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Vitka Kempner (14 March 1920 2012) was a Polish Jewish partisan and member of the national Zionist movement HaShomer HaTza'ir (The Young Guard). She was a Jewish partisan leader during World War II, participating in the active resistance and sabotage of German Nazi forces. After fleeing Poland following Germany's invasion in 1939, she went to Vilna, Lithuania. Here, she served in the United Partisan Organization (Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO) and, alongside Rozka Korczak and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Avengers (Nokmim) — one of the most effective partisan groups in the history of the Holocaust.

Following the German occupation of Vilna in 1941, all Jews were relegated to a ghetto where the FPO would engage in resistance activities until the destruction of the ghetto in 1943. After an unsuccessful revolt in the ghetto, Kempner and other FPO members would escape to the Rudnicki forest, joining a partisan base hiding there, and forming a Jewish partisan camp. It was here where Kovner would form the Avengers. Kempner would serve as one of Kovner’s chief lieutenants. The partisans continued to interfere with German war efforts until Soviet forces arrived in the summer of 1944. The partisans and the Soviet Army would join forces, liberating Vilna in July, 1944.

After the end of the war, The Young Guard would help Jewish refugees relocate to Palestine by helping to organize the Bricha (Escape) movement. During this time, the Avengers continued to seek revenge on German Nazis in American-controlled POW camps, including poisoning the bread supply at Stalag 13 in Nuremburg.

In 1946, Kempner arrived in Palestine, joining Kovner and Korczak in the Ein HaHoresh kibbutz (collective community) where Kempner and Kovner would marry later that year. In 1948, during the War of Independence (15 May 1948 – 20 July 1949), Kempner would give birth to a son, Michael Kovner (27 May 1948), and in 1956, she would give birth to a daughter, Shlomit Kovner.

In 1965, Kempner returned to school, studying clinical psychology and psychiatry at Bar Ilan University in Israel. She would go on to invent a new form of art therapy called Non-Verbal Therapy by Color. After Kovner’s death in 1987 and Korczak’s in 1988. Kempner would continue to work with children in the kibbutz. She died in February of 2012 at the age of 92.

Early Life

File:Semel Vectores.svg

The symbol of HaShomer HaTza'ir.

Vitka Kempner was born on 14 March 1920 in Kalisz, Poland. Her parents were Hayyah and Zevi Kempner, tailors who owned their own business in Kalisz. She had a younger brother, Baruch Kempner, who was born in 1923. The Kempner family, along with one third of Kalisz's citizens, was Jewish. However, they were liberal Jews and did not show rigid conformity to the customs and practices of traditional Judaism. They preferred to speak Polish instead of Yiddish, the customary Jewish language, in their home.

Kempner was self-sufficient growing up, holding a job from a young age. She went to a progressive Jewish school and would join the Betar youth Zionist movement, a militaristic, right-leaning group who championed holy violence. Betar advocated for the founding of a Jewish nation in Palestine, an egalitarian society, self-defense based military training, and a non-socialist form of Zionism. In 12^th grade, Kempner, under pressure from her friends, left Betar and joined HaShomer HaTza’ir (The Young Guard), a national Zionist youth movement. A left-wing organization, The Young Guard stood in contrast to Betar. The Young Guard stressed the ideas of hard work, gender equality, sharing possessions, and emphasized using violence only in defense of one’s family or oneself. This group also focused on preparing young Jews for life in Palestine. Following her completion of secondary education, Kempner would go to Warsaw, Poland where she pursued Jewish studies in a seminary. Here, she became a member of the Young Guard student movement, Avukah. Kempner would eventually return to Kalisz, where she would be when Germany marched into Poland.

World War Two

German Invasion

On 23 August, 1939, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression agreement that divided territory in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Romania between Germany and the Soviet Union. As a result, Germany began their occupation of Poland on 1 September 1939. After arriving in Kalisz, the Germans declared the town was to become Jew-free. This prompted Kempner to take Baruch and flee Kalisz. The two would go to their grandparent’s home in Lodz, Poland, where Kempner would leave Baruch before continuing on to Vilna, Lithuania. Vilna was a free city according to the Soviet-Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty, signed on 10 October 1939. Vilna was known to Jews as the Jerusalem of Lithuania and served as a stopping point for Jews hoping to get to Palestine. 15,000 Jewish refugees from around Europe flooded the city in 1939. By the end of that year, over 200,000 people lived in Vilna, about 1/3 of them Jews. The Jewish refugees comprised multiple Zionist sects including the Young Guard, Communists, Bundists, Orthodox, and “assimilated Jews” who identified more strongly with their nationality than their religion.

