Abba Kovner

1918 - 1987

Organizer of Vilna ghetto revolt, World War II partisan leader, and acclaimed Hebrew poet.

Born in Sevastopol, Russia, and raised in Vilna, Poland. Kovner joined ha-Shomer ha-Tzaʾir and planned immigration to Eretz Yisrael (Palestine) but was prevented by the German invasion of 1941. His wartime resistance activities - notably in founding an umbrella resistance force in the Vilna ghetto, the United Partisans Organization - made him a symbol of the heroism of Jewish fighters in the Holocaust to generations of Israelis. Kovner co-founded the Jewish Museum in Vilna in 1944, then helped to organize clandestine Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael, cofounding the Brichah, and was briefly imprisoned by the British in Egypt. On his release, he joined the Givʿati brigade and fought in the Arab - Israel War of 1948. Books of Kovner's poetry, which focuses on the Holocaust and Zionism, were published in Israel in the 1940s (reprinted from partisan newsletters), 1950s and 1960s. At the Eichmann trial in 1961, Kovner testified to the brutality of Germans and their collaborators in the Vilna ghetto, as well as to reprisals meted out by Jewish partisans against captured German soldiers. Kovner's poetry, mimicking the epics of the Russian symbolists, focused on his experience of the Holocaust in Vilna and his sense of isolation as a survivor thereafter. For Kovner, postwar Jewish and Israeli experience was also part of the ongoing experience of the Holocaust. His work thus traced reflections of the Holocaust in the present and was not solely a lament of the losses and pain of the past - for example, his 1970 poem "Huppa bamidbar"' (A canopy in the desert," Kovner, 1973).

Kovner cofounded the Holocaust journal Yalkut Moreshet in 1963, and was awarded the coveted Israel Prize for literature in 1970, though few of his Israeli contemporaries shared his focus on Jewish resistance, viewing European Jews instead as predominantly passive victims of the Nazis.

Bibliography

Cohen, Rich. The Avengers: A Jewish War Story. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Ginor, Zvia. "'Meteor-Yid': Abba Kovner's Poetic Confrontation with Jewish History," Judaism 48, no.1 (Winter 1999): 83 - 98.

Kovner, Abba. A Canopy in the Desert, translated by Shirley Kaufman, with Ruth Adler and Nurit Orchan. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.

Segev, Tom. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, translated by Haim Watzman. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

— ZEV MAGHEN
UPDATED BY GEORGE R. WILKES

Abba Kovner (Hebrew: אבא קובנר) (born: 1918; died: 1987) was a Lithuanian Jewish Hebrew poet, writer, and partisan leader. He became one of the great poets of modern Israel. He was a cousin of the Israeli Communist Party leader Meir Vilner.^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Further reading 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Biography

He was born in the Crimean Black Sea port city of Sevastopol but soon moved with his family to Vilnius (then in Poland, now in Lithuania) where he grew up and was educated at the secondary Hebrew academy and the school of the arts. While pursuing his studies, he joined and became an active member in the socialist Zionist youth movement HaShomer HaTzair.

In June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the city, which was by that time in Lithuanian SSR, and after occupation established the Vilna Ghetto. Kovner managed to escape with several friends to a Dominican convent headed by Anna Borkowska in the city's suburbs, but he soon returned to the ghetto.^[2] He concluded that in order for any revolt to be successful, a Jewish resistance fighting force needed to be assembled. He commanded the United Partisan Organization in the forests near Vilnius and engaged in sabotage and guerrilla attacks against the Nazis. ^[3] He continued his partisan efforts and survived the Holocaust.

After liberation of Vilnius by the Soviet Red Army in July 1944, he became one of the founders of the Berihah movement, helping Jews escape Eastern Europe after the war. He came to Palestine for a short period of time in 1945, and then returned to Europe to, with the Nakam organization, continue underground activities against Nazi POW's.

Abba Kovner founded Nakam (Dam Yehudi Nakam - "Jewish Blood Will Be Avenged") as a Jewish organization with the aim of avenging the Holocaust. Nakam attempted a mass assassination on April 14, 1946 at the Langwasser internment camp near Nuremberg. Bread for 12,000 to 15,000 German POWs (mostly SS members) was reputedly painted with diluted arsenic. According to the New York Times in 1946, 207 of the interned soldiers fell ill and were admitted into the hospital but none died. Kovner was detained and deported from Europe back to Israel, where he eventually served as an officer in the Givati Brigade in the Israel War of Independence.

His book of poetry Ad Lo-Or, ("Until No-Light"), 1947, describes in lyric-dramatic narrative the struggle of the Resistance partisans in the swamps and forests of Eastern Europe. Ha-Mafteach Tzalal, ("The Key Drowned"), 1951, is also about this struggle. Pridah Me-ha-darom ("Departure from the South"), 1949, and Panim el Panim ("Face to Face"), 1953, continue the story with the Israeli War of Independence.

In 1970 Kovner was awarded the Israel Prize for literature.^[4]

Further reading

• See The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (2003), ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
• See My Little Sister and Selected Poems, trans. Shirley Kaufman (1986), ISBN 0-932440-20-7
• See The Avengers (2000), by Rich Cohen, ISBN 0-375-40546-1

See also

• Anna Borkowska
• Bielski partisans
• List of Israel Prize recipients
• Nakam

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ Marcin Masłowski, Tomasz Patora, "Nasz Bóg ich zgubi", Gazeta Wyborcza, 2/6/7 [2]
3. ^ [3]
4. ^ "Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1970 (in Hebrew)". http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/Tashkag/Tashlab_Tashkag_Rikuz.htm?DictionaryKey=Tashal. 

External links

• Chronicles of the Vilna Ghetto: wartime photographs & documents - vilnaghetto.com
• Abba Kovner Biography
• Abba Kovner and Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto

v • d • e The Holocaust in Lithuania Crimes Ninth Fort · Kaunas June 1941 · Kaunas 29 October 1941 · Ninth Fort November 1941 • Ponary Prominent victims Zelig Kalmanovich Major perpetrators Erich Ehrlinger · Karl Jäger · Hinrich Lohse · Franz Murer · Adrian von Renteln · Alfred Rosenberg · Rudolf Joachim Seck · Franz Walter Stahlecker · Martin Weiss Nazi occupation and organizations Einsatzgruppen · Reichskommissariat Ostland · Rollkommando Hamann Collaborators and Nazi sympathizers Algirdas Klimaitis · Lithuanian Security Police · Schutzmannschaft · TDA · YD Ghettos, camps and prisons HKP 562 · Kaunas fort ring · Kaunas Ghetto · Lukiškės Prison · Vilna Ghetto Resistance and survivors Fareinigte Partizaner Organizacje · Abba Kovner · Ephraim Oshry · Ona Šimaitė Documentation Jäger Report Concealment and denial Sonderaktion 1005 Justice Einsatzgruppen Trial Righteous among the Nations Karl Plagge · Chiune Sugihara Related articles The Holocaust · History of the Jews in Lithuania · The Holocaust in Latvia · The Holocaust in Estonia

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