Ruzka Korczak, Abba Kovner, Vitka Kempner, Jewish partisans in Vilnius on July 14, 1944, the day after Russian troops won the city from the Germans. Photo by Ilya Ehrenburg
“In 1944, a band of Jewish guerrillas emerged from the Baltic forest to join the Russian army in its attack on Vilna, the capital of Lithuania. The band, called the Avengers Dam Yehudi Nakam, was led by Abba Kovner, a charismatic young poet. In the ghetto, Abba had built bombs, sneaking out through the city’s sewer tunnels to sabotage German outposts. Abba’s chief lieutenants were two teenage girls, Vita Kempner and Ruzka Korczak. At seventeen, Vitka and Ruzka were perhaps the most daring partisans in the East, the first to blow up a Nazi train in occupied Europe”. (via flickr/bootsartemis)
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