Abba Kovner was a Polish-born 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, but 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 genocidal revenge by murdering six million German people, but Kovner was arrested in the British zone of Occupied Germany before he could successfully carry out his plans. He made aliyah to the State of Israel in 1947. Considered one of the greatest authors of Modern Hebrew poetry, Kovner was awarded the Israel Prize in 1970.
Abraham Sutzkever was an acclaimed Yiddish poet. The New York Times wrote that Sutzkever was "the greatest poet of the Holocaust."
Zelig Hirsch Kalmanovich (1885–1944) was a Litvak Jewish philologist, translator, historian, and community archivist of the early 20th century. He was a renowned scholar of Yiddish. In 1929 he settled in Vilnius where he became an early director of YIVO.
The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye was a Jewish resistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during World War II. The clandestine organisation was established by Communist and Zionist partisans. Their leaders were writer Abba Kovner, Josef Glazman and Yitzhak Wittenberg.
Songs of the Vilna Ghetto is a compilation LP record featuring twelve Yiddish songs from World War II era. The songs were composed by the inmates of the Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust and are sung by Nechama Hendel, Chava Alberstein, and Shimon Israeli with accompaniment from the CBS Israel Orchestra and Choir, conducted by Gil Aldema. The album contains an 8-page booklet with lyrics in the Yiddish language, photographs from the ghetto, and historical information about the songs in English. According to the liner notes, the recording "was prepared by the Yitzhak Kalznelson House of the Ghetto Fighters, at Kibbutz Lochamei Hagetaot, Israel, in co-operation with the Vilna Organisation [sic] of Haifa."
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.
HKP 562 was the site of a Nazi forced labor camp for Jews in Vilnius, Lithuania, during the Holocaust. It was centered around 47 & 49 Subačiaus Street, in apartment buildings originally built to house poor members of the Jewish community. The camp was used by the German army as a slave labor camp from September 1943 until July 1944.
Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.
"Zog nit keyn mol" sometimes "Zog nit keynmol" or "Partizaner lid" [Partisan Song]) is a Yiddish song considered one of the chief anthems of Holocaust survivors and is sung in memorial services around the world.
Hirsch Glick was a Jewish poet and partisan.
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.
Mendel Balberyszski was a Lithuanian Jew, Polish politician and survivor of the Holocaust in Lithuania. He is chiefly known today as the biographer of the destruction of the Vilna Ghetto in his book Stronger Than Iron – The Destruction of Vilna Jewry 1941-1945: An Eyewitness Account. It is the account of life and organization in the Small Ghetto from its day of formation until its liquidation, it is also the only complete historical record of the fate of the Jewish population of Vilna from the day of the arrival of the Germans, through the two Ghettos, the concentration camps in Estonia until the liberation of the surviving 84 Jews by the Soviet Army.
Rachel Margolis was a Holocaust survivor, partisan, biologist and Holocaust historian.
Rozka or Ruzka Korczak was a Polish partisan leader during World War II. A Polish Jew, she served in the United Partisan Organization and, alongside Vitka Kempner and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Avengers (Nokmim)--the only known undefeated ghetto uprising in the history of the Holocaust.
Vitka Kempner was a Polish Jewish partisan leader during World War II. She served in the United Partisan Organization and, alongside Rozka Korczak and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Avengers (Nokmim).
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, afterwards he took part in 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.
Partizaner lid might refer to two Yiddish songs by Hirsh Glick:
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.
Rikle (Ruth) Glezer was a World War II partisan who composed popular songs about The Holocaust during the war.
