# data[].attributes.body
Thanks to Abba thousands of people were able to escape the Nazis and start a new life.Many people died on his  journey but alltimatly he was able to escape and on the way help people. Without him ultimately thousands of more people would have been slaughtered by the cruel Nazis.

# data[].attributes.body
After Abba escaped and survived the war with many other people, he settled down and pursued his dream of becoming a poet.He also got married to Vitka Kempner.He lived a happy life and died ate the young age of 69 years old.

# data[].attributes.body
Abba Kovner was able to inspire many,not all,but many Jews that were being oppressed by the Nazies.He brought them together to fight for their freedom and eventually they escaped through the sewers and many of them  made their way west to start new lives and leave their past behind them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Skillet - "The Resistance" [Official Lyric Video]

# data[].attributes.body
Before Abba rose as the leader of FOP, the previous leader had been the target of the German troops because of his campaign and acts of resistance.He had been arrested once but his arrest made many Jews angry and so many of them came together to free him.When he was free he hid because he knew the Germans would be looking for him.Soon he gave himself up to the Germans because if he didn't the innocent Jews would have to pay the price. When he gave himself up and turned himself in to the Germans his last act as president of the FPO was to make Abba Kovner the new president of the FPO.

# data[].attributes.body
The FPO 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. the FPO would be lead by a "staff command" made up of Kovner, Josef Glazman, and Yitzhak Wittenberg, with the "chief commander" being Wittenberg. Later, two more members were added to staff command - Abraham Chwojnik of the Bund and Nissan Reznik of the Ha-No'ar ha-Ziyyoni - making the leadership of the FPO to five.The FOP had a goal to create a way for the self-defense of the ghetto population, to sabotage German military activities and to join the partisan and Red Army’s fight against the Nazis.Even though the goal of the FPO(Fareinikte Partisaner Organizatzie )was to help the ghetto community have a fighting chance against the Germans not all Ghetto Jews were in favor of the resistance movement.

# data[].attributes.body
"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!"

# data[].attributes.body
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/abba-kovner

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Jewish youth! Do not trust those who are trying to deceive you. Hitler plans to destroy all the Jews of Europe...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!"

With these words on December 31, 1941, Abba Kovner galvanized the divided factions of the Vilna ghetto resistance to join together and fight back against their would-be murderers. Three weeks later, the FPO (United Partisan Organization) was born.

Kovner would go on to command the FPO, lead the famed "Avengers" partisan unit, help found the State of Israel-becoming one of its most honored poets-and reputedly continue to hunt Nazis after the war.

Born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Russia, Kovner spent his high school years in Vilna, Lithuania-the 'Jerusalem of Europe'-where he joined the Ha-Shomer ha-Za'ir youth movement. Hearing rumors of killings and mass graves in nearby Ponar, Kovner and his youth group friends self-organized as partisans. They snuck out of the ghetto to execute sabotage missions, manufactured bombs, trained fighters, and acquired weapons which were smuggled into the ghetto in false-bottomed coffins or through the sewers.

The FPO continually pleaded with the Jews of Vilna to join the partisans in a popular uprising. Realizing Vilna's Jews would not rise up before the final destruction of the ghetto, Kovner sent the majority of the partisans (about 300) into the forest. Those who stayed, including Kovner, took up positions in abandoned buildings and briefly fought the Germans before escaping the destruction.

Kovner led the remaining partisans to the Rudnicki Forest where the "Avengers" earned a distinguished record, destroying over 180 miles of train tracks, 5 bridges, 40 enemy train cars, killing 212 enemy soldiers and rescuing at least 71 Jews. Kovner was convinced that Jews could gain self-respect through fighting, and that Jews must fight as Jews. He refused to be absorbed into Lithuanian or Russian partisan groups.

Kovner and the partisans returned to Vilna with the Red Army on July 7, 1944, recapturing the city from the Germans on July 13, 1944.

Following the war, Abba Kovner helped surviving Jews reach mandate Palestine. He also formed a new organization with 50 other partisans, reportedly attempting to poison thousands of Nazi and SS prisoners in a Nuremberg POW camp. Accounts differ as to how many Germans were injured or killed. Soon after, he and fellow Vilna partisan Vitka Kempner were married and smuggled into mandate Palestine.

In 1961, Kovner testified at the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Kovner continued to inspire people with his writing, and won the "Israel Prize" in literature for his poetry in 1970. Abba Kovner died in 1987.

Primary resources by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. © 2018 Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. All Rights Reserved. For more information, go to www.jewishpartisans.org.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Abba Kovner.

# data[].attributes.body
pied Vilna, they conducted their first Action.5,000 Jewish men of Vilna were taken away to Ponary.The Germans found these pre-dug "pits",and they saw it as a convenient place to dispose of bodies of not only these Jews but also the thousands of others they would bring there under the pretense of being sent to labor camps, when they were really sent to Ponary to be murdered.SS created two ghettos in Vilna, called  Ghetto No. 1 and Ghetto No. 2. The following day they went through the city and  forced the remaining Jews of Vilna into the newly created ghettos. 30,000 Jews were forced into Ghetto No. 1 and between 9,000 and 11,000 Jews into Ghetto No. 2. watching through a window, he saw a woman dragged by the hair by two soldiers, he later told his comrades what he saw:"A woman who was holding something in her arms. One of them directed a beam of light into her face, the other one dragged her by her hair and threw her on the pavement.   Then the infant fell out of her arms. One of the two, the one with the flashlight, I believe, took the infant, raised him into the air, grabbed him by the leg.The woman crawled on the earth, took hold of his boot and pleaded for mercy. But the soldier took the boy and hit him with his head against the wall, once, twice, smashed him against the wall!".This just goes to show the cruelty that the Jews faced and how heartless the Germans were to the Jews.

# data[].attributes.body
born in 1918 in Sebastopol, Crimea, on the shores of the Black Sea. Abba lived the average life of a young Jew back then. He was raised in Vilna, the preeminent center of Jewish learning since the seventeenth century and was exposed to every variety of Jewish thought and  the teachings of traditional and modem persuasions.He became a student of the University of Vilna,learning how sculpt and learn to develop his passion for poetry.Like other boys at His age Abba became interested in the Zionist movement and joined a local youth group, the "Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'r". However Abbas' destiny would be anything from typical, and the Nazi war machine would make sure that was to be the case.