Vitka Kempner

Vitka Kempner (Hebrew: ויטקה קובנר‎; 14 March 1920, Kalisz – 14 February 2012)[1] was a Polish Jewish partisan leader during World War II.

She served in the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (FPO) and, alongside Rozka Korczak and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Nakam.

When Lithuania fell to the Germans eight months later, Kempner and tens of thousands of other Jews were forced into a ghetto, where she met Korczak and Kovner.

Kempner played an integral leading role in the organization, and is famous for blowing up a Nazi train line with a homemade bomb.

Kempner is remembered in the song Shtil, di nakht iz oysgeshternt by Hirsh Glick, which celebrates her heroic attack on a German convoy in the Vilnius sector in 1942.

Vitka Kempner (standing at far right) in the Vilna Ghetto with members of the FPO including Abba Kovner and Rozka Korczak .
Graves of Abba Kovner and Vitka Kempner