Non­fic­tion

Nit­zotz: The Spark of Resis­tance of Kovno Ghet­to and Dachau-Kaufer­ing Con­cen­tra­tion Camp

Lau­ra Wein­rib, ed. and intro; Estee Wein­rib, trans.
  • Review
By – September 13, 2011
Just two months after the liq­ui­da­tion of the Kovno ghet­to, a Dachau- Kaufer­ing issue of Nit­zotz appeared. Its edi­tors were Abra­ham Melamed and Shlo­mo Frenkel Shafir. The first two issues were writ­ten by Frenkel from the BBC night­ly, Ger­man broad­casts while he was in Kaufer­ing 1 and II. These secret pub­li­ca­tions were a result of the under­ground meet­ings of the IBZ (Irgun Brith Zion) begun secret­ly in the Kovno Ghet­to and con­tin­ued in the Kaufer­ing camps, where they were an inspi­ra­tion to oth­er Zion­ists in the camps. They are Hebrew lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions, a lan­guage for­bid­den by their occu­piers, but con­tin­ued in secret. The five issues of Nit­zotz cir­cu­lat­ed in Dachau-Kefer­ing that appear in this vol­ume are a small sam­ple of the 42 that were pro­duced dur­ing that peri­od. Begun in oppo­si­tion to the Sovi­et occu­pa­tion, it con­tin­ued under the Nazis. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the bulk of IBZ archives have been lost to his­to­ry. Exten­sive bib­li­og­ra­phy, notes, photography.
Mar­cia W. Pos­ner, Ph.D., of the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al and Tol­er­ance Cen­ter of Nas­sau Coun­ty, is the library and pro­gram direc­tor. An author and play­wright her­self, she loves review­ing for JBW and read­ing all the oth­er reviews and arti­cles in this mar­velous periodical.

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