Shmuel Kaplinski

Shmuel Kaplinski (also Szmul Kapliński ; born 1914 in Vilnius , Russian Empire ; died 2000 in Vilnius, Lithuania ) was a Jewish partisan and engineer in World War II .

Life

Shmuel Kaplinski was born in 1914 as the son of a Jewish Bundist family in Vilna, Russia, and when Vilna was already part of Poland he joined the General Jewish Workers' Union . He was trained as an engineer and worked at the Vilna waterworks . After the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Vilnius in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 Shmuel Kaplinski was in Ghetto Vilna continue in the now illegal 'Federation active for the three resistance groups it as one in January 1942, to the founding of the Jewish United Partisan Organization ( Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye , FPO). In the summer of 1942, as a representative of the federal government, he assumed responsibility for technology and the procurement of weapons in the leadership of the FPO. As a sewer worker, he was able to bring numerous weapons to the partisans through the city's sewers. When the Vilna ghetto was liquidated in September 1943, Shmuel Kaplinski's technical and topographical knowledge helped the partisans to get out of the ghetto through the sewer system and into the forests of Rudniki before they were annihilated by the German occupiers.

In the forests of Rudniki, Shmuel Kaplinski commanded the partisan brigade "For Victory" (За победу), in which Chiena Borowska served as political commissioner . As part of the Red Army, the brigade took part in the capture of the city of Vilnius.

After the war Shmuel Kaplinski and Chiena Borowska married in Vilnius, where they lived until their death and were buried in the Jewish cemetery.

literature

• Yitzhak Arad: Ghetto In Flames - The struggle and destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust . Yad Vashem, Martyrs 'and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem 1980. pp. 388, 432, 455.

Web links

• Shmuel Kaplinski (1914–2000) , Memorial Sites Europe 1939–1945
• Vilna During the Holocaust, Partisans in Vilna, The Rudniki Forest. The Jerusalem of Lithuania, The Story of the Jewish Community of Vilna. Yad Vashem