Both of the parents of Irving Kempner, MOTL New England’s Director of Development, survived the Holocaust. Irv’s father David Kempner and his cousin Vitka were both raised in Kalisz Poland.
Irv’s father survived the war as a slave laborer and was liberated by the US Army from the Mathausen concentration in Austria in May 1945. Vitka survived the war having escaped the Vilna Ghetto and joined the Partisans of Vilna fighting the Nazi Occupation forces. After the war she eventually immigrated to Israel with her husband Abba Kovner, the leader of the Partisans of Vilna. Read more about Vitka Kempner Kovner heroism in the History of the Partisans of Vilna.
Vitka Kempner was born on March 14, 1920 in the county-town of Kalisz (Kalisch), western Poland, one-third of whose population was Jewish. Her parents, Hayyah and Zevi, ran a retail business. Her large tribe of grandparents, uncles and cousins were liberal both in outlook and in lifestyle. At home they spoke Polish, not Yiddish. Kempner, who studied at a progressive Jewish school, was independent from her early years, working for her living even at a young age. The first woman to join the Revisionist youth movement Betar, she took pride in belonging to a militarist group. Only in the twelfth grade did her friends convince her to transfer to Ha-Shomer ha-Za’ir. Upon the completion of her studies in the gymnasium, she moved to Warsaw, where she studied in a seminary for…
Vitka Kempner carried out the first act of sabotage against Germans. For a long time she patrolled and investigated the time-table of German military trains that reached Vilna—activity which involved mortal danger. Kempner is featured prominently in Aviva Kempner 1989 documentary called the partisans of Vilna.
Page 156, Headline: The stories in Partisans of Vilna, stirring and painful, extend our knowledge of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust…
