22 Facts About Josef Glazman

Josef Glazman was a Lithuanian-Jewish resistance leader in the Vilna Ghetto.

Josef Glazman was born in 1913 in the town of Alytus in southern Lithuania, then part of Russia.

Josef Glazman became head of the Betar youth movement in Lithuania in 1937, and at some point served in the Lithuanian Army.

Josef Glazman was a member of the Zionist-Revisionist political movement and was the editor of the Revisionist newspaper Hamdina.

Josef Glazman lost his position with Betar when it was disbanded by the Soviets, along with all other Jewish political groups, shortly after they invaded.

When Nazi Germany invaded Lithuania in June 1941, Josef Glazman was in Vilnius and was taken outside the city for forced labor by the Germans.

Josef Glazman was a member of the Jewish ghetto police, partly to further the resistance activities he was involved in.

Josef Glazman helped found the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye in January 1942.

The head was Yitzhak Wittenberg, and Josef Glazman was one of two deputy commanders of the FPO, as well as being in charge of its intelligence gathering.

Josef Glazman was in charge of two of the FPO's battalions, which over time grew to about 100 to 120 individuals.

In June 1942, Josef Glazman changed jobs from the ghetto police force to the ghetto's housing department, where he was able to help find hiding locations for members of the FPO and others who were without official status in the ghetto.

Josef Glazman helped to select ex-military personnel to help train FPO members.

Josef Glazman refused as he feared that it was an attempt to force him to participate in choosing which Jews would be deported to forced labor or extermination.

Josef Glazman was arrested by the Jewish ghetto police in October 1942 and spent several weeks in jail until being released in December.

Gens then threatened that if Josef Glazman did not go to Rzesza, Gens would resign as head of the ghetto and the FPO would have to take over the administration.

Gens promised that Josef Glazman would be able to return to Vilna within a short period of time.

The freeing of Josef Glazman was the signal to the ghetto inhabitants that the FPO existed and that there was a group organizing for armed resistance against the Germans in the ghetto.

Josef Glazman was questioned repeatedly by the police over the next few months, but was not arrested again.

Josef Glazman's escape to the forest was mainly caused by his belief that the ghetto inhabitants would not follow the FPO into an armed revolt.

Josef Glazman was suffering from the persecution of the ghetto's administrative leaders.

Once in the Naroch Forest, Josef Glazman's group formed a partisan band named "Nekama" and became a part of a larger Soviet-organized partisan force commanded by Fyodor Markov.

Josef Glazman's band attempted to leave the area but did not succeed.