In May 1946, a reporter from the Yiddish newspaper, The Jewish Daily Forward, waited for Vladka Meed and her husband, Benjamin, as they disembarked from one of the first ships carrying European refugees from World War II to New York. The Jewish socialist publication knew that the 24-year-old Meed (a Bundist from childhood) had already spoken and written in Europe about her experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto resistance, and wanted its chance to ask her about them.

By December 1942, Meed (born Feigele Peltel) was the sole survivor of her family. Her father had died from illness, and her mother, sister, and brother had been deported to the Treblinka death camp. Meed sought solace and support from her fellow young Bund activists, many of whom were building the underground Jewish resistance within the Ghetto.

They recruited Meed, who looked Aryan and spoke unaccented Polish, to escape the Ghetto. On the Polish side of the wall, she bravely served as a weapons and documents courier and smuggler, found safe hiding places for Jewish women and children, and provided supplies and information to Jewish partisans in the countryside. Her quick intelligence, grit, and innate gifts with writing and speaking were assets.

The dockside interview with the Forward led to Meed producing a series of 16 extended weekly articles for the paper. In 1948, she expanded her articles into a full memoir, “Fun Beyde Zaytn Geto-Moyer” (On Both Sides of the Wall), one of the first published Holocaust testimonies. It was later translated into six languages, including English.

Half a century after the English version appeared, the author’s son, Steven Meed, decided that it was time for an updated translation.

The new “On Both Sides of the Wall: A Resistance Fighter’s Firsthand Account of The Warsaw Ghetto,” was published in February 2026.

Meed, a New York-based retired physician, did the translation, and Holocaust scholars Samuel Kassow, Judy Batalion, and Sara Bloomfield contributed forewords, afterwords, and other supplementary material. There is also an introduction written in 1992 by Elie Wiesel.

“The original book in Yiddish is now more than 75 years old. I felt that a contemporary audience wouldn’t get it — the information, the names, the situation itself. None of those things would automatically ring true for a younger audience. I wanted to create a new book that was the old book, but with added elements that would make it more alive, more relevant to the reader… I........

© The Times of Israel