Background
Mordechaj Tenenbaum was born in 1916, Poland.
Mordechaj Tenenbaum was born in 1916, Poland.
Tanenbaum studied at the Warsaw University. Since 1935 he was member of the Jewish Socialist Youth organization "Frajhajt" (part of Poale Zion).
In 1938 he joined the staff of the Zionist Youth head office in Warsaw. In September 1939, Tenenbaum and his comrades left the city for Kovel and Vilna, hoping to reach Palestine. Since not enough immigration certificates were availa-ble, he obtained forged documents for many Zionist youth that allowed them to escape. Out of a sense of duty, however, Tenenbaum himself decided to remain in Vilna.
The Germans entered Vilna in late June 1941 and began murdering masses of Jews immediately. The possession of work permits saved Jews from death, and Tenenbaum provided many such false permits to Zionist youth. When there was a period of quiet, between incidents of murder, he sent word to Warsaw to tell of the atrocities that had taken place in Vilna. The leaders of the Zionist Youth Movement decided that its members in Vilna should be moved to Bialystok, where the situation was somewhat better.
On January 1, 1942, he issued a call for armed resistance at a meeting of Zionist youth. Using forged documents, he left Vilna for Grodno and Bialystok, where he organized armed undergrounds. Me then returned to the Zionist Youth head office in Warsaw and at a meeting of various Jewish political groups, asserted that the murder in Vilna indicated that the Germans planned to eradicate the Jews of Europe.
He was one of the founders of the short-lived united armed underground, the Antifascist Bloc in Warsaw. From Warsaw he also visited Zionist Youth Movement branches in several ghettos, obtaining intelligence and working with resistance leaders. In July 1942, he became a founder of the Warsaw underground, the Jewish Fighting Organization. He was sent back to Bialystok in November 1942, but on his arrival discovered that the Germans had sealed off the ghetto while liquidating neighboring Jewish communities. Tenenbaum went to Grodno, but on the way was shot in the leg. After the wound had healed he entered Bialystok, where he unified the underground movement and readied them for an armed uprising. He appealed to the general Polish underground to supply weapons, and to the Western world to save the remaining Jews of Poland. He also established an underground archive and kept a diary.
February 1943 saw a large deportation of Jews from Bialystok. Tenenbaum did not launch a revolt, but instead sent messengers to the partisans in the forest. Following a lively discussion as to whether the underground should escape to the forest or fight in the ghetto and then escape, Ten-enbaum’s view that they first fight in Bialystok was accepted. He became the commander of a unified Bialystok underground in July.
Believing the final destruction of the Bialystok ghetto was at hand, Tenenbaum launched an armed uprising on August 16, 1943. The strong German forces surrounding the ghetto foiled his plan for breaking out of the ghetto. Tenenbaum functioned superbly during the first day of fighting, but his exact fate is unknown; he may have fallen in battle or may have committed suicide.