Marek Edelman as authentic master
anecdote · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 4 talks
Marek Edelman, Warsaw Ghetto fighter, Bundist, Solidarity member, letter-writer supporting Palestinians, was refused a handshake by Rabin in Poland; Žižek uses him as the example of an 'authentic master' who opens up possibilities rather than commanding.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“The only authentic Jew…he restores your freedom to you, he opens up a possibility where you don't see it.”
“He said: forget Auschwitz. Auschwitz is—I'm totally provocative now—Auschwitz is a Gulag Disneyland today.”
“imagine me as a stone in Auschwitz. Somebody has to be here to embody, not to talk about that memory”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Marek Edelman3Cecil John Rhodes1Yahya Sinwar1Herman Lang1Richard Sennett1Samir Amin1Mike Johnson1Greta Gerwig1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Marek Edelman, Warsaw Ghetto fighter, Bundist, Solidarity member, letter-writer supporting Palestinians, was refused a handshake by Rabin in Poland; Žižek uses him as the example of an 'authentic master' who opens up possibilities rather than commanding., illustrating authentic master,universalism
21:45 29.04.2023 Leipzig Slavoj Žižek "Die Paradoxien der Mehrlust: Ein Leitfaden für die Nichtverwirrten"2023-04-29 · 45:24
Žižek recounts the story of Marek Edelman, a Jewish resistance leader, who refused to visit the Auschwitz museum, calling it a 'Gulag Disneyland' compared to the raw horror of Sobibor/Treblinka. Edelman insisted on being a 'stone' in the real camps, linking anti-Semitism with Palestinian rights., illustrating geopolitics-war,race-antisemitism,ethics
Marek Edelman, hero of both the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising, remained in Poland after communism turned antisemitic, describing himself as 'a stone in Auschwitz', someone who must be there to embody the memory. At his life's end he wrote a letter supporting Palestinian resistance while condemning Palestinian violence., illustrating Jewish ethical tradition,solidarity,memory and witness