Yitzhak Arad was an Israeli historian, author, IDF brigadier general and Soviet partisan. He also served as Yad Vashem's director from 1972 to 1993, and specialised in the history of the Holocaust.
Abba Kovner was a Jewish partisan leader, and later Israeli poet and writer. In the Vilna Ghetto, his manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to murder all Jews. His attempt to organize a ghetto uprising failed. He fled into the forest, joined Soviet partisans, and survived the war. After the war, Kovner led Nakam, a paramilitary organization of Holocaust survivors who sought to take revenge by murdering six million Germans, but Kovner was arrested in British-occupied Germany before he could successfully carry out his plans. He made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1947, which would become the State of Israel one year later. Considered one of the greatest authors of Modern Hebrew poetry, Kovner was awarded the Israel Prize in 1970.
The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.
Anton Schmid was an Austrian Wehrmacht recruit who saved Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania. A devout but apolitical Roman Catholic and an electrician by profession, Schmid was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and later into the Wehrmacht during World War II.
Mother Bertranda, O.P., later known as Anna Borkowska, was a Polish cloistered Dominican nun who served as the prioress of her monastery in Kolonia Wileńska near Wilno. She was a graduate of the University of Kraków who had entered the monastery after her studies. During World War II, under her leadership, the nuns of the monastery sheltered 17 young Jewish activists from Vilnius Ghetto and helped the Jewish Partisan Organization (FPO) by smuggling weapons. In recognition of this, in 1984 she was awarded the title of Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
ŁachwaGhetto was a Nazi ghetto in Łachwa, Poland during World War II. The ghetto was created with the aim of persecution and exploitation of the local Jews. The ghetto existed until September 1942. One of the first Jewish ghetto uprisings had happened there.
Yitzhak Wittenberg was a Jewish resistance fighter in Vilnius during World War II. He was a member of the Communist Party. He was the commander of the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (FPO), a resistance group in the Vilna Ghetto which was preparing an uprising should the final moments of the ghetto come. When the Germans learned about the existence of a Communist, Wittenberg, in the ghetto, they made a request to the head of the Jewish council, Jacob Gens, that Wittenberg should be surrendered to them. Gens betrayed Wittenberg to the police who arrested him, but he was freed by young FPO fighters. Subsequently, Gens insisted that Wittenberg surrender. Feeling he did not have the support of the ghetto for an uprising and fearing a massacre, he surrendered.
Rachel Margolis was a Lithuanian Holocaust survivor, partisan, biologist and Holocaust historian.
Rachel (Sarenka) Zylberberg was an underground activist and participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She held a key role in rousing the rebellion. Zylberberg was a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist-socialist youth movement. After the German invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, she left the capital for Wilno in northeastern part of prewar Poland, then returned to Warsaw together with Chajka (Chaikeh) Grossman and was actively involved in the Jewish resistance.
Rozka or Ruzka Korczak was a Jewish partisan leader during World War II. A Polish Jew, she served in the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye and, alongside Vitka Kempner and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Avengers (Nakam).
Vitka Kempner was a Polish Jewish partisan leader during World War II. She served in the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (FPO) and, alongside Rozka Korczak and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Nakam.
Jacob Gens was the head of the Vilnius Ghetto government. Originally from a merchant family, he joined the Lithuanian Army shortly after the independence of Lithuania, rising to the rank of captain while also securing a college degree in law and economics. He married a non-Jew and worked at several jobs, including as a teacher, accountant, and administrator.
Josef Glazman was a Lithuanian-Jewish resistance leader in the Vilna Ghetto. A member of the Revisionist Zionism movement prior to the German invasion of the Baltic states in 1941, afterward, he took part in the resistance and youth movements in the ghetto. He also worked in the Jewish-run ghetto administration – first in the police, then later in the housing department. Glazman's relationship with the head of the ghetto, Jacob Gens, was difficult and led to Glazman's arrest several times. Eventually, Glazman left the ghetto with a group of followers and formed a partisan unit in the Lithuanian forests. His partisan band was surrounded in October 1943 and Glazman and all but one of the members were killed by the Germans.
"Shtil, di nakht iz oysgeshternt" or "Partizaner lid" is a Yiddish song written in summer 1942 by Hirsh Glick, a young Jewish inmate of the Vilna Ghetto. It is set to a Russian folk melody.
Bruno Kittel was an Austrian Nazi functionary in the German SS and Holocaust perpetrator who oversaw the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto in September 1943. Kittel became known for his cynical cruelty. He disappeared after the war.
Shmaryahu "Shmerke" Kaczerginski was a Yiddish-speaking poet, musician, writer and cultural activist. Born to a poor family in Vilna and orphaned at a young age, Kaczerginski was educated at the local Talmud Torah and night school, where he became involved in communist politics and was regularly beaten or imprisoned.
Iser Lubotzky (Lubocki) was a member of Betar, the Vilna ghetto's underground and a Jewish partisan fighter. He was both a fighting member and a commander of the Irgun, serving as a national recruiting officer and heading the Ramat Gan group. As a lawyer, he served as the head of Herut’s lawcourt and as the Likud's first legal adviser.
Fania Brancowska, née Jocheles, was a teacher, librarian, and statistician. During World War II, she was imprisoned in the Vilna Ghetto, later fighting in the ranks of the Jewish resistance and Soviet partisans. After Lithuania regained independence, she became involved in efforts to commemorate and preserve the legacy of Vilnius Jews.
