# Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye

The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (Yiddish: פֿאַראײניקטע פּאַרטיזאַנער אָרגאַניזאַציע‎; "United Partisan Organization"; Lithuanian: Jungtinė Partizanų Organizacija; referred to as FPO by its Yiddish initials) was a Jewish resistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during World War II. The clandestine organisation was established by communist and Zionist partisans. Their leaders were writer Abba Kovner, Josef Glazman and Yitzhak Wittenberg.

## Establishment of the FPO

The FPO was formed on January 21, 1942, in the Vilna Ghetto. It took on the motto: "We will not allow them to take us like sheep to the slaughter." This was the first Jewish resistance organization established in the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe in World War II, followed by Łachwa underground in August 1942. Unlike in other ghettos – where the underground resistance was coordinated to some extent with the officials of the local Jewish establishment – Vilna's Jacob Gens, head of the ghetto, cooperated with German officials in stopping armed resistance. The FPO brought together Socialist Zionists, right-wing Revisionist Zionists, Communists/Marxists and Bundists. It was headed by Yitzhak Wittenberg, Josef Glazman, and Abba Kovner.
The goals of the FPO were to establish self-defense in the ghetto, to sabotage German industrial and military activities and to join the partisan and Red Army’s fight against the Nazis. Abe (Abba) Kovner, the movement's leader, and 17 members of the local Zionist group Hashomer Hatzair, stationed at a Polish Catholic convent for an order of Dominican Sisters, sheltered from the Nazis by Mother Superior Anna Borkowska (Sister Bertranda), who was the first to supply hand grenades and other weapons to the Vilnius ghetto underground.

## Crushing of the revolt

The FPO did not succeed in its mission. In early 1943, the Germans caught a resistance member in the forest. The Judenrat, one of the widely used administrative agencies imposed by Nazi Germany, in response to German threats, gave Wittenberg over to the Gestapo. The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye organized an uprising. The FPO was able to rescue Wittenberg through an armed struggle and then set up a small militia. The Judenrat did not tolerate this, because the Nazis gave them an ultimatum to end the resistance or face extermination. The Judenrat knew that Jews were smuggling weapons into the ghetto and when a Jew was arrested for buying a revolver, they finally gave the FPO an order to withdraw. The Judenrat turned the people against the resistance members by making them seem like selfish enemies who were provoking the Nazis. Jacob Gens emphasized the people's responsibility for one another, saying that resistance was sacrificing the good of the community. As the Germans demanded that Wittenberg should be handed over to them, the Judenrat and Gens convinced the majority of the inhabitants of the ghetto to acquiesce to that request, arguing that tens of thousands should not be sacrificed for the sake of one man. As people assembled insisting that Wittenberg should be given to the Germans, he agreed to surrender to the Gestapo and was found dead in his cell on the next morning, having committed suicide according to most accounts. Discouraged by the attitude of the population of the ghetto, the FPO decided not to resist there and began to gradually relocate to the forests.
When the Nazis came to liquidate the ghetto in 1943, the members of the FPO again congregated. Gens took control of the liquidation so as to rid the ghetto of the Germans, but helped fill the quota of Jews with those who would fight but were not necessarily part of the resistance. The FPO fled to the forest, where most were able to reach Soviet partisan units. FPO members participated in the Vilnius Offensive led by the Soviet army in July 1944.

## Survivors

Fania Brantsovsky, 22 May 1922 - 22 September 2024 (aged 102), was the last known surviving member of the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye. Remaining in Lithuania after the war, she served as the Vilnius Yiddish Institute's librarian, and a beloved teacher there, lifelong advocate for the memory and legacy of the culture and heritage of the once illustrious Jewish Lithuanian community.