Jewish partisans and ghetto fighters

What this site is

This site tells the history of Jewish armed resistance in the Second World War: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the underground in the Vilna ghetto and the FPO, the Bielski partisans in the forests of western Belorussia, and fighters such as Abba Kovner, Vitka Kempner, Yitzhak Arad and Hannah Szenes. Every page is written in our own words from published sources, which are listed at the end of each page.

The site is independent. It is not linked to the Ghetto Fighters' House (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot) and does not speak for it. Until 2020 this address hosted a partisans database that was a project of the Ghetto Fighters' House; that database is offline, and this is a new site. The story of the old database is on the About page.

If you arrived here from an old link to the partisans database, the old cards are no longer online. Our page Find a partisan record explains where records of Jewish partisans and ghetto fighters are kept today and how to search them.

The Hebrew site has many more pages, on other ghettos, forests, units and people. You can start from the Hebrew home page.

Pages in English

• About · History of this address

  About this site and the old partisans database

  What this site is, and what happened to the old partisans database at this address.

• Family research · Archives and databases

  How to find a partisan record

  Where records of Jewish partisans and ghetto fighters are kept today, and how to search them.

• History · Overview

  Jewish partisans in the Second World War

  Who the Jewish partisans were, how many fought and where.

• 
  Warsaw · 19 April to 16 May 1943

  The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

  The 27-day revolt of the Warsaw ghetto fighters in April and May 1943.

• Vilna · 1941 to 1944

  The Vilna ghetto and the FPO

  The Vilna ghetto underground, from Kovner's call to the escape through the sewers.

• Western Belorussia · Naliboki forest · 1942 to 1944

  The Bielski partisans

  The Bielski brothers' forest unit, which protected about 1,200 Jews.

• 
  Švenčionys · Naroch forest · Israel

  Yitzhak Arad

  Ghetto underground member and Soviet partisan who became an IDF general, chairman of Yad Vashem and a leading historian.

• 
  Vilna · Rudniki forest · Ein HaHoresh

  Abba Kovner

  Vilna ghetto underground leader, commander of the Avengers in the Rudniki forest, and Hebrew poet.

• 
  Kalisz · Vilna · Rudniki forest

  Vitka Kempner

  Vilna ghetto fighter who carried out the FPO's first sabotage and led patrols in the Rudniki forest.

• 
  Budapest · Sdot Yam · Yugoslavia and Hungary

  Hannah Szenes

  Parachutist from Mandatory Palestine and poet, captured in Hungary and executed in Budapest in 1944.