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Unity Under Existential Threat
- Abba Kovner rallied fragmented Jewish youth movements into organized armed resistance and partisan cells during WWII.
- His FPO coordination shows how ideological rivals unified when survival and direct action became imperative.
Wittenberg's Sacrifice To Save A Ghetto
- Yitzak Wittenberg surrendered to the Nazis to spare the Vilna Ghetto from destruction and then died in custody.
- Kovner then assumed leadership and fled with surviving fighters into the forests to continue insurgency.
Facing The Scale Changed Strategy
- Encountering death camps like Majdanek transformed Kovner's view from local revenge to confronting the Holocaust's industrial scale.
- That realization shifted goals from ghetto defense to contemplating wide-ranging retaliation and deterrence.