Rozka orRuzka Korczak (1921,Płock – 1988) was aJewish partisan leader duringWorld War II. APolish Jew, she served in theFareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye and, alongsideVitka Kempner and founderAbba Kovner, assumed a leadership role[citation needed] in its successor group, the Avengers (Nakam).
Korczak was born in April 1921 inBielsko, to a cattle dealer.[1] Her family moved to a small village in Płock where she attended public school.[2] In eighth grade, she organized a Jewish student strike to protest Anti-Semitism in the school.[1] As a teenager, she joined a Zionist organization calledHaShomer HaTzair (the young guard).[2]
During theinvasion of Poland by Germany in 1939, Korczak fled to Lituania and metVitka Kempner in VilnIUS thanks toHaShomer HaTzair.[3] Upon Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, she co-founded theFareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (FPO) withAbba Kovner and Kempner in 1942.[4] They smuggled weapons into theVilna Ghetto and smuggled Jews out.[3]
As the situation worsened in the ghetto, she left it in September 1943 with the last group of fighters passing through the sewers and took refuge in the forests ofRūdninkai andNaroch.[4] After theRed Army occupied Vilnius in July 1944, she and her companions focused on helping Jewish refugees and their emigration toPalestine. She arrived there on December 12, 1944.[3][5]
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