Pre-World War II Zivia Lubetkin was born in
Byteń in the
Grodno Governorate of the
Russian Empire (present-day
Belarus). She joined the
Labor Zionist Movement at an early age. During her school years, Lubetkin was educated in Hebrew by private tutors. In her late teens she joined the
Zionist youth movement Dror, and in 1938 became a member of its Executive Council. In August 1939, she attended the twenty-first
Zionist Congress as a delegate of the Eretz Israel Labor bloc. After
Nazi Germany and later the
Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939 she made a perilous journey from the Soviet occupied part of the country to
Warsaw to join the underground there.
World War II In 1942, Lubetkin helped found the
left-wing Zionist
Anti-Fascist Bloc. This would be the first resistance organization in the Warsaw Ghetto to confront the German forces in combat. She also, as one of the founders of the ŻOB, served on the Warsaw Jewish community's political council, the Jewish National Committee (Żydowski Komitet Narodowy; ŻKN), and also served on the Coordinating Committee, an umbrella organization comprising the ŻKN and the non-Zionist
General Jewish Labour Bund (Bund), that sponsored the ŻOB. During her years of underground activities, the name
"Cywia" became the code word for Poland in letters sent by various resistance groups both within and outside of the
Warsaw Ghetto. She was one of the leaders of the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and one of only 34 fighters to survive the war. After leading her group of surviving fighters through the sewers of Warsaw with the aid of
Simcha "Kazik" Rotem in the final days of the ghetto uprising (on 10 May 1943) she continued her resistance activities in the rest of Warsaw outside the ghetto. She took part in the Polish
Warsaw Uprising in 1944, fighting in the units of the
Armia Ludowa.
Postwar life Following the
Second World War, Lubetkin was active in the
Holocaust survivors community in Europe, and helped organize the
Bricha, an organization staffed by operatives who helped Eastern and Central European Jews cross borders en route to
Mandate Palestine by
illegal immigration channels. She herself immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1946. She married
Yitzhak Zuckerman, the ŻOB commander, and they, along with other surviving ghetto fighters and
partisans founded
Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot and the
Ghetto Fighters' House museum located on its grounds. In 1961, she testified at the trial of captured Nazi
war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Her granddaughter,
Roni Zuckerman, became the
Israeli Air Force's first female fighter pilot in 2001. In the 2001 television film
Uprising, she was portrayed by English actress
Sadie Frost. == Writings ==