1. Abba Kovner was a Jewish partisan leader, and later Israeli poet and writer.
23 Facts About Abba Kovner
1. 2.
Abba Kovner fled into the forest, joined Soviet partisans, and survived the war.
3.
Abba Kovner made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1947, which would become the State of Israel one year later.
4.
Abba Kovner was born on 14 March 1918 in Ashmyany.
5.
Abba Kovner's parents were Rochel Taubman and Israel Kovner, whose other sons were Gedalia and Michel, the youngest of them.
6.
Abba Kovner was educated at the Hebrew Tarbut Gymnasium and Stefan Batory University's Faculty of Arts.
7.
Abba Kovner's father had a shop in Vilnius selling leather on Julian Klaczko Street.
8.
Abba Kovner was a cousin of the Israeli Communist Party leader Meir Vilner.
9.
All Jews were ordered by the occupiers to move into the Vilna Ghetto, but Abba Kovner managed to hide with several Jewish friends in a Dominican convent headed by Polish Catholic nun Anna Borkowska in the city's suburbs.
10.
Abba Kovner concluded that in order for any revolt to be successful, a Jewish resistance fighting force needed to be assembled.
11.
Abba Kovner informed the remaining Jews that their relatives who had been taken away had been murdered in the Ponary massacre and argued that it was best to die fighting.
12.
Abba Kovner became its leader in July 1943, after Wittenberg was named by a tortured comrade and turned himself in to prevent an attack on the ghetto.
13.
In pursuit of Plan A, members of the group were infiltrated into water and sewage plants in several cities, while Abba Kovner went to Palestine in search of a suitable poison.
14.
Abba Kovner discussed Nakam with Yishuv leaders, though it is not clear how much he told them, and he does not seem to have received much support.
15.
The Katzir brothers confirmed that they gave poison to Abba Kovner, but said that he only mentioned Plan B and they denied that Weizmann could be involved.
16.
Abba Kovner was imprisoned for a few months in Cairo, and Plan A was abandoned.
17.
Abba Kovner joined the Haganah in December 1947, and soon after Israel declared independence in May 1948 he became a captain in the Givati Brigade of the IDF.
18.
From 1946 to his death, Abba Kovner was a resident of Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh.
19.
Abba Kovner was active in Mapam as well as in HaShomer HaTzair, but never took on a formal political role.
20.
Abba Kovner played a major part in the design and construction of several Holocaust museums, including the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv.
21.
Abba Kovner died in 1987 of laryngeal cancer, perhaps due to his lifelong heavy smoking, at his home in Ein HaHoresh.
22.
Abba Kovner was survived by his wife Vitka Kempner, who married Kovner in 1946, and their two children.
23.
Abba Kovner testified about his experiences during the war at the trial of Adolf Eichmann.