Zivia Lubetkin

Zivia Lubetkin was born in 1914 in Bycień

Lubetkin was born in 1914 in Byteń, near Slonim, in what is now Belarus. She grew up in a traditional Jewish home, one of 7 siblings, and studied Hebrew with private tutors. At 16 she joined the Dror youth movement and trained on HeHalutz farms.

In 1938 she moved to Warsaw to coordinate training for the movement and joined the Dror Executive Council. In August 1939 she was a delegate to the 21st Zionist Congress in Geneva. When the war began she went east to Soviet-held territory, then returned to German-occupied Warsaw in early 1940.

In the Warsaw Ghetto she represented Dror and took part in founding the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) in July 1942. She ran its couriers and worked on its finance committee. She was among the leaders of the 1943 uprising, led surviving fighters out through the sewers, and fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

After the war she helped organize the Bricha and immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1946. She married Yitzhak Zuckerman, and with other survivors they founded Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot and the Ghetto Fighters' House. In 1961 she testified at the Eichmann trial, and she lived on the kibbutz until her death in 1978.