1. Tosia Altman was a courier and smuggler for Hashomer Hatzair and the Jewish Combat Organization during the German occupation of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
19 Facts About Tosia Altman
1. 2.
Tosia Altman smuggled weapons and explosives into the ghetto and established a chapter of the ZOB in the Krakow Ghetto.
3.
Tosia Altman was captured two weeks later when the factory she was sheltering in caught fire.
4.
Tosia Altman joined the headquarters of Hashomer Hatzair in Vilna, and helped to organize several unsuccessful attempts to send members of the youth movements illegally to Palestine.
5.
Tosia Altman was considered to be an inspiring leader and good at organizing.
6.
Tosia Altman traveled frequently to Galicia and Czestochowa despite restrictions on Jews traveling by train, where she attempted to organize clandestine education and even training kibbutzim.
7.
Tosia Altman sent postcards to youth movement leaders in Vienna, Vilna, and Switzerland, describing the suffering of the Jews under the Nazi regime.
8.
Tosia Altman sent food packages into the Warsaw Ghetto for her family and friends.
9.
Tosia Altman described the horrible conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto, but still urged the Zionist leaders to evacuate there since the Vilna Ghetto was being systematically depopulated in a series of massacres at Ponary.
10.
On her trip back to Warsaw, Tosia Altman visited several eastern Polish ghettos, including Grodno, to pass along this message.
11.
Tosia Altman was joined by Arie Wilner, another Hashomer Hatzair activist, in an attempt to convince the Polish resistance groups to arm them.
12.
Tosia Altman continued her visits to other ghettos, this time organizing armed resistance.
13.
Tosia Altman was instrumental in setting up a chapter of the ZOB in the Krakow Ghetto.
14.
Afraid that the Germans had tracked her down, Tosia Altman returned to the ghetto, replaced by Yitzhak Zuckerman as liaison to the Polish resistance.
15.
Tosia Altman, although wounded, was one of six who managed to escape and was found by Zivia Lubetkin and Marek Edelman, who smuggled her out to the Aryan side.
16.
Tosia Altman hid with other Jewish fighters in a celluloid factory.
17.
Severely burned, Tosia Altman was forced into the open where she was captured by police who turned her over to the Gestapo.
18.
Tosia Altman was posthumously awarded the Silver Cross of the Military Order of Virtuti Militari by the decision of the President of the Polish People's Republic on April 1,1948, for her merits in the underground struggle during the occupation.
19.
Tosia Altman was portrayed by American actress Leelee Sobieski in the 2001 television film Uprising.