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 approximat ...

that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies
United Partisan Organization, Vilna.
/ref> The clandestine organisation was established by Communist and

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

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 and Yitzhak Wittenberg.

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, 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 Bundists. It was headed by Yitzhak Wittenberg, Josef Glazman, 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 The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

’s fight against the Nazis. Abe (Abba) Kovner, the movement's leader, along with 17 members of the local Zionist group Hashomer Hatzair, stationed at a Polish Catholic

convent A convent is a community of monks, nuns, religious brothers or, sisters or priests. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The word is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglic ...

for an order of

Dominican Sisters The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of Cal ...

, sheltered from the Nazis by Mother Superior Anna Borkowska (Sister Bertranda), The Righteous among the Nations: Anna Borkowska.
''

'' 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 A ''Judenrat'' (, "Jewish council") was a World War II administrative agency imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish communities across occupied Europe, principally within the Nazi ghettos. The Germans required Jews to form a ''Judenrat'' in every c ...

, one of the widely used administrative agencies imposed by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, in response to German threats, gave Wittenberg over to the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

. 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 A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...

. 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. Jacob Gens 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 Soviet partisans were members of resistance movements that fought a guerrilla war against Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Soviet-occupied territories of interwar Poland in 1941–45 and eastern Finland. The ...

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

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