DIMKE GELPERN (D. GELPERNAS)

DIMKE GELPERN (D. GELPERNAS) b. 1918)

            He was born in Kovno, Lithuania, into a family of an assimilated lawyer.  Until 1941, when he was confined to the ghetto, he lived in surroundings of assimilated, left-leaning intellectuals.  In the ghetto he grew close to the simple folk and learned Yiddish.  He was an active leader of the underground and partisan movement in the ghetto.  In the summer of 1944, during the liquidation of the Kovno ghetto, he was deported to the concentration camp of Dachau, and despite great hardships, he managed to survive the war and in 1945 lived for a time in Lodz, later returning to Lithuania.  His book Partizaner fun kaunaser geto (Partisan in the Kovno ghetto) (Moscow, 1948), 163 pp., written together with Meyer Yelin, is an important literary document of the Jewish partisan movement in Lithuania, and sheds light on the harsh and dangerous conditions in which the Jewish partisans carried out their struggles against the Nazis.

Sources: Y. Gar, Umkum fun yidishn kovne (The destruction of Jewish Kovno) (Munich, 1948), p. 190; S. Rabinovitsh, in Eynikeyt (Moscow) (September 21, 1948).