In Vilna, Kempner met Ruzka Korczak, also a Young Guard member and polish refugee from Plosk. The two quickly became friends and worked together at a hairbrush factory in Vilna. On 15 June 1940, Russian forces entered Vilna and outlawed the Zionist groups, calling them a threat to Soviet power. Stalin would no longer accept Vilna as a free territory. He declared Russian citizenship a requirement for living in Vilna and ordered all Vilna residents to apply for Russian citizenship status. As a result, Zionists were forced to choose between becoming Russian citizens and forfeiting their eligibility for papers that would allow them to immigrate to Palestine or rejecting Russian citizenship and risk being arrested. The majority of Zionists ultimately did not accept Russian citizenship and went into hiding. Kempner would also reject Stalin’s order and leave Vilna in June, 1941, going to Grodno, Belarus to avoid arrest.

On 24 June 1941, Germany seized Vilna as part of Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Germans had also overtaken Grodno. After hearing about the occupation of Vilna, Kempner decided to return to the city to face the Nazi regime with Korczak and the other members of the Young Guard. The Germans founded two ghettos in Vilna. Ghetto #2 was reserved for Jews who were considered unable to work and would ultimately be destroyed in October of 1941, during which time most of the inhabitants of ghetto #2 were killed. Ghetto #1 was reserved for Jews who could work. This ghetto was less than a square mile in size and had six streets. Prior to WWII, only 1000 people had lived in the area the ghetto occupied, but over 30,000 Jews would now live there.

The Ghetto

The grey area comprises the ghetto Kempner lived in. The green dot is where her house, which would later become FPO headquarters, was located.

The ghetto was over-crowded and dirty. Jews were forced to work on construction projects or in factories making equipment to supply the German army. Every morning German-allied Lithuanian police would check the work permits of the Jews before allowing them to exit the ghetto. When they returned to the ghetto at night, the Jews were searched for contraband before being allowed inside. Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes, marking them as Jewish, a curfew was imposed, and Jews were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks in the Ghetto, but had to walk in the streets with the animals instead. Kempner and Korczak lived at 15 Straszun Street, a house near the ghetto wall. The house had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and one bathroom. The girls would share the house with 10 other boys.

Franz Murer, a Nazi colonel, ran the ghetto. He would appoint a Jewish council and Jewish police force within the ghetto to control the inhabitants according German orders. 60 Young Guard members lived in the ghetto and some joined the police force, acting as double agents and engaging in non-violent resistance. The Young Guard was focused on keeping Jews in the ghetto alive long enough to survive the war. To do this, the Young Guard asked for volunteers to pose as Christians and live outside of the ghetto in the free city. These volunteers would be supplied with fake papers and identification and would sneak out of the ghetto with the help of the Young Guard members on the Jewish police force. Kempner volunteered for the mission. She was well-suited for it as she spoke fluent Polish without a Yiddish accent and, after dying her hair blonde, easily passed as a non-Jewish peasant. She would worked as a maid during the day and returned to the ghetto on the nights Young Guard police officers were on patrol. Kempner, along with the other Young Guard volunteers, would bring food, blankets, information, and other resources back to the ghetto.

In December, 1941, a young Jewish girl, Sara, was found beaten and naked by Jews scavenging for food in the forest. She claimed the Germans were taking Vilna Jews to Ponar, a nearby suburb, to be executed. She had been lucky enough to escape. The Young Guard then sent Kempner to a convent just outside of Vilna. Abba Kovner (1918-1987), the leader of Vilna’s Young Guard branch, was hiding there and Kempner was sent to bring him to the ghetto. After speaking with Sara, Kovner understood the Germans were attempting to commit a Jewish genocide and the killings at Ponar were a part of it. The Germans had been periodically removing Jews from the ghetto, claiming to be sending them to other Nazi labor camps. These Jews were instead sent to Ponar for execution. The Ponary Massacre occurred between July 1941 and August 1944. During this time, over 100,000 people, 70,000 of them Jews, were killed. Following Kovner’s revelation, he and Kempner returned to the ghetto permanently. They would move into Kempner’s old house, 15 Straszun Street, with Korczak.

