The Fall of a Sparrow: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner (review)

Dina Porat succeeds admirably in presenting a positive yet critical narrative of Abba Kovner's life and the events that shaped his personality, art, and political views. The book is organized into four parts corresponding to specific periods in Kovner's eventful life. The first period (1918-41) covers his childhood and youth; the second (1941-44), his pivotal role in the Vilna ghetto underground and subsequent leadership of the United Partisan Organization (known by its Yiddish acronym, FPO); the third (1944-49), the post-liberation years in Europe and in Eretz Israel, where he participated in the War of Independence; and finally (1949-87), his life as a writer and public figure often out of step with Israeli politics.

Kovner was born in March 1918 in Sevastopol (not in Vilna, as stated on the jacket of the book). Faced with civil war and the imposition of Soviet rule, the Kovners left Russia for Vilna. As a youth, Kovner joined the Zionist-socialist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair (Young Guard). Much of his adolescent and early adult life revolved around the movement. Admired for his leadership qualities, Kovner was known for his critical thinking. His independence of mind and his uncompromising judgments often went against the political wisdom of the Zionist left and the Hashomer Hatzair leadership. Yet, at first, Kovner shared their Zionist-socialist worldview and their admiration for the Soviet communist "fatherland."

When he was just 21, Kovner's youthful optimism and faith in Zionist redemption were challenged by events that, as he said, "turned his world upside down." The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939 brought in its wake the German invasion of Poland and, subsequently, the arrival of Jewish refugees in Vilna. Among the refugees were Hashomer Hatzair activists who spoke of the violence against the Jews. Porat vividly describes the impact of these events on Kovner, who in 1940 foresaw that the world would become a "gallows for the Jewish people" (p. 16).

The encounter with Soviet reality, both during the Russian occupation of Vilna in September-October 1939 and again in 1940-41, convinced Kovner that no salvation was to be expected from Stalin's Russia. His rejection of all things Soviet was solidified in 1942-43, when he and his fellow partisans operating under Soviet command were exposed to blatant, even murderous antisemitism. The bitterness of this experience with Stalinist reality also affected his relationship with Hashomer Hatzair's pro-Soviet leadership. Kovner's righteous condemnation of Jewish leaders may well have derived from the fact that he was among the first to proclaim that, under German rule, the Jews were doomed to total destruction. Porat documents meticulously how he concluded that the mass killings in and around Vilna were not just an aberration, but the local manifestation of a concerted program to kill all European Jews. Kovner famously exhorted the Jews of Vilna on January 1, 1942: "Let us not go like lambs to the slaughter!" While the manifesto was greeted with some disbelief, it had the two-fold effect of undermining the illusion that survival under the Nazis was possible and galvanizing Jewish resistance in defense of Vilna's ghetto population.

Porat also addresses still-prevalent misconceptions of what Kovner meant by his call for resistance. She argues that Kovner did not distinguish between the young people who became partisans and the rest of the community; in short, he did not juxtapose "fighters" and "nonfighters." Yet, it appears that Kovner fought a losing battle in the last years of his life when he objected to the use of the phrase "like lambs to the slaughter" in a derogatory way to refer to the victims of the Holocaust.

Despite Kovner's intentions, in reality, fighters' and non-fighters' objectives and modes of existence were distinctly different and often in conflict. From its inception in January 1942, the FPO was confronted with three interrelated dilemmas. First, underground activity...