Haika Grossman

1919 - 1993

Leading resistance fighter during the Holocaust; senior politician in the Israeli Knesset.

Born in Bialystok (Poland), Haika Grossman joined the Zionist youth movement ha-Shomer haTzaʿir and became a member of its central committee. The Nazis invaded in 1941, and Grossman moved secretly between ghettos across Poland, smuggling weapons, organizing hiding places, and liaising with the Polish resistance groups and Soviet partisans. After the war, she was awarded the Gruenwald Cross for valor, and moved to Warsaw, where she was elected to the Central Committee of Polish Jews.

At the beginning of the Arab - Israeli War of 1948, Grossman emigrated to a kibbutz in Israel and became head of the Gaʾaton Regional Council, concentrating on refugee relief. Elected four times to the Knesset, she served first for the Maʿarach Party and later chaired the MAPAM faction. Grossman turned the Public Services Committee into one of the most important Knesset committees, introducing legislation across a spectrum of social issues, and was a forthright critic of Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians. She supported cooperation between Arabs and Jews in Israel throughout her career, and in the 1980s she founded the dialogue and education center Givʿat Haviva. Grossman was also a member of the unofficial international war crimes tribunal established in protest against the Vietnam War in 1967.

Bibliography

Grossman, Haika. The Underground Army: Fighters of the BialystokGhetto. New York: Holocaust Library, 1987.

"Haika Grossman: A Mirror of Our History." Available from http://www.haika.org.il.

— GEORGE R. WILKES