in the name of Halina Woronywicz. |
Haika, who looked Polish, moved between the members of the underground and acted as liaison officer, disregarding the Nazi ordinances. Eventually a friend in the Catholic Polish underground supplied her with a forged birth certificate signed by a priest. The name Halina Woronywicz was supplied by Mordechai Tennenbaum, from the central committee of the "Halutz" ("Pioneer") movement. |
written by Mordechai Tennenbaum. |
Until August 1943 Haika operated in the Jewish underground in many of the ghettos, and outside them: Vilna, Bialystok, Warsaw, Czenstokhov, Lublin, Grodno. Her center of operations was the ghetto of Bialystok. Besides liasing between the various ghettos and the Aryan side, Haika was also active in obtaining weapons and smuggling them into the ghetto. She also frequently visited the head of the Judenrat in the city, and kept in close contact with him. |
On the 16th of August 1943, when the Germans started their program to annihilate the ghetto, the Bialystok Ghetto Revolt broke out. It lasted one day. Afterwards Haika went out to her Aryan friend in an attempt to organise hiding places for the refugees from the fighting, and to try to make contact with the partisan group that had been sent out from the ghetto by the movement before the German attack started. From August 1943 to August 1944, Haika operated in the town of Bialystok and the whole surrounding region, in contact with the headquarters of the Soviet Partisans Brigade. She can take credit for setting up an underground cell of Germans, who initally supplied weapons to the Jews and later co-operated with the Soviet Partisans Brigade. |
The well through which members of the underground gained access to their bunker in Bialystok Forest. |
After the liberation of Warsaw, Haika left Bialystok, to which she had returned from the forest together with the headquarters of the Soviet Partisans Brigade, and settled in the ruins of Warsaw. |
The Holocaust Museum, Washington
The Ghetto Fighters' House Museum
Previous page | Next page | Home |