The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye ( yi, ; "United Partisan Organization"; referred to as FPO by its Yiddish initials) was a Jewish resistance organization based in the

Vilna Ghetto 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. During the approximatel ...

that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during World War II. Yad Vashem Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies
United Partisan Organization, Vilna.
/ref> The clandestine organisation was established by

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

and Zionist partisans. Their leaders were writer

Abba Kovner Abba Kovner ( he, אבא קובנר; 14 March 1918 – 25 September 1987) was a Polish Israeli poet, writer and partisan leader. In the Vilna Ghetto, his manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to ...

Josef Glazman Josef Glazman (1913 – 7 October 1943Yad Vashem staff "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 194 ...

and

Yitzhak Wittenberg Yitzhak Wittenberg ( yi, איציק װיטנבערג, he, יצחק ויטנברג; 1907 – 16 July 1943) 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 Fareynikt ...

Establishment of the FPO

The FPO was formed on January 21, 1942, in the Vilna Ghetto. It took on the motto: ''"We will not allow them to take us

like sheep to the slaughter "Like sheep to the slaughter" ( he, כצאן לטבח) is a phrase which refers to the idea that Jews went passively to their deaths during the Holocaust. It derives from a similar phrase in the Hebrew Bible which positively depicts martyrdom in ...

."'' This was the first Jewish resistance organization that was established in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, followed by Łachwa underground formed in August 1942. Unlike in other ghettos – where the underground resistance was coordinated to some extent with the officials of the local Jewish establishment – Vilna's

Jacob Gens Jacob Gens (1 April 1903 – 14 September 1943) 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 ...

, head of the ghetto, cooperated with German officials in stopping armed resistance. The FPO brought together Socialist Zionists, right-wing Revisionist Zionists, Communists/Marxists and

Bundist Bundism was a secular Jewish socialist movement whose organizational manifestation was the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia ( yi, אַלגעמײַנער ײדישער אַרבעטער בּונד אין ליטע פויל ...

s. It was headed by

, and

. The goals of the FPO were to establish self-defense in the ghetto, to sabotage German industrial and military activities and to join the partisan and Red Army’s fight against the Nazis. Abe (Abba) Kovner, the movement's leader, along with 17 members of the local Zionist group

Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair ( he, הַשׁוֹמֵר הַצָעִיר, , ''The Young Guard'') is a Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, and it was also the name of the group ...

, stationed at a Polish Catholic convent for an order of Dominican Sisters, sheltered from the Nazis by Mother Superior

Anna Borkowska (Sister Bertranda) Mother Bertranda, O.P. (''née'' Janina Siestrzewitowska; 1900–1988), later known as Anna Borkowska, was a Polish cloistered Dominican nun who served as the prioress of her monastery in Kolonia Wileńska near Wilno (now Pavilnys near Vilnius, ...

, The Righteous among the Nations: Anna Borkowska.
'' Yad Vashem'' who was the first to supply hand grenades and other weapons to the Vilnius ghetto underground.

Crushing of the revolt

The FPO did not succeed in its mission. In early 1943, the Germans caught a resistance member in the forest. The Judenrat, one of the widely used administrative agencies imposed by Nazi Germany, in response to German threats, gave Wittenberg over to the Gestapo. The ''Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye'' organized an uprising. The FPO was able to rescue Wittenberg through an armed struggle and were then able to set up a small militia. The Judenrat did not tolerate this, because the Nazis gave them an ultimatum to end the resistance or face extermination. The Judenrat knew that Jews were smuggling weapons into the ghetto and when a Jew was arrested for the purchase of a revolver, they finally gave the FPO an order to withdraw. The Judenrat turned the people against the resistance members by making them seem like selfish enemies who were provoking the Nazis.

emphasized the people's responsibility for one another. He said that resistance was sacrificing the good of the community. In the end, the people confronted the resistance and demanded their own right to live. The resistance would not fire on the other Jews and they were eventually disarmed and arrested on September 1, 1943.Undigested Past: The Holocaust in Lithuania
Rodopi, Robert van Voren, pages 102–104 When the Nazis came to liquidate the ghetto in 1943, the members of the FPO again congregated. Gens took control of the liquidation so as to rid the ghetto of the Germans, but helped fill the quota of Jews with those who would fight but were not necessarily part of the resistance. The FPO fled to the forest, where most were able to reach Soviet partisan units. FPO members participated in the liberation of Vilna by the Soviet army in July 1944.

References

External links

The Underground Movements in Vilna
fro
The Jerusalem of Lithuania: The Story of the Jewish Community of Vilna
an online exhibition by Yad Vashem
Chronicles of the Vilna Ghetto: wartime photographs & documents – vilnaghetto.comAbout the Holocaust

Partisan Rachel Rudnitzky After LiberationPartisans of Vilna
* ttp://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/vilna/vilna_pages/vilna_partisans.html Vilna Partisansbr>Documentary film project on the former FPO partisan Fania Brancovskaya
{{Authority control Anti-Zionism in Lithuania Jewish partisans Poland in World War II Jewish Lithuanian history Jewish Polish history Jewish resistance during the Holocaust History of Vilnius Lithuanian Resistance in World War II The Holocaust in Lithuania Military units and formations of Poland in World War II Generalbezirk Litauen Vilna Ghetto Yiddish culture in Lithuania Zionism in Lithuania

Establishment of the FPO

Crushing of the revolt

See also

References

Further reading

External links