Korczak-Marla, Rozka

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KORCZAK-MARLA, ROZKA

KORCZAK-MARLA, ROZKA (1921–1988), Zionist youth movement and underground leader, partisan. Korczak-Marla grew up in Plock, Poland, and was a member of the Zionist youth movement Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir. With the start of World War ii she fled to Vilna, then under Soviet control, and became a leader of the local Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir group. At the time of the German invasion in the summer of 1941, she remained in the Vilna area where within six months the Einsatzgruppen along with Lithuanian collaborators killed about 40,000 Jews. At a meeting of Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir activists in a convent just outside of Vilna to discuss the Jewish response, Abba *Kovner proposed that the remaining Jews of Vilna should ready themselves to resist the occupiers with arms. Korczak-Marla published the minutes of the ensuing discussion in her memoir of the period, Lehavot ba-Efer ("Flames in the Ashes," 1964). The protocol of the discussion is an important source for understanding the concerns and motivations of Zionist youth at the time.

Korczak-Marla was a member of the Fareinkte Partizaner Organizatsie (fpo; United Partisan Organization), which was created as a result of the meeting. She escaped from the ghetto to the Rudninkai Forest shortly after the suicide of the fpo leader Yiẓḥak Wittenberg, in July 1943. In the forest she took part in the establishment of Jewish partisan units. In July 1944, after the liberation of Vilna, Korczak-Marla returned to the city. At the end of 1944 she left for Palestine, where she joined kibbutz Eilon. After a while she moved to kibbutz Ein-Ḥoresh, along with other former partisans, including Abba Kovner. Korczak-Marla took part in the creation of Moreshet, the museum Bet Loḥamei ha-Getta'ot, the Givat Ḥavivah Holocaust study center, and the museum and study center at Yad Mordekhai.

[Robert Rozette]