On 31 December 1941, Kovner organized a meeting of the ghetto Zionists. 150 Jews, most of them in their teens and twenties, attended. Kovner declared an uprising against Nazi forces and their allies. He urged the Zionist youth not to sit by and wait passively to be killed. He called on them to fight to the death, saying it was better to die free than live under Nazi rule. With this declaration, Kovner united the divided Zionist youth movement factions under one goal: active resistance of Nazi Germany.

FPO fighters. Abba Kovner stands in the center of the back row. Ruzka Korczak is to the right of Kovner. Kempner stands at the far right.

United Partisan Organization

On 21 January 1942, the leaders of the three largest Zionist movements in the ghetto held a meeting. Yitzhak Wittenberg led the Communists, Joseph Glassman led the Betar, and Kovner represented the Young Guard. The three agreed to put their differing views aside and fight as a united Jewish party against the Nazi regime. Wittenberg, Glassman, and Kovner would establish the United Partisan Organization (Fareynigte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO), the only completely Jewish partisan group to fight in WWII. Wittenberg led the FPO with Kovner and Glassman serving as his lieutenants. The FPO immediately began preparing for their rebellion. They stockpiled weapons from various sources. Partisans would collect bits of metal from the German metal shops they worked in or steal weapons off of sleeping Lithuanian guards in and around the ghetto. Each night, Kovner sent Jewish partisans into the city to negotiate with locals and buy equipment. The FPO utilized the sewer system beneath Vilna to smuggle weapons, communications from other partisan organizations, and Jewish fighters into and out of the ghetto. Kovner and Shmuel Kaplinsky, an FPO member and veteran of the Polish Army, trained the FPO recruits in combat. These training sessions took place in cellars beneath the streets. Kempner continued to be sent out of the ghetto, communicating with other resistance groups stationed around Vilna and monitoring German soldiers.

In July 1942, Kempner led the FPO's first act of sabotage, blowing up a German military train. For two weeks, she had studied German military activity in the forest. She was told to find a place to plant the bomb that was far enough away from the Jewish slave laborers working in the forest. The FPO did not want those Jews to be blamed for the attack and punished. Kempner settled on a portion of train tracks 12 miles outside of Vilna. The FPO then undertook the task of building a bomb. The sabotage plan briefly stalled when it was discovered none of the partisans knew how to build a bomb. Korczak would solve this problem, finding a pamphlet from the Winter War (30 November 1939 – 13 March 1940) between the Soviet Union and Finland in the ghetto’s library. This pamphlet included instructions on how to construct a bomb. Once the bomb was built, Kovner appointed Kempner to take it and lead a small group of partisans out of the ghetto via the sewer systems under the streets. Kempner led the group to the section of train tracks she had chosen and she and Itzke Matzevich rigged the bomb to the tracks. Following this successful attack, the FPO continued to engage in active resistance in Vilna. Kempner was later named a chief lieutenant.

Despite the efforts of the FPO, the Germans continued to deport large numbers of Jews to concentration camps. In August of 1943, 3000 Jews were sent to Estonia. On 1 September 1943, German forces entered the ghetto, forcibly removing another 2000 Jews. On 23 September 1943, the Germans announced the ghetto was to be destroyed and the remaining inhabitants deported. Kovner, now the FPO leader after Wittenberg’s forced surrender to German soldiers, had received word that a large partisan base was hiding in the Rudnicki Forest. He ordered the remaining FPO members to evacuate the ghetto and head for the Rudnicki. In October 1942, the last partisans fled Vilna. The remaining inhabitants were sent to labor or death camps around Europe. 1,500 women were sent to Kaiserwald, a labor camp in Latvia, 5,000 women and children to Majdanek, a death camp in Poland, and a few hundred elderly and ill were killed at Ponar. Any remaining men in the ghetto went to Klooga, a work camp in Estonia.

