On Both Sides of the Wall: A Resistance Fighter's Firsthand Account of the Warsaw Ghetto

The essential new edition of one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, On Both Sides of the Wall, which recounts one woman’s harrowing experiences as a courier for the Jewish underground, is a testament to the ordinary men and women who mustered the courage to resist—despite the odds—in defense of human freedom and dignity.

With exclusive new photographs and material.

Introduction by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel laureate

Foreword by Samuel D. Kassow, Holocaust historian and author of Who Will Write Our History?

Afterword by Judy Batalion, New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days

Vladka Meed, born Feigele Peltel, was just a teenager when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Increasingly devastated by the deportation and murder of 300,000 Jews—including her mother, brother, and sister—who were sent from Warsaw to the death camp of Treblinka, she heeded the call for armed resistance, joining the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), established in Warsaw in July 1942.

With her typically “Aryan” looks and fluency in Polish, Vladka could pose as a Gentile, so the ZOB asked her to live on the Aryan side of the wall and serve as a courier. In this role, she smuggled weapons across the wall, helped Jewish children escape from the Ghetto, assisted Jews hiding in the city, and established contact with both Jews in the labor camps and the partisans in the forest.

First published in Yiddish by the Educational Committee of the Workmen’s Circle in New York in 1948, On Both Sides of the Wall was based on a series of 27 articles Vladka wrote in the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts) in 1946–47. In this revised translation, which includes exclusive, new material and photographs, Vladka’s son, Dr. Steven D. Meed, captures the vibrancy and passion of his mother’s original Yiddish text, preserving the testimony and memory of this valiant woman for a new generation of readers.

Vladka Meed, born Feigele Peltel, served in the Jewish underground in the Warsaw Ghetto by passing as a Christian outside its walls. Immediately following the Second World War, she settled in New York City with her husband. Her memoir, On Both Sides of the Wall, one of the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust, was first published in Yiddish in 1948. She remained extremely active in Holocaust education and memorialization until her death in 2012.

Steven D. Meed is a retired internist and rheumatologist who earned his medical degree from New York University, where he also later served as an assistant professor of medicine. A founder of the Second Generation group in New York City, he has spoken widely on his parents’ experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto.