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Abba Kovner, born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Crimea, on the shores of the Black Sea, was raised in Vilna, Abba became interested in the Zionist movement and joined a local youth group, the "Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'r."

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When the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union, the Germans occupide Vilna. Vilna was separated into two ghettos, No.1 and No.2. About 30,000 Jews were forced into Ghetto No. 1 and between 9,000 and 11,000 Jews into Ghetto No. 2. However, Kovner and sixteen other members of the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir chose not to be locked away in the ghetto and fled the city. Hiding out in a convent of Dominican nuns a few miles outside of Vilna, they watched as the Nazis conducted one series of actions, after another. Several thousand Jews fled eastward with the Soviet army, but the rapid German advance traps the majority of the Jews in Vilna. and almost 60,000 Jews remain in the city at the time of the German occupation.

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Shortly thereafter the United Partisan Organization-Fareinikte Partisaner Organizatzie - F.P.O.- was formed on January 21, 1942 in the Vilna Ghetto. It took for its motto "We will not go like sheep to the slaughter," from the speech given by Abba Kovner.

During the summer and fall of 1943, Kovner and his resistance fighters carry out acts of sabotage against German military trains and equipment transports, and even set up an illegal printing press outside of the ghetto.

One of their key goals was to establish ties to the Soviet resistance in the city and the forests. Kovner also sent emissaries to the Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos to warn the inhabitants about the mass killings of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union and to incite resistance.

On September 1, 1943 German forces began the final destruction of the Vilna ghetto. Kovner and the FPO made a concerted effort to try and persuade the ghetto residents not to gather for the deportation because they were in actuality being sent to their deaths.

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Kovner and hundreds of the ghetto fighters escaped through the city’s sewers and other outlets to the Rudniky forests where they joined Soviet partisans in many combat missions. There Kovner and his followers operated a partisan division comprised solely of Jews, and performed many heroic acts of sabotage.

The division played a key role in destroying power installations, water infrastructures and supply depots. They blew up German transport trains and even rescued groups of prisoners from the Kalais labor camp.

Ultimately, the F.P.O became a hated group within the ghetto. Their leader, Yitzhak Wittenberg, was arrested by ghetto police. He fled when he was released by pressure of the Jewish community and soon went into hiding within the Vilna Ghetto. At the end, he made the decision to submit to the Nazi demands and turn himself in. However before submitting himself to torture and death at the hands of the Gestapo, as his final act as leader of the FPO, he appointed Abba Kovner his successor.

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Kovner and hundreds of the ghetto fighters escaped through the city’s sewers and other outlets to the Rudniky forests where they joined Soviet partisans in many combat missions. After the war, Kovner helped organize the Beriha movement, in which hundreds of thousands of survivors made their way west in order to reach Palestine.

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Jewish youth! Do not trust those who are trying to deceive you. Out of the eighty thousand Jews in the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" only twenty thousand are left. . . .

Ponary is not a concentration camp. They have all been shot there. Hitler plans to destroy all the Jews of Europe, and the Jews of Lithuania have been chosen as the first in line.

We will not be led like sheep to the slaughter! True, we are weak and defenseless, but the only reply to the murderer is revolt! Brothers! Better to fall as  free fighters than to live by the mercy of the murderers. Arise! Arise with your last breath!"

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Abba Kovner | Historical Figures of the Holocaust | Yad Vashem

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Commemorating Jewish Heroism In Their Own Words: Abba Kovner

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Abba Kovner — Hero and Witness, August 1, 2021

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One of Abba's poems from his time in captivity

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One of Abba's poems from his time in captivity

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Abba Kovner at the 1961  trial of Adolf Eichmann

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Abba Kovner at the 1961  trial of Adolf Eichmann

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Eichmann was part of a German force (a high ranking general) that organized the deportation of 1.5 million Jews to ghettos, killing centers, and German-occupied land in Poland. After the war, Eichmann flew to Argentina where he lived under the false name Ricardo Klement. He was soon joined by his family. Tipped off by German justice official Fritz Bauer concerning Eichmann’s whereabouts, Israeli officials initiated a plan for his capture. Because Argentina had a history of denying extradition requests, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made the decision to secretly capture him. On May 20, 1960, officers from the Israeli foreign intelligence service (Mossad) seized Eichmann outside his residence at 14 Garibaldi Street and took him to Israel. The legal basis for the charges against Eichmann was the 1950 Nazi and Nazi Collaborators’ Punishment Law. This law allowed Israeli courts to punish Nazi perpetrators for crimes against Jews during World War II. On December 11–12, 1961, Eichmann was convicted of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and membership in a criminal organization. He was sentenced to death on December 15. Kovner provided his sightings in the War, yet was never in contact with Eichmann himself. Kovner also authored several books after the Holocaust, for which he won the 1970 Israel Prize in Literature. He later died at age 69 in 1987.