The Rudnicki Forest

The Rudnicki Forest was located 12 miles south of Vilna. When the FPO arrived, they joined a partisan base that had been forming there. There were two Russian and two Lithuanian partisan camps. There were also several Polish Home Army camps who were operating under orders from the Polish government working out of London. The FPO would form a Jewish partisan camp. During this time, over 1,000 partisans lived in the forest. To survive, they stole food, clothes, weapons, and other resources from peasant farmers or off of the bodies of dead German soldiers. Moscow also sent supplies via airdrops. Shortly after their arrival, Kovner would split the Jewish partisans into four divisions. The divisions were Death to Fascism, Struggle, To Victory, and The Avengers. These divisions made up the Jewish unit of the Rudnicki partisan network and were commanded by Kovner. Kempner, along with Kovner and Korczak, was a member of the Avengers.

The Avengers, along with the other partisans of the Rudnicki, continued to interfere with German military activities. They cut phone lines, bombed railways and German trains, passed information about the Germans onto the Soviet Army, and rescued Jews from labor camps around the area. By autumn of 1943, over 300 Jews would live in the Jewish partisan camp. Kempner led a small group of Avengers on a successful mission to bomb the waterworks and electrical systems in Vilna. During this operation, she also rescued 60 Jews from the still active fur factory in Vilna, leading them back to the Jewish camp. By the end of WWII, the Avengers had demolished 180 miles of railroad tracks, destroyed 51 German trains and hundreds of German military vehicles, and had kill over 200 enemy troops.

In July of 1943, the Germans had started to lose ground. Soviet forces had defeated them during a battle in Kursk, and by October, the Soviets had reclaimed much of the Russian territory the Germans had invaded. By winter, the partisans could see signs of German defeats, spotting German soldiers leaving Russia and returning to Lithuania. In April of 1944, Kovner sent Kempner to Vilna with a message for any remaining rebels hiding in the Vilna underground. The message was to prepare for a revolt. By summer, the Soviet Red Army had arrived in the forest and the partisans welcomed them with relief and elation. The Red Army credited their successful advance on German forces to the partisans, saying their continued harassment and interference with the German military had allowed the Soviets to gain the upper hand. The partisans then joined the Red Army, and on 7 July 1944, the combined forces would advance on Vilna. Five days of fighting ensued in which 8,000 German soldiers were killed. On 13 July 1944, the Red Army and partisan fighters officially liberated Vilna. 57,000 Jews had been in Vilna at the start of the WWII. By the time of its liberation, between 2,000-3,000 remained. Germany would cede to the Soviet Union on 9 May 1945 and WWII would officially end on 2 September 1945.

Immigration to Palestine

Jewish Settlements in Palestine.

Following the end of WWII, Jews still faced persecution across Europe. The Holocaust had not reduced the anti-Semitic attitudes that many non-Jewish Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, and Russian held prior to the war. There were over one million Jews scattered around Europe post-WWII. Many tried to return home, but encountered violent resistance and rejection. As a result, Jews returned to former concentration camps, using them as temporary residences. Surviving members of Zionist youth movements, including the Young Guard, began to promote immigration to Palestine in an effort to get persecuted Jews out of Europe. Palestine was under British control due to the British Mandate for Palestine (29 September 1923 – 15 May 1948). Under this agreement, the British government pledged their support for the development of a national Jewish homeland in Palestine. In July of 1945, Zionists organized the Bricha (Escape) movement, a mass evacuation of surviving Jews to Palestine. Bricha organizers smuggled Jews from country to country, moving them toward Italy where ships would take them to Palestine. During this movement, Kempner worked as a guide stationed in Krosno, a town on the Poland-Czechoslovakia boarder. It is estimated that between 80,000 and 250,000 Jews got to Palestine during the Bricha movement. However, Jewish oppression did not end when Jews got to Palestine. According to the British White Paper of 1939, only 15,000 Jewish immigrants were allowed into Palestine each year. This limit led many Jews to immigrate illegally during the Bricha, using forged papers and identification. These Jews were arrested by British forces and sent to Atlit, a prison in Palestine for illegal Jewish refugees. Following her arrival in Palestine in 1944, Korckzak was sent to Atlit before being freed by Yitzhak Greenbaum, a Zionist leader and member of the United Jewish Agency.

