz family (his mother, Ryfka) sold vegetables and fruit at a stall, not fish. This detail is often discussed in critical analyses of Krall’s work and Edelmann's forwarded legends.
Numerous young researchers in Poland are currently attempting to portray Mordechaj Anielewicz as 'red'—a communist supporter—to align with contemporary political trends. However, this overlooks the strategic reality of the time. The Battle of Stalingrad is widely regarded as the decisive turning point that launched the Soviet Union’s sustained westward offensive toward Berlin. While the Red Army had launched its first successful counterattack near Moscow in 1941, it was the victory at Stalingrad that permanently shifted the strategic initiative to the Soviet side.
Following the German surrender on February 2, 1943, the Red Army did not halt; they immediately launched further offensives to the West. Given that a 'Second Front' in Western Europe did not exist until June 1944, it was logical for those resisting the Nazis to expect that liberation would come from the East with the Red Army. Considering this strategic context of 1942–1943, accusing Anielewicz of communist sympathies based on his hopes for a Soviet victory is historically nonsensical.
Mordechai Anielewicz (leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) was a member of Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist-Socialist movement. While they were left-wing, there was a vast difference between "Socialist Zionism" and "Soviet Communism." In 1943, supporting the Red Army’s advance was a matter of survival and pragmatism for anyone under Nazi occupation, regardless of their specific political ideology.
