Fania Brantsovsky, last living Vilna ghetto partisan resistance fighter, dies at 102

Recommendable! R.I.P. A heroine!

"Lithuania’s Jews and Yiddishists around the world are mourning the passing of Fania Brantsovsky, the last surviving member of the Jewish underground in the Vilna ghetto and a keeper of the flame of the city’s once glorious Yiddish past, who died at the age of 102 on Sunday in Vilnius.

Brantsovsky escaped the ghetto in 1942 and fought against the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Rudninkai forest with a group of Jewish partisans under the command of Abba Kovner. ...

It was a role that brought her world-wide acclaim and eventually local hostility, when Lithuanian nationalists began to equate her Soviet liberators with the Nazis, and tried to discredit partisans like her who had once considered the Russians their allies. ...

As a young girl, she was active in the rich Jewish life of Vilnius [Polish back then]. At the time [about 1927], Vilnius was home to more than 60,000 Jews and boasted over 100 synagogues, the largest of which had seating for more than 2,000. With a Jewish community that had been flourishing when Napoleon passed through the city in the 18th century, Vilnius was more than just a religious center. It was home to a rich cultural and political scene, all in the Yiddish language. ..."

Fania Brantsovsky, last living Vilna ghetto partisan resistance fighter, dies at 102 - Jewish Telegraphic Agency "Remaining in Lithuania after the war, she became a keeper of the flame of the city’s once illustrious Yiddish culture."