Yitzhak Zuckerman

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Zuckerman at the Eichmann Trial (1961)

Jitzhak Zuckerman , also: Icchak Cukierman and other transliterations (born December 13, 1915 in Vilnius , Russian Empire ; died June 17, 1981 in Kibbutz Lochamej HaGeta'ot , Israel ), was a Jewish resistance fighter in Poland, which was occupied by Germany during World War II .

Life

Zuckerman attended school in Wilna, now part of Poland, and was a member of the Zionist youth organization Hechaluz . From 1936 he worked in Warsaw as a functionary for Hechaluz and for the successor organization Dror Hechaluc as general secretary.

After the German and Soviet occupation of Poland in 1939, he first went to the Soviet-occupied part to set up illegal organizations there, and in April 1940 returned to German-occupied Warsaw, where the Jewish population was ghettoized in October 1940. In the Warsaw ghetto , but also in other Polish regions, he initially organized a variety of educational activities. When the extent of the Holocaust in the Vilna Ghetto and in the Kulmhof extermination camp became known in the winter of 1941 , Zuckerman called for armed resistance from the Jewish Council of the ghetto. When the mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto began in July 1942, he was among those who founded the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB). While he was in the Krakow ghetto in December 1942 , the resistance organization there carried out an attack on a café frequented by the German occupiers. In January 1943, under the direction of Mordechaj Anielewicz, there was an armed resistance against the deportations in Warsaw, with his future wife Zivia Lubetkin involved . Zuckerman's task was now primarily to keep in touch with the Polish resistance organizations Armia Ludowa and Armia Krajowa . When the uprising broke out in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943 , he was staying illegally in the “Aryan” part of Warsaw and supported the uprising from outside. Information from the ŻOB director Anielewicz reached the international press through him. After the uprising was put down, he made sure that a group of resistance fighters could be brought to safety on May 12, 1943 after a 48-hour escape through the Warsaw sewer system beyond the ghetto walls. The few survivors cooperated with the Polish resistance, and in August 1944 Zuckerman took part with a Jewish combat group in the Warsaw uprising on the side of the Polish Home Army against the German occupation.

After the end of the war he belonged to the Jewish organization Bricha , which organized the escape of the surviving Jews from Eastern Europe to Western Europe and their illegal immigration to Palestine. His own migration to Palestine was not successful until early 1947. In the State of Israel , he and his wife were involved in the establishment of kibbutz Lochamej haGeta'ot, where they worked and started a family from then on.

In 1961 he was heard as a witness in the Eichmann trial . After the Six Day War in 1967 he joined the movement for a Greater Israel , which wanted to annex the territories conquered in the war and which later became a faction of the Likud which was being founded.

In 2001 he was portrayed in the film Uprising by David Schwimmer .

Fonts (selection)

  • A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising . Translated into English and edited by Barbara Harshav. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley 1993, ISBN 0-520-07841-1 (interview 1976)

literature

  • Israel Gutman : The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: ghetto, underground, revolt . Translation from Hebrew by Ina Friedman. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press 1982 ISBN 0-7108-0411-3 , passim
  • Israel Gutman: Zuckerman, Yitzhak . In: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Volume IV, 1990, pp. 1740-1743.
  • Zivia Lubetkin : The Last Days of the Warsaw Ghetto. In: New selection. Ed. Alliierter Informationsdienst, Volume 3, Issue 1, 1948, pp. 1–13; again as a paperback: VVN- Verlag, Berlin 1949, illustrated, afterword Friedrich Wolf

Web links

Commons : Icchak Cukierman  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Israel Gutman: Zuckerman, Yitzhak . Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. , 1990, pp. 1740-1743.
  2. ^ Andrea Löw, Markus Roth: Jews in Krakow under German occupation 1939–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2011, p. 192.
  3. ↑ a b Statement by Zivia Lubetkin at the Eichmann trial, May 3, 1961.
  4. ↑ a b statement , Eichmann trial, May 3, 1961.
  5. ^ Tikva Fatal-Kna'ani: Zivia Lubetkin , at Jewish Women's Archive (en)
personal data
SURNAME Zuckerman, Yitzhak
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cukierman, Icchak
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Vilnius , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 17th June 1981
Place of death Lochamej haGeta'ot , Israel