Rozka Korczak

Rozka Korczak was born in 1921 in Bielsko-Biała

Korczak was born in 1921, the eldest daughter of Gedalia and Hinda, and grew up in a traditional family with two sisters. Her father was a cattle dealer with Zionist leanings. She studied in a heder and a Polish school, and in 1934 the family moved to Płock because of financial hardship.

In Płock she sold rolls to help her family and finished her schooling in evening classes. After reading Pinsker's Auto-Emancipation she joined HaShomer HaTzair, where she became a counselor and a member of the leadership.

In November 1939 she went to Warsaw and then crossed the border secretly to Vilna, where she met Vitka Kempner and Abba Kovner. After the Germans took the city in 1941, she was held in the ghetto and was among the founders of the FPO. In September 1943 she escaped through the sewers with the last fighters, carrying the group's archive, and joined Kovner's Jewish partisan unit in the forests.

After Vilna was freed in July 1944, she helped organize survivors for emigration to the Land of Israel. In December 1944 Kovner sent her to Romania to prepare an escape route to the Black Sea ports. She later wrote the book Flames in the Ash and worked as an educator documenting the Holocaust at Moreshet. She died in 1988.