Mentionsy

Irena Gelblum. Jewish fighter who destroyed her own past. Podcast in English.

For years, the narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was written by men. That’s why the story of Jewish women liaison officers, fighters and conspirators is so little known. Female liaison officers were on the front line – they smuggled weapons to incite anti-Nazi resistance, money to help Jews in hiding, and rescued people. One of them was Irena Gelblum, unknown to the world for decades. As a journalist and writer I devoted fourteen years to her biography. “The Three Lives of Irena Gelblum” (“Trzy życia Ireny Gelblum”, Bellona Publishing House, Warsaw) with an introduction by Professor Norman Davies (“God’s Playground”, “Rising 44. The Battle for Warsaw”) and an introduction by Holocaust survivor historian Marian Turski, whose words “Auschwitz did not fall from the sky” circulated the world three years ago, is the most likely version of herstory. Probable because she herself for years falsified it, destroyed documents and traces.

For almost 14 years I was researching the biography of Irena Gelblum, an extremely brave fighter for the Jewish combat organization from the period of the Second World War. I knew her, but not as Irena Gelblum, that person was hidden by her by the end of her life, but as Irena Conti di Mauro, an Italian poet living close to Orso. She was playing that Irena Conti for almost 60 years every day, 24 hours a day. Irena Gelblum was born in Warsaw in 1923 to a wealthy Jewish family when World ...