Abba Kovner
Abba Kovner · Heroes of Israel
Author of the first call to armed Jewish resistance from inside the Holocaust and commander of the Vilna partisan organisation.
14 March 1918, Ashmyany, Russian Empire (now Belarus) — 25 September 1987, Ein HaHoresh, Israel
Vilna (Vilnius) and the Rudniki forest; later Israel
Abba Kovner is recognized among Israeli contributors to Heroes of Israel — Author of the first call to armed Jewish resistance from inside the Holocaust and commander of the Vilna partisan organisation.
Abba Kovner was a youth movement leader in the Vilna Ghetto who, at the start of 1942, co-authored a manifesto warning that the German plan was the total destruction of European Jewry and calling on Jews not to go 'like sheep to the slaughter'. It is regarded as the first such warning issued from inside the Holocaust, and it argued for organised armed resistance. He became commander of the United Partisan Organisation (FPO) in 1943 and, after the ghetto's liquidation, led a partisan unit in the forests near Vilna.
After the war he helped organise the Bricha movement bringing survivors out of Eastern Europe, settled in Israel in 1947, and became a major Hebrew poet, receiving the Israel Prize in 1970.
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Source: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/abba-kovner
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Author of the first call to armed Jewish resistance from inside the Holocaust and commander of the Vilna partisan organisation.
Source: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/abba-kovner
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