YITSKHOK TSUKERMAN (YITZHAK ZUCKERMAN, ICCHAK CUKIERMAN)

YITSKHOK TSUKERMAN (YITZHAK ZUCKERMAN, ICCHAK CUKIERMAN) (December 13, 1915-June 17, 1981)

            He was born in Vilna, Lithuania.  He graduated from the Hebrew Tarbut high school.  From his student years, he was active as a leader in the “Young Pioneers” movement and in the youth organization Dror (Freedom).  From 1935 he devoted himself entirely the Pioneers and to youth labor.  He was a member of the central committee of the Young Pioneers in Poland.  From the start of the war in 1939 until mid-April, he was among the top leadership of the underground united youth organization in the occupied Soviet zone of Poland and carried out important work in the illegal aliya to the land of Israel.  Later, in Warsaw, where he became one of the top organizers and leaders of active resistance to the Nazis in both Warsaw and throughout occupied Poland.  For a time he lived in the Aryan sector of the city, using the name Antoni Wilczynski, and he served as the liaison between the Aryan side and resistance fighters in the ghetto.  In 1941 he was seized by the Gestapo, deported to the concentration camp near Kampinos, and sentenced to death.  He then escaped and returned to Warsaw.  He became a member of the Jewish national committee and helped administer the unification of the Pioneer and the Zionist-socialist fighting groups with the fighting groups of the Bund, which came together to form the united Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB-Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa).  In late 1942 he took part in the attempted assassination of a group of Nazi officers in a Cracow café, was wounded, and arrested, but again succeeded in escaping and returning to Warsaw.  He was later a member of the leadership preparing the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and as its first commander and deputy of Mordechai Anielewicz, he directed the battles in the burning city (April-May 1943).  When their ammunition ran out and the ghetto turned to rubble, he risked his life, led the surviving fighters from the ruins, and rescued them through the sewers to the Aryan side.  He was known in the Warsaw Ghetto by the name Captain Antek.  Later, at the time of the general Polish uprising in Warsaw (August 1944), he took part in the fighting and hid in the ruins until the liberation.  Over the years 1945-1947, he was a member of the central committee of Polish Jewry and helped organize Zionist pioneer activities.  He assisted in illegal aliya to the land of Israel, and in 1947 he himself settled there and was the founder of Kibbutz Loḥame hagetaot (Fighters of the Ghetto).  On behalf of the Histadruth campaign, in 1957 he visited the United States and gave speeches there.  His writing began even before the war in the Zionist-pioneer publications of Dror and continued in the underground Payn un gvure (Pain and might), published in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940.  He was editor, along with Elye Gutkovski, of Bafrayung, dror, yedies (Liberation, Dror, news) (Warsaw Ghetto, 1940-1942).  Until 1947 he contributed to Unzer vort (Our word), Arbeter tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper), and Nashe slovo (Our word), among other serials, in Lodz.  He also wrote articles and memoirs for Dos vort (The word) in Warsaw.  He edited Dapim min hadelika (Pages from the fire) by M. Tamaroff (Tenenbaum), for which he also wrote the author’s biography (pp. 3-26, in Yiddish translated into Hebrew) (Tel Aviv, 1947/1948).  He was co-editor with M. Basok of the large collection of materials and memoirs concerned with the fighting in the ghettos, concentration camps, and forests: Sefer milḥamot hagetaot (The fighting ghettos) (Tel Aviv, 1949; second printing 1954), for which he also wrote a chapter entitled “Mered hayehudim” (The rebellion of the Jews).  He also authored “In arbets lager” (In a work camp), which under the pen name A. Viltsh (by mistake listed as a work by Yekhezkl Viltshinski) was included in the anthology Tsvishn lebn un toyt (Between life and death) (Warsaw, 1955), pp. 24-29; this is only the first part concerning the Kampinos work camp, written in the Warsaw Ghetto and published in Dror in 1941.  He later wrote: Kapitlekh fun izovn (Chapters of a heritage) (Tel Aviv, 1982), 154 pp., in Hebrew as Perakim min haizavon (1981).  He co-edited his wife Zivia Lubetkin’s In umkum un oyfshtand (In destruction and uprising) (Tel Aviv, 1980).  He died in Kibbutz Loḥame hagetaot.

Sources: B. Mark, Dos bukh fun gvure (The book of valor) (Lodz: Dos naye lebn, 1947), see index; M. Neustadt, Khurbn un oyfshtand fun di idn in varshe (Destruction and resistance of the Jews in Warsaw [original: Destruction and Rising: The Epic of the Jews in Warsaw]), vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1948), see index; T. Bazhikovski, Tsvishn falndike vent (Amid falling walls) (Lodz, 1948); Sh. Izban, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (December 1, 1957); Męczeństwo, walka, zagłada, żydów w Polsce, 1939-1945 (Martyrdom, struggle and death of the Jews in Poland, 1939-1945) (Warsaw, 1960), see index; Biblyografye fun yidishe bikher vegn khurbn un gvure (Bibliography of Yiddish books on the Holocaust and heroism) (New York: YIVO, 1962), see index; Biblyografye fun artiklen vegn khurbn un gvure in der yidisher peryodike (Bibliography of articles on the Holocaust and heroism in Yiddish periodicals) (New York, 1966), see index.

Khayim Leyb Fuks

[Additional information provided by Ezra Lahad in: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 459.]