Featured Jewish Partisan - Nina Grutz Morecki (z"l)

Nina Grutz Morecki (z"l) was 18 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland. Nina endured the loss of her mother, father, sister and brother-in-law before being sent to Janowska Concentration Camp as part of a work detail.

She luckily escaped a killing pit outside of the camp, and fled deep into the forest where she encountered the Polish Underground and the partisans, for whom she worked for almost a year and a half. Nina provided them with important stamped documents that allowed them to create chaos and havoc among the German military, and perhaps even save other resistors. She did this knowing the danger and the terrible punishment she would face if caught.

Toward the end of the war, Nina met and married another survivor from Lvov, Josef Morecki. Together, they had three grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren at the time of Nina’s death in 2012.

Read about Nina's incredible story, and share your family's partisan stories here.

"The Partisan, 1942" — a poem by Laura Morowitz in memory of Faye Schulman

Faye Schulman

My heart lies in the woods

Red heart on soft white snow
Songs written in blood, not lead
written in red
Sheyne mydelach sinking to her knees
and weeping for her comrades her mother her lover
longing for warm blankets and warm food
Meyn sheyne mydelach not long for this world

Clean your gun, my pretty one, the smell of fire
clings to your hair
every night and every night again
resounds with footsteps cracking twigs distant thunder without rain
A crack a burst an echo
someone’s sister someone’s captain someone lost
you see them lying on a grave of leaves
Unblinking

Meyne Ketzele, my  kitten, pull your fur hat tighter round your chin
Begin again try to forget, to fargessen, to erase
Grip your pistol hold it tight don’t think
Here, beneath the branches shrouded in snow
The trees await their future lives as coffins
To live means for the moment not to know
But only to keep moving.

Laura Morowitz is a Professor of Art History at Wagner College New York. A  specialist on art in turn-of-the -century, as well as Nazi-occupied Vienna, she is the author of numeorus books and articles. She is the co-organizer, with Dr. Lori Weintrob of the international symposium on Heroines of the Holocaust: New Frameworks of Resistance, to be held on the Wagner College campus June 15-16 2022.