page_title: Shlomo Shafir
section_title: Zionist underground movement " Irgun Brit Zion " and Zionist underground newspaper " Nitzotz " (1944-1945)
hierarchical_section_title: Shlomo Shafir / Zionist underground movement " Irgun Brit Zion " and Zionist underground newspaper " Nitzotz " (1944-1945)
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Irgun Brith Zion-Mitglieder im Ghetto Kowno (1943)English: Members of Irgun Brith Zion in Kovno ghetto, 1943
context_page_description: Shlomo Shafir was an Israeli journalist and historian. His work included the underground Hebrew-language publication Nitzotz, circulated in the Kovno Ghetto and Dachau concentration camp; the Israeli Labor Party newspaper, Davar; and other Hebrew, German, and English language writings.
  Shafir was born in Germany as Selimar Frenkel. During the Second World War, he was a prisoner in the Kovno Ghetto and was subsequently transferred first to Stutthof and then to Dachau concentration camp. After World War II he emigrated to Israel. In the 1960s he was stationed in Washington D.C. as the US correspondent for the newspaper Davar. In later years he served as the foreign affairs editor of Davar and the editor of the journal of the World Jewish Congress, Gesher.
context_section_description: Frenkel was active in an underground movement, "Irgun Brit Zion" ( IBZ), founded in 1940 under Soviet rule. IBZ was a Zionist youth organization. Most of its members favored a moderate socialist approach, but the organization also included religious followers of Bnei Akiva as well as several Revisionists, who were more right-wing. In June 1941, with the Nazi invasion of Lithuania, Kovno's Jews were confined to the Kovno Ghetto. Much of the ghetto's population was killed early on, and in June 1943, the remainder were subjected to reorganization of the ghetto as the Kaunas concentration camp. During this period, Frenkel was a member of the anti -Nazi resistance and helped to publish IBZ's underground newspaper, Nitzotz . The 42 issues of Nitzotz were written in Hebrew and circulated secretly to the members of IBZ and to the organization's sympathizers. Their articles discussed the future of the land of Israel and the political consequences of the crimes committed against the Jewish people; the authors demanded restitution, war crimes tribunals, and international support for a Jewish state. Frenkel would later resume publication of Nitzotz in Dachau-Kaufering concentration camp, making it the only known Hebrew-language journal to survive the concentration camps.
caption: affiliation of members of the Irgun Brit Zion in the ghetto Kauen, 1943. Selimar Frenkel standing in the middle of the back
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