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

2. The Making of an Underground

15 2 TheMakingofanUnderground As a history, this introduction to Nitzotz is partial, fractured, and distorted. First and foremost, the discussion is limited by what survived the massive destruction of documents and human life. More generally, it seeks to distill to a handful the countless historical forces that precipitated the destruction of European Jewry. There were many organizations and individuals influential in the Kovno and Dachau resistance. Some may have been lost to history; others are beyond the scope of this project. A few developments, however, are of particular relevance to the publication of Nitzotz and warrant a brief overview. Kovno Before the Nazi Occupation The surviving issues of Nitzotz were circulated in Germany, in DachauKaufering concentration camp, but the roots of the journal were laid in Kovno, Lithuania. Because of its proximity to the German border, Kovno served as a haven for a few German Jewish families threatened by restrictive anti-Jewish laws in Germany in the mid-1930s. More moved to Kovno after the annexation of the Memel territory by the Germans early in 1939. Nonetheless , Irgun Brith Zion was predominantly a Lithuanian Jewish movement. As its mouthpiece, Nitzotz was very much a product of Lithuanian history, and particularly the history of Kovno Jewry. Lithuania was independent for the twenty-two years leading up to World War II. During that period, the nation served as a laboratory of political and cultural ideologies. Within two decades, its leadership was successively democratic, fascist, nationalist, Soviet, and finally National Socialist.1 The rapid succession of regimes set the stage for national and antisemitic tensions that, in turn, produced IBZ and Nitzotz. 16 . The Voice of Resistance The sovereignty of Lithuania had been under contention ever since its inception as a Christian monarchy in 1251. Poland, Prussia, and Russia all vied for the territory, accounting for the country’s diverse cultural and political heritage, until the annexation of most of its area to Russia following the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. Lithuania never acquiesced to Russian rule. It participated in the Polish uprisings of 1831 and 1863 and demanded independence at its first opportunity: the Lithuanian conference in Vilna in 1905. During this period, the Jews were subject to intense discrimination and pogroms by the czarist government. Although Jews had settled in Kovno as early as the fifteenth century, their long tenure in the city was interrupted by periodic expulsions from the city proper. As a result, tens of thousands of Jews left Lithuania for destinations such as North America and South Africa. Even more destructive to Lithuanian Jewry was the Russian military oppression during the Russian retreat in World War I. Approximately 120,000 Jews were expelled to the Russian interior, though many returned after the war. Together with the remaining 150,000 who suffered under German rule until 1918, they made up the bulk of Lithuania’s independent Jewish population.2 Despite the tumultuous history of Lithuanian Jewry, a thriving Jewish community developed early on in Slobodka (known in Lithuanian as Viljampole)—the district that would one day house the Kovno ghetto—across the Vilija (Neris) River from Kovno.3 By the end of the nineteenth century, Kovno, which had grown to absorb Slobodka, was home to a sizable Jewish population. In 1897, more than 35 percent of the city’s 70,000 inhabitants were Jewish. By contrast, ethnic Lithuanians constituted only 6.8 percent of the population (the remainder were primarily Russians and Poles). Kovno was home to many of eastern European Jewry’s preeminent religious and secular scholars. Among them was Abraham Mapu, widely considered the first modern Hebrew novelist, whose 1853 Ahavat Zion (Love of Zion) is a testament to Kovno’s early commitment to Zionism. Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spector, chief rabbi of Kovno for more than thirty years, was one of the most important pro-Zionist Orthodox rabbis of the nineteenth century.4 Building on this early proliferation of Jewish life and institutions, Kovno assumed a central status in eastern European Jewry during the interwar years. National self-determination was finally recognized in 1918, following The Making of an Underground . 17 the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Jews, uniquely threatened by Russian rule, played an important role in securing independence, both domestically and within the context of international diplomacy. The democratic government instituted at independence rewarded the Jews for their support. The Ministry for Jewish Affairs was established for self-government. The “Declaration of Principles...