Abba Kovner

Abba Kovner was born in 1918 in Ašmiany

Abba Kovner was born on 14 March 1918 to Israel and Rochel Kovner. In 1927 the family moved to Vilnius. He studied at the Hebrew Tarbut Gymnasium and later at the university's arts faculty, and was active in the youth movement HaShomer HaTzair.

After the Germans took Vilnius in 1941, he hid for a time in a Dominican convent and then returned to the ghetto. At a meeting on 31 December 1941 he read a manifesto calling on Jews not to go like lambs to the slaughter. In 1942 he helped found the FPO underground and became its commander in July 1943.

In September 1943 he escaped the ghetto through the sewers to the Rūdninkai forest. There he commanded a Jewish partisan unit called the Avengers until July 1944. After the war he helped organize the Berihah movement.

He led Nakam, a group that planned to kill Germans in revenge for the Holocaust by poisoning water supplies. In 1945 he obtained poison in Palestine but was arrested by the British on his way back, and the plan failed. He was held for several months in Cairo and Jerusalem.

From 1946 he lived at Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh and married Vitka Kempner. He served as culture officer of the Givati Brigade in 1948, wrote poetry about the partisans and the war, and helped create the Diaspora Museum. He died at home in 1987.