Background
Kovner was born in Sevastopol on March 14, 1918.
Kovner was born in Sevastopol on March 14, 1918.
In his youth he joined the left-wing Zionist youth movement Ha-Shomer ha-Tsair. He was in Vilna when the Germans entered on June 24, 1941, and with other members of the movement, hid in a convent at the edge of the city.
On New Year’s Eve, 1941, he spoke out at a meeting of Zionist Youth in the convent. He asserted that Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews, and that the Jews could not allow themselves to “go like sheep to the slaughter,” but must offer armed resistance. As a result of the meeting in the convent, the United Partisan Organization was founded three weeks later. Kovner became one of its leaders, and, after the arrest and suicide of its commander, Yitzhak Wittenberg, in the summer of 1943, Kovner took his place.
When the Nazis began to round up Vilna Jews for Estonian work camps, the organization launched its revolt, believing that the liquidation of the ghetto had begun. Without community support, however, the revolt floundered, and most of the fighters made their way to the Rudninkai Forest. There they formed the Revenge partisan unit, with Kovner at its helm.
When the Rudninkai area was liberated, Kovner became involved in setting up the Beriha movement, which sought to take Jews clandestinely out of eastern Europe to central Europe and from there to Palestine. He also was a leader of the Organization of Eastern European Survivors, which tried to unify the remaining Jews in response to the dangers which were still imminent. Among other things, the organization carried out revenge operations against former Nazis and their collaborators.
Kovner went to Palestine toward the end of 1945 to enlist help for his operations in Europe. While making his way back to Europe, he was arrested by the British and returned to Palestine. Released in 1946, he and his wife, also a resistance leader, joined Kibbutz Ein ha-Horesh. Kovner took part in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and then settled down to a career in writing poetry and prose.
His symbolist poetry dealt mainly with the Holocaust and the State of Israel.