Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
25 (1996) 99-136
Keywords:
Kovner, Abba,
;
World War, 1939-1945 Jewish resistance
;
Jewish ghettos
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jews
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
The proclamation, compiled and read by Abba Kovner at the underground meeting in Vilna on 1 January 1942, was the first to assess the mass executions of the city's Jews in 1941 not as a local phenomenon or as Nazi revenge on the "communist Jews, " but as part of the Nazis' general plan to exterminate all the Jews. It was also the first Jewish document of the Holocaust which concluded that resistance was the only option. Only a minority in the underground believed Kovner's dire prognosis; however, all the groups, including the communists, saw the need for a unified Jewish resistance. Relates the process of Zuckerman's and Tenenbaum's realization (in Warsaw and Bialystok) of the nature of the Nazis' intentions and of the need to organize resistance. Discusses, also, the issue of the existence of another, longer version of Kovner's proclamation, and the origins of a proclamation by Tenenbaum with similar contents, aimed at the ghettos of Warsaw, Bialystok, and Grodno.
Note:
See also in Hebrew.
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