Warsaw Ghetto Uprising leader gets recognition - at last

The emotional ceremony to name a Herzliya plaza after Jewish Military Organization leader Pawel Frenkiel attracted a host of luminaries.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY (TRANSLATED)
A long-ignored leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising has been officially commemorated for the first time at a ceremony naming a Herzliya plaza in his honor, reports www.local.co.il. The emotional ceremony to name the plaza in Rehov Hadar after Jewish Military Organization leader Pawel Frenkiel attracted a host of luminaries, among them former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the heads of several organizations devoted to remembering the war. According to the report, Frenkiel's name was pushed into obscurity after the war, despite his organization having fought the main battle of the uprising in Muranowski Square and succeeding in hanging Zionist and Polish flags from the buildings there. The competing Jewish Fighting Organization led by Mordechai Anielewicz won all the fame after the war, and numerous streets and sites are named in his honor. The report said it was only when former defense minister Moshe Arens began researching the rebellion as a personal project in recent years that he uncovered Frenkiel's story. He searched historical archives and records in an intensive research effort, and vowed to expose the truth and to ensure Frenkiel posthumously received the respect he deserved. Like many others, Frenkiel was killed in action during the uprising. At the naming ceremony, Arens said that while Herzliya was the first city in Israel to name a site in Frenkiel's honor, he hoped that other cities would quickly follow suit.