3 Oct 2009

Last Warsaw ghetto survivor dies

11:28 pm on 3 October 2009

The last surviving leader of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland, Marek Edelman, has died at the age of 90.

The uprising began in 1943 after the Nazis started sending the ghetto's remaining 60,000 inhabitants to the Treblinka death camp.

Mr Edelman was one of about 200 young Jews armed with pistols and home-made bombs who held off the German army before the uprising was crushed and the ghetto razed to the ground.

Mr Edelman escaped and helped coordinate anti-Nazi resistance. After the war he became a doctor and joined Poland's democratic opposition to communism.