The year 2022 in Łódź is dedicated to Alina Margolis-Edelman – the doctor and social activist, wife of Marek Edelman (also a doctor and political activist). The decision was made by the local City Council on the initiative of the Marek Edelman’s Center of Dialogue. The program of the Year of Alina Margolis-Edelman includes lectures, meetings, walks and exhibitions.
The Dialogue Center is organizing a mobile biographical and educational exhibition that could be shown in schools all over Poland, the planting of Alina Margolis-Edelman’s tree in the Survivors’ Park, as well as screenings of the films “Ala from the primer” and “Alina Margolis – the doctor of the world”. The organizers are planning also lectures, meetings with the family and friends of the patron of the year, as well as with people who also bring help and encouragement to those in need of support.
Addressed to children from 5 to 10 years old and their guardians, an interactive exhibition “The Primer of Empathy” will be opened at the Dialogue Center on the 100th anniversary of the patron’s birthday -on April 18.
Marek Edelman’s wife, Alina Margolis was a distinguished doctor, paediatrician and social activist. She was born in Łódź on April 18, 1922, in a family of socially committed doctors. As a child, she appeared on the pages of Marian Falski’s Primer; her parents were friends with the author. She was the protagonist of the famous phrase “Ala has As”, which is why she titled her memoirs published in the 1990s “Ala from the primer”.
During World War II, she participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She also took part in the Warsaw Uprising as a nurse. After the war, she became a paediatrician. She took care of children suffering from diabetes, founded a clinic for children with kidney diseases and a centre for treating children with diabetes in Rabka.
After March 68, Alina Margolis left for France where she worked for the organization Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World. Alina worked on hospital ships catching refugees from communist Vietnam at sea and helped the sick in El Salvador, Chad and Afghanistan. During the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she co-created a rape victim support centre.
In the 1980s, she was a co-founder of the French-Polish association SOS Aide aux Malades Polonais (Aid to the Sick in Poland). During martial law, Alina Margolis organized medicines and help people in need.
In 1991, she founded the Nobody’s Children Foundation (now “We give children strength”), aiming to ensure a safe childhood for the youngest, respect for their dignity and respect for their rights. Alina Margolis-Edelman died on March 23, 2008, in Paris and was buried there.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński