Zivia Lubetkin
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Zivia Lubetkin (in Polish: Cywia Lubetkin), (1914–1976), also known by her nom de guerre "Celina", was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and the only woman on the High Command of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB).
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[edit] Pre-World War II
She was born in 1914 in Byten, Poland. She joined the Labor Zionist Movement at an early age. In her late teens she joined the Zionist youth movement Dror, and in 1938 became a member of its Executive Council. She was in the Russian-controlled area of Poland when Germany invaded the country in September, 1939, and she made the perilous journey back to Warsaw to join the underground there.
[edit] The Second World War
In 1942, Lubetkin helped found the Antifascist Bloc. She also, as one of the founders of the ZOB, served on the Warsaw Jewish community's political council, the Jewish National Committee (Zydowska Komitet Narodowa; ZKN), and also served on the Coordinating Committee, an umbrella organization comprising the ZKN and the non-Zionist Bund, that sponsored the ZOB.
She was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and one of only 34 fighters to survive the war. During her years of underground activities, the name "Cywia" became the code word for Poland in letters sent by various resistance groups both within and outside of the Warsaw Ghetto. After leading her group of surviving fighters through the sewers of Warsaw with the aid of Simcha "Kazik" Rotem in the final days of the ghetto uprising (on May 30th, 1943), she continued her resistance activities in the rest of Warsaw outside the ghetto. She took part in the Polish Warsaw Uprising in August, 1944.
[edit] Postwar life
Following the Second World War, Lubetkin was active in the Holocaust survivors community in Europe, and helped organize the Beriha, an organization staffed by operatives who helped Eastern and Central European Jews cross borders en route to Mandatory Palestine by illegal immigration channels. She herself immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1946.
She married Yitzhak Zuckerman, the ZOB commander, and they, along with other surviving ghetto fighters and partisans founded Kibbutz Lohamey ha-Geta'ot and the Ghetto Fighters' House museum located on its grounds. In 1961 she testified at the trial of captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
Her granddaughter became the Israeli Air Force's first female fighter pilot.
[edit] Bibliography
- Lubetkin, Zivia. Die letzten Tage des Warschauer Gettos. pp. 47, illus. Berlin: VVN-Verlag, 1949
- Lubetkin, Zivia. Aharonim `al ha-homah. (Ein Harod, 1946/47)
- Lubetkin, Zivia. Bi-yemei kilayon va-mered. pp. 89. Tel-Aviv, 1953
- Lubetkin, Zivia. In the days of destruction and revolt. [translated from the Hebrew by Ishai Tubbin; revised by Yehiel Yanay; biographical index by Yitzhak Zuckerman; biographical index translated by Debby Garber]. Pp. 338, illus. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Pub. House: Am Oved Pub. House, 1981
