Haika Grossman

Haika Grossman was born in 1919 in Białystok

Grossman was born in Białystok, Poland, to Nahum and Leah. She studied at Hebrew schools of the Tarbut network, including its Hebrew gymnasium. As a teenager she joined HaShomer HaTzair and later became one of its leaders in Poland.

When World War II began she moved to Wilno and worked in the movement's underground leadership. In 1941 she returned to Białystok and helped organize the ghetto underground. Using forged papers under the name Halina Woranowicz, she carried messages between ghettos, bought arms and smuggled them in.

In 1943 she took part in the Białystok Ghetto Uprising. After the war she served on the Central Committee of the Jews of Poland.

In 1948 she moved to Kibbutz Evron and was active in Mapam. From 1950 to 1951 she headed the Ga'aton Regional Council, the first woman to head a regional council. She served in the Knesset from 1969 to 1981 and from 1984 to 1988, working on social issues and the status of women, including laws on abortion rights and against beating children.

In 1993 she lit a torch at the Independence Day ceremony. Afterward she fell down stairs and went into a coma, and she died in 1996.