( CNN ) -- Leading figures from Poland to the United States have been paying tribute to Marek Edelman , the anti-Nazi resistance fighter and Solidarity movement supporter who died Friday . Marek Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in World War II . Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising , `` the largest , symbolically most important Jewish uprising '' against the Nazis during World War II , according to the U.S . Holocaust Memorial Museum . Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk both issued statements mourning Edelman . Tusk called him an `` exceptional man , '' saying `` his bravery was a testament to the courage of the fighters of the Jewish Fighting Organization , '' as the largest Jewish resistance movement in the ghetto was known . The prime minister also praised him for standing up against the Polish Communist government 's anti-Semitic campaign of 1968 , and hailed him as an example for free , democratic Poland . The U.S. State Department saluted `` his life dedicated to the defense of human dignity and freedom . The United States stands with Poland as it mourns the loss of a great man . '' Edelman is thought to have been the last surviving commander of the uprising , in which Jews fought Nazi efforts to send them to concentration camps . Armed with pistols , some rifles and automatic weapons , and hand-made grenades , the resistance fighters attacked the Germans and their allies when they tried to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943 . The Nazis had planned to round up all the ghetto 's Jews in three days , but in the end it took them more than a month -- longer than some countries held out against Hitler 's armies . The Nazis reduced the ghetto to rubble in the process of flushing resistance fighters out of their bunkers . Edelman was in one of the last groups to hold out in the headquarters of the Jewish Fighting Organization at 18 Mila Street . In the final days of the uprising he was able to sneak out of the ghetto by way of the city 's sewers , he wrote after the war . He went on to fight in the Warsaw Polish Uprising , a two-month battle against the Nazis in 1944 , undertaken primarily by non-Jewish Poles . After the war , Edelman became a cardiologist . In the late 1940s , he published a short history of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Polish , Yiddish , and English , called `` The Ghetto Fights . '' In it , he described the creation of the ghetto by the Nazis . `` In November 1940 , the Germans finally established the Warsaw Ghetto . The Jewish population still living outside the 'Seuchensperrgebiet ' ( 'Quarantined Zone ' ) was brought inside the special area . Poles living within the designated ghetto boundaries were ordered to move out , '' he wrote . `` Beginning with November 15 , no Jew was allowed to leave the Jewish precincts . All houses vacated by Jews were immediately locked by the Germans and then , with all their contents , gratuitously given to Polish merchants and hucksters ... . The walls and barbed wire surrounding the ghetto grew higher every day until , on November 15 , they completely cut off the Jews from the outside world . '' Hunger and disease were rife in the ghetto , he wrote . `` People began to die of hunger in the streets . Every morning , about 4-5 a.m. , funeral carts collected a dozen or more corpses on the streets that had been covered with a sheet of paper and weighted down with a few rocks . Some simply fell in the streets and remained there , '' Edelman remembered . Jews organized a local government and Socialist unions , but conditions became progressively worse in the ghetto , with the Nazis summarily executing people . Nazis then began deporting Jews to concentration camps -- sometimes with the help of Jewish collaborators in the ghetto -- Edelman wrote . By that time , many in the ghetto knew the Nazis were systematically murdering Jews in the camps , he recalled . He describes in detail the spring 1943 uprising , a street-by-street battle that ended with the ghetto in ruins . Edelman 's history finishes simply , listing the handful of survivors of the hundreds who fought back . `` Those who had gone over to the 'Aryan side ' continued the partisan fight in the woods . The majority perished eventually . The small group that was still alive at the time took an active part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising as the 'ZOB Group . ' At present the following of our comrades are still among the living : Chajka Betchatowska , B. Szpigel , Chana Krysztal , Masza Glejtman , and Marek Edelman . '' During the early 1980s Edelman was active with Solidarity , the Polish trade union movement that opposed the Communist government . French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner awarded him the Legion of Honor in 2008 , on a visit to Poland marking the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . Edelman was born in 1921 , according to Yad Vashem , Israel 's Holocaust museum . He was buried in Warsaw 's Jewish cemetery on Friday , the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported .
Marek Edelman was hundreds of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . Both Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Marek Edelman pay tribute . Edelman is thought to have been the last surviving commander of the uprising . During two-month Polish was active with Polish trade union movement , Edelman .