The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (Yiddish: פֿאַראײניקטע פּאַרטיזאַנער אָרגאַניזאַציע; "United Partisan Organization"; referred to as FPO by its Yiddish initials) was a Jewish resistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during World War II.[1] The partisan organisation was established by Communist and Zionist partisans - their leaders were writer Abba Kovner and Yitzhak Wittenberg.
The FPO was formed on January 21, 1942 in the Vilna Ghetto. It took on the motto: "We will not allow them to take us like beasts to the slaughter." This was the first Jewish resistance organization that was established in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.[2] Unlike in other ghettos, where the underground resistance was coordinated to some extent with the officials of the local Jewish establishment, Vilna's Jacob Gens, head of the ghetto, cooperated with German officials in stopping armed struggle. The FPO brought together socialist-Zionists, right-wing conservatives, communists and Bundists. It was headed by Yitzhak Wittenberg, Josef Glazman, and Abba Kovner. The goals of the FPO were to establish self-defense in the ghetto, to sabotage German industrial and military activities and to join the partisan and Red Army’s fight against the Nazis.
However, the FPO did not succeed in its mission. In early 1943, the Germans caught a resistance member in the forest and the Judenrat, in response to German threats, gave Wittenberg over to the Gestapo. The FPO was able to rescue him through an armed struggle and were then able to set up a small militia. The Judenrat did not tolerate this, though, because the Nazis constantly put pressure on them to end the resistance or face liquidation. The Judenrat knew that Jews were smuggling weapons into the ghetto and when a Jew was arrested for the purchase of a revolver, they finally gave the people an ultimatum. The Judenrat turned the people against the resistance members by making them seem like selfish enemies who were provoking the Nazis. Gens emphasized the people’s responsibility for one another. He said that resistance was sacrificing the good of the community. In the end, the people confronted the resistance and demanded their right to live. The resistance would not fire on the other Jews and they were eventually disarmed and arrested.
When the Nazis came to liquidate the ghetto in 1943, the members of the FPO again congregated. Gens took control of the liquidation so as to rid the ghetto of the Germans, but helped fill the quota of Jews with those who would fight but were not necessarily part of the resistance. The FPO fled to the forest, where most were able to reach Soviet partisan units. FPO members participated in the liberation of Vilna by the Soviet army in July 1944.[1]
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