In Lithuania, the Avengers, in addition to promoting the Bricha, turned their attention to revenge on German soldiers for the Holocaust. They targeted Stalag 13, an American-run POW camp in Nuremburg, Germany. Over 30,000 Nazi soldiers were detained there. They planned to poison the camp bread supply with arsenic. Kovner went to Palestine to get the arsenic, but was arrested and jailed by British forces in Egypt for having forged papers. After hearing of Kovner’s arrest, Kempner took the lead on planning the Stalag 13 attack. On 13 April 1946, Avengers Lebke Dieste, Joseph Harmatz, and Pinchas Ben-Tzur successfully poisoned the camp’s bread supply. According to British journalist Jonathan Freedland, a scholar of Jewish revenge organizations, 1,900 German POWs became sick. Over 100 others are estimated to have died. The attack on Stalag 13 was the largest act of German sabotage the Avengers would pull off.

In spring of 1946, Kovner was sent to a prison in Jerusalem, but was quickly released. Kempner arrived in Palestine not long after. She was sent to Atlit, but let go due to a bribe of a prison official. She joined Kovner and Korczak in Ein HaHoresh (“The Plowman’s Fountain”), a kibbutz founded in the 1920s by 80 Jewish families, all of whom were members of the Young Guard. Kempner and Kovner later married in 1946.

Later Life

In 1947, just over a year after Kempner arrived in Ein HaHoresh, the British government announced their plans to leave Palestine. On 29 November 1948, the United Nations voted to separate Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish state would be on the Mediterranean coast along the Sea of Galilee. On 15 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion, a Zionist leader, declared the establishment of Israel. He would become the country's first prime minister. Ben-Gurion would also abolish the White Paper of 1939, granting unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Jews in Israel now had a homeland, but they would face opposition from Arab forces.

The Bar Ilan University Psychology building.

The day of Israel’s founding, Arab forces from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt attacked Israel, initiating the War of Independence (15 May 1948 – 10 March 1949). Ten months of fighting followed, interrupted by multiple cease fires called for by the UN. Kovner would serve in the war, acting as a cultural commissar to the Givati Brigade of the Israeli Army. His job was to raise the morale of the Israeli soldiers, reminding them of why they were fighting and inspiring them to continue on. Just before the war broke out, Kempner had discovered she was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Michael Kovner, on 27 May 1948 during the first cease fire. The war officially came to a close after Israel’s signing of peace treaties with Egypt (24 February 1949), Lebanon (23 March 1949), Jordan (13 April 1949), and Syria (20 July 1949). 6,000 Jews, one percent of the population in Israel, had been killed during the war.

In 1956, Kempner gave birth to a daughter, Shlomit Kovner. In 1965, at the age of 45, Kempner went back to school, attending Bar Ilan University in Israel where she studied Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry. She would graduate in three years. Kempner would also create a new form of art therapy, called Non-Verbal Therapy by Color, for children with special needs, allowing them to communicate via colors. Abba Kovner died of throat cancer in 1987. Ruzka Korczak died shortly after in 1988. Kempner would spend the rest of her life counseling, tutoring, and treating special needs children in Ein Hahoresch. She died in February of 2012 at the age of 92.

Awards and Honors

The Medal of Valor Kempner received for her actions during WWII.

Kempner received the Soviet Medal of Valor, the most prestigious Soviet award for courage in battle, for her actions during WWII.

Hirsh Glik (1921-1944), a Jewish poet and Vilna partisan, wrote the song Shtil, di nakht iz oysgeshternt (Still, the night is full of stars), which celebrates Kempner's heroic sabotage attack on the German military train in the Vilna in 1942.

See Also

Resistance During the Holocaust: An Exploration of the Jewish Partisan, an online educational program for students

Listen: An Oral History Interview with Vitka Kempner

Listen to Glik's "Shtil, di nakhtz iz oysgeshternt"