The Fighters – Page 2 – Project Gideon Company

Lithuania and Byelorussia

There were 850 Jews in the Lithuanian partisan movement. An additional 450 Jewish Lithuanian fighters in the Belorussian partisan movement and another 350 Lithuanian Jews in other groups brought the total to 1,650 Lithuanian Jews who fought as partisans. Of the 92 partisan battalions, Jews fought in the 22 that had sterling records in battle.

In 1943, Lithuanian Jewish partisans became unified under the direction of the Soviet Lithuanian partisan movement. The partisan movement was their only vehicle to fight actively against the Nazis. In some cases, all-Jewish units were formed within the larger organization of Lithuanian partisans.

Among their many successful missions, Lithuanian Jewish partisans derailed enemy trains, dynamited miles of train tracks, destroyed bridges, factories, water towers, and electrical transformers, and cut hundreds of miles of telephone and telegraph lines. In Vilna, they damaged the power station and sabotaged the water supplies. Other times they secured arms and food supplies.

Ten percent of the Lithuanian partisan population was comprised of Jewish partisans, but the units in which Jews served were responsible for 79% of the train derailments, 72% of the locomotives destroyed, and 22.9 % of the soldiers killed. Sabotage was only one their specialties. In total, 1,650 Jews took part in the resistance movement [as part of the] Lithuanian partisan movement. A total of 250 Jews were killed. Many received medals for their outstanding service.

Sabotage

Then there were the subtle forms of sabotage. The Nazis were focused on the use of slave labor, missing the fact that it would be easy to do hidden damage. From a book by John Diebold, Chief Scientist for Marine Operations in Norway

In 1978 I worked with Norwegian colleagues during a US–Norwegian geophysical study of the Norwegian continental margin. For seismic sources, we used World War II surplus Nazi explosives which were stored in man-made caverns along Norwegian fjords.

It was my personal observation that while the munitions dated 1939–1940 were reliable, those with dates from 1943 and later were typically weak or noneffective. This difference I ascribe either to intentional sabotage by the “Jews and concentration camp inmates” or to the simple substitution of inert materials for active ones by munitions plant managers, presumably due to the conflict between production quotas and availability of nitrates.

Speer was apparently not above “production for production’s sake” with a blind eye to quality control.

Then there was this incident reported by Richard J. Evans.

A German bomb fell through the roof of my wife’s grandmother’s house in the East End of London in 1943 and lodged, unexploded, in her bedroom wardrobe. When the bomb disposal unit opened it up, they found a note inside. “Don’t worry, English,” it said, “we’re with you. Polish workers.”

This is resistance. This is courage.

Hungary: Hannah Senesh

Born in Budapest, Hannah Szenes became a Zionist and immigrated to Palestine in 1939. In 1943 Jewish agency officials asked Szenes to join a clandestine military operation. She became a member of the Palmah and participated in a course for paratroopers.

In March 1944, she was dropped into Yugoslavia to aid anti-Nazi forces. Szenes was captured in June after entering Hungary, and sent to a prison in Budapest, where she was tortured. Since Szenes would not talk, Hungarian authorities arrested her mother. Both women remained silent. Given the chance to beg for a pardon in November 1944, Szenes instead chose death by firing squad.

Poland: Tosia Altman

Tosia Altman grew up in a Jewish Community in Lipno, Poland. She learned Polish and Hebrew and was an active member of the Ha-Shomer ha-Za’ir youth movement. With the outbreak of World War 2, she became a spy for Ha-Shomer ha-Za’ir. A fearless leader in the Jewish clandestine resistance to the Nazi occupation, Altman played an integral role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of April 18, 1943. She was badly injured in a fire in the attic in which she was hiding. Altman died a few months later in the custody of the Germans.

The leadership of Ha-Shomer ha-Za’ir in Vilna was extremely concerned with the fate of the movement’s members who were left behind under German occupation. As a member of the central leadership, and with the appropriate personality and appearance, Altman was instructed to return to the Generalgouvernement (Nazi-occupied Poland). She was the first to return to occupied Poland (followed later by Josef Kaplan, Mordecai Anielewicz and Samuel Braslav).

After two failed attempts to cross both the Soviet and German borders, she finally succeeded. Altman gathered the remaining youth-group leaders and organized the movement’s branches. Even though Jews were prohibited from traveling on trains, Altman began to make the rounds of other cities. In every city she reached, she encouraged the young people to engage in clandestine educational and social activity. Altman corresponded with the leadership in Vienna (Adam Rand), the movement in Palestine and emissaries in Switzerland (Nathan Schwalb and Heine Borenstein). The correspondence was written in code for fear of German censors.

Poland: Eta Wrobel

In early 1940, Eta started working as a clerk in an employment agency. Soon she began resisting the occupation by forging false identity papers for Jews. In October 1942, Eta’s ghetto was ‘liquidated’ and the Jews were exported to concentration camps. During the transition, Eta and her father managed to escape into the woods.

Eta organized an all-Jewish partisan unit of close to eighty people. Her unit stole most of their supplies, slept in cramped quarters, and had almost no access to medical attention. Eta’s unit set mines to hinder German movement and to cut off supply routes.

Russia (Vilna): Haika Grosman

Haika Grossman participated in the “movement” at a gathering in a convent near Vilna, where the group, led by Abba Kovner (1918–1988), decided on armed resistance. Sent to Bialystok to organize the fighting underground, she served as a contact person between Vilna and Bialystok and other ghettos. Her “ammunition” was resourcefulness, arrogance, courage, strong nerves and constant alertness, all of which saved her from virtually hopeless situations. “

Between August 1943 and August 1944, Grosman participated in forming a group of six women in Bialystok, called “the anti-fascist committee.” The aim of their hazardous activity was the ongoing maintenance of contact with the Soviet partisan brigade in the forest. They led Jews to them, established relations with anti-fascist Germans in the towns, and used their help to acquire ammunition for the underground and the partisans. With the surrender of the German troops, Grosman and her friends marched in the front line, side by side with the Soviet Brigade fighters that entered the city in August 1944.