Marek Edelman | Led Warsaw uprising, 90

Marek Edelman, 90, the last surviving leader of the World War II Warsaw Ghetto uprising, died yesterday in the Polish capital.

"He died at home, among friends, among his close people," Paula Sawicka said, attributing his death to old age. Feeble and in a wheelchair, Mr. Edelman had lived with Sawicka's family for the last two years.

He was the last surviving leader of the ill-fated 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the first large-scale Jewish revolt against the Nazis.

More than 55,000 people were killed or deported to Nazi concentration camps when the uprising failed. With a small group of survivors, he fled through the sewers and helped coordinate Jewish partisan groups in nearby forests.

Because of his defense of freedom and dignity, he was considered a great moral authority. He was also a member of the democratic opposition to the communist regime in Poland before it was toppled in 1989.

He worked as a cardiologist in the central city of Lodz. But he dedicated most of his life to preserving the memory of the fallen heroes of the ghetto uprising. Every April, on the anniversary of the revolt, he laid flowers at Warsaw's monument to the ghetto heroes, in a call for tolerance.

He was awarded the French Legion of Honor.

- AP