Rozka Korczak

Rozka or Ruzka Korczak (1921, Płock – 1988) was a Polish Jewish partisan leader during World War II. She served in the United Partisan Organization (Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye) and, alongside Vitka Kempner and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Avengers (Nokmim)--the only known undefeated ghetto uprising in the history of the Holocaust.

Rozka Korczak (standing, third from the left) with members of the FPO in the Vilna Ghetto. Abba Kovner is to her right, and Vitka Kempner is at far right.

Early life

Korczak was born in April 1921 in Bieslko, to a cattle dealer.[1] Her family moved to a small village in Płock where she attended public school.[2] In eighth grade, she organized a Jewish student strike to protest Anti-Semitism in the school.[1] As a teenager, she joined a Zionist organization called HaShomer HaTzair (the young guard).[2]

During World War Two

During the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939, Korczak flees to Lituania and meet Vitka Kempner in Vilna thanks to HaShomer HaTzair.[3] Upon Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, she co-founded the United Partisan Organization (FPO) with Abba Kovner and Kempner in 1942.[4] They smuggled weapons into the Vilna Ghetto and smuggled Jews out.[3]

As the situation worsened in the ghetto, she left it in September 1943 with the last group of fighters passing through the sewers and took refuge in the forests of Rudninkai and Naroch.[4] After the liberation of Vilnius by the Red Army in July 1944, she and her companions focused on helping Jewish refugees and emigration to Palestine. She arrived there on December 12, 1944.[3][5]

References
  1. "Rozka Korczak-Marla". jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved January 24, 2020.
  2. Paul R. Bartrop; Steven Leonard Jacobs (December 17, 2014). Modern Genocide: The Definitive Resource and Document Collection. ABC-CLIO. p. 1288. ISBN 9781610693646. Retrieved January 24, 2020.
  3. Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present - Bernard A. Cook - Google Books
  4. "ROZKA KORCZAK-MARLA". jwa.org. Retrieved January 24, 2020.
  5. Ketty La Rocca. Rozka Korczak Biography (in English)
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