Yitzhak Zuckerman ( pl, Icchak Cukierman; he, יצחק צוקרמן; 13 December 1915 – 17 June 1981), also known by his nom de guerre "Antek", was one of the leaders of the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany' ...

in 1943 against

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 ...

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 ...

Biography

Zuckerman was born in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

, partitioned Poland (then part of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

, now the capital of Lithuania) into a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family. As a young man he embraced the concepts of

socialism Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...

and

Zionism 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 ...

. After the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 he was in the area overrun by the

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 ...

and initially stayed in the Soviet zone of occupation, where he took an active part in the creation of various Jewish underground socialist organisations. In the spring of 1940 he moved to

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

, where he became one of the leaders of the Dror Hechaluc youth movement, along with his future wife

Zivia Lubetkin Zivia Lubetkin ( pl, Cywia Lubetkin, , he, צביה לובטקין, nom de guerre: Celina; 9 November 1914 – 11 July 1978) was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and the only woman on the High Command of the ...

. Zuckerman was issued a false passport by the Ładoś Group. In 1941 he became the deputy commander of the ŻOB resistance organisation. In this capacity, he served mainly as the envoy between the commander of ŻOB and the commanders of the Polish resistance organizations of Armia Krajowa and

Armia Ludowa People's Army ( Polish: ''Armia Ludowa'' , abbriv.: AL) was a communist Soviet-backed partisan force set up by the communist Polish Workers' Party ('PR) during World War II. It was created on the order of the Polish State National Council on 1 ...

. On 22 December 1942 he and two accomplices attacked a café in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

that was being used by the SS and

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 ...

. Zuckerman was wounded and narrowly escaped, and his two comrades were tracked down and killed. In 1943, he was working on the " Aryan" side of

to procure guns and ammunition when the

erupted. Unable to enter the ghetto to join his comrades in battle, he nonetheless proved a crucial link between resistance forces within the ghetto and the

Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) est ...

on the " Aryan" side. Along with Simcha "Kazik" Rotem, he organized the escape of the surviving ZOB fighters through the sewers to safety. During the later

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led ...

of 1944, he led a small troop of 322 survivors of the Ghetto Uprising as they fought the Germans in the ranks of the

. After the war he worked as part of the ''

Bricha Bricha ( he, בריחה, translit. ''Briẖa'', "escape" or "flight"), also called the Bericha Movement, was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors escape post– World War II Europe to the British Mandate ...

'' network, whose operatives smuggled Jewish refugees out of Eastern and Central Europe to

Mandate Palestine Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 i ...

. In 1947 he himself made that journey, settling in what would soon be

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

. There he and his wife Zivia, along with other veterans of the ghetto undergrounds and former partisans, were among the founding members of Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot and the Ghetto Fighters' House (GFH) museum located on its grounds, commemorating those who struggled against the Nazis. GFH has a study center named for Zivia and Yitzhak Zuckerman. Zuckerman and Lubetkin settled in Lohamei HaGeta'ot and had two children, Shimon (b. 1947) and Yael (b. 1949). In 1961 he appeared as a witness at the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Israel. He died in 1981, in the kibbutz he had founded. A record of a lengthy interview he gave in 1976 was expanded into the book ''Sheva ha-Shanim ha-Hen: 1939-1946'' ebrew: Those Seven Yearspublished in Israel in 1991, later translated into English and published as ''A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising''. His granddaughter Roni Zuckerman became

Israeli Air Force The Israeli Air Force (IAF; he, זְרוֹעַ הָאֲוִיר וְהֶחָלָל, Zroa HaAvir VeHahalal, tl, "Air and Space Arm", commonly known as , ''Kheil HaAvir'', "Air Corps") operates as the aerial warfare branch of the Israel Defens ...

's first female fighter pilot. In 2001, the tale of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was turned into a made-for-TV film entitled ''

Uprising Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the open resistance against the orders of an established authority. A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation and ...

'', with actor

David Schwimmer David Lawrence Schwimmer (born November 2, 1966) is an American actor, director and producer. He gained worldwide recognition for portraying Ross Geller in the sitcom ''Friends'', for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Primeti ...

portraying Zuckerman.

References

Bibliography

* Nir Itzik, "The Testimonies of Yitzhak (Antek) Zuckerman from Wartime to Those Seven Years: A Reassessment", Moreshet Journal for the Study of the Holocaust and Antisemitism, vol. 16/2019, pp. 135–183. * Yitzhak Zuckerman, ''A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising''; translated and edited by Barbara Harshav. Berkeley:

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...

, 1993. * Yitzhak Zuckerman, 'A life in the ghetto'; translated and edited by Barbara Harshav.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zuckerman, Yitzhak 1915 births 1981 deaths 20th-century Israeli Jews Jewish Combat Organization members Jewish Polish politicians Jewish resistance members during the Holocaust Jewish socialists Kibbutzniks Ładoś List Labor Zionists Polish emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Polish Zionists Politicians from Vilnius Warsaw Ghetto inmates Warsaw Ghetto Uprising insurgents Warsaw Uprising insurgents

Biography

See also

References

Bibliography

External links