Zivia Lubetkin

Zivia Lubetkin
Before the 1939 invasion of Poland
Born	9 November 1914 Byteń, Poland
Died	14 July 1976 (aged 61) Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot, Israel
Nationality	Polish, Israeli
Known for	One of the leaders of the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Combat Organization), participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising

Zivia Lubetkin (Polish: Cywia Lubetkin IPA: [ˈt͡sɨvja luˈbɛtkʲin], Hebrew: צביה לובטקין‎, nom de guerre: Celina; 1914–1976) was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and the only woman on the High Command of the resistance group Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ŻOB). She survived the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland and immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1946, at the age of 32.

Biography

Pre-World War II

Zivia Lubetkin was born in Poland in Byteń near Słonim (now in Belarus). She joined the Labor Zionist Movement at an early age. In her late teens she joined the Zionist youth movement Dror, and in 1938 became a member of its Executive Council. After Nazi Germany and later the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939 she made a perilous journey from the Soviet occupied part of the country to Warsaw to join the underground there.

World War II

In 1942, Lubetkin helped found the left-wing Zionist Anti-Fascist Bloc. She also, as one of the founders of the ŻOB, served on the Warsaw Jewish community's political council, the Jewish National Committee (Żydowska Komitet Narodowy; ŻKN), and also served on the Coordinating Committee, an umbrella organization comprising the ŻKN and the non-Zionist General Jewish Labour Bund (Bund), that sponsored the ŻOB. During her years of underground activities, the name "Cywia" became the code word for Poland in letters sent by various resistance groups both within and outside of the Warsaw Ghetto. She was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and one of only 34 fighters to survive the war. After leading her group of surviving fighters through the sewers of Warsaw with the aid of Simcha "Kazik" Rotem in the final days of the ghetto uprising (on May 10, 1943), she continued her resistance activities in the rest of Warsaw outside the ghetto. She took part in the Polish Warsaw Uprising in 1944, fought in the units of the Armia Ludowa.

Postwar life

Following the Second World War, Lubetkin was active in the Holocaust survivors community in Europe, and helped organize the Bricha, an organization staffed by operatives who helped Eastern and Central European Jews cross borders en route to Mandate Palestine by illegal immigration channels. She herself immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1946. She married Yitzhak Zuckerman, the ŻOB commander, and they, along with other surviving ghetto fighters and partisans founded Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot and the Ghetto Fighters' House museum located on its grounds. In 1961, she testified at the trial of captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Her two children, Shimon (b. 1947) and Yael (b. 1949), were born in Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetta’ot, where she lived for the remainder of her life and died in [1976?]. Her granddaughter, Roni Zuckerman, became the Israeli Air Force's first female fighter pilot in 2001.

Writings

• Lubetkin, Ziviah. (sic) Die letzten Tage des Warschauer Gettos. pp. 47, illus. Berlin: VVN-Verlag, 1949 (from: Commentary (magazine) , New York). Also in: Neue Auslese. ed. Alliierter Informationsdienst, Berlin, no. 1, 1948, pp. 1–13
• Lubetkin, Zivia. Aharonim `al ha-homah. (Ein Harod, 1946/47)
• Lubetkin, Zivia. Bi-yemei kilayon va-mered (In the Days of Destruction and Revolt). Pp. 127. Tel-Aviv: HaKibbutz HaMeuchad, 1953.
  • ------------- In the days of destruction and revolt translated from Hebrew by Ishai Tubbin; revised by Yehiel Yanay; biographical index by Yitzhak Zuckerman; biographical index translated by Debby Garber. Pp. 338, illus. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Pub. House: Am Oved Pub. House, 1981

References

• Gutman, Israel, Zivia Lubetkin, in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, New York: Macmillan (1990), vol.3, pp. 914–915
• Transcript: Zivia Lubetkin's testimony at the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann