Rachel Margolis (28 October 1921 – 6 July 2015) was a Lithuanian

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators before and during World War II ...

partisan Partisan(s) or The Partisan(s) may refer to: Military * Partisan (military), paramilitary forces engaged behind the front line ** Francs-tireurs et partisans, communist-led French anti-fascist resistance against Nazi Germany during WWII ** Ital ...

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

and Holocaust historian.

Background

Margolis was born in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

, Lithuania in 1921. Her parents were Jewish. In 1941, when the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

occupied Lithuania, Margolis was sent to live with a Christian family. She instead decided to voluntarily enter the Jewish

Vilna ghetto The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered . During the approximately two years of its existen ...

in September 1942. She entered the resistance movement there and became active in the underground. She joined the

Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye The ''Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye'' (; "United Partisan Organization"; ; referred to as FPO by its Yiddish initials) was a Jewish resistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania that organized armed resistance against th ...

, formed that same year by poet

Abba Kovner Abba Kovner (; 14 March 1918 – 25 September 1987) was a Jewish partisan leader, and later Israeli poet and writer. In the Vilna Ghetto, his 1942 manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to murde ...

. Margolis wrote

"Everyone was anxious to fight... Our mission was to acquire weapons, complete militarily preparations, all with the aim of provoking an uprising in the ghetto. If we perished it would be with honour, having proved to humanity that we are not sheep going meekly to the slaughter."

In June 1943

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...

commanded the extermination of the ghetto. 4000 Jewish residents were sent to death camps and killed; 4000 more were sent to labour camps. Margolis and her future husband were one of the few hundreds that survived the ghetto, by escaping to the surrounding forests. They contracted

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...

but lived to continue their work with the resistance movement, joining a new unit and blowing up German infrastructure. Margolis was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust . Her mother and brother perished in the

Ponary massacre The Ponary massacre (), or the Paneriai massacre (), was the mass murder of up to 100,000 people, mostly Jews, Poles, and Russians, by German '' SD'' and '' SS'' and the Lithuanian '' Ypatingasis būrys'' killing squads, during World War II a ...

Post war

After the war, Margolis gained a Ph.D. in biology and was a teacher until the end of the 1980s. She helped establish Lithuania's only Holocaust museum, the Green House in Vilnius. Her work in the resistance has been honoured by US congress and the British House of Lords. Margolis's 2010 memoir ''A Partisan of Vilna'' recounts the author's escape from the Vilna Ghetto with the FPO (United Partisan Organization) resistance movement and the time spent in the forests of Lithuania with the partisans, active on sabotaging missions. Margolis found and published the long-lost diary of

Kazimierz Sakowicz Kazimierz Sakowicz (1894–1944) was a Poland, Polish journalist, soldier and member of the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish resistance against Nazism. A witness to the prolonged Ponary massacre in German-occupied Vilnius, he c ...

, a Polish Christian journalist who witnessed the

outside Vilnius, where tens of thousands of Jews were murdered. Margolis reconstructed Sakowicz's diary from fragments of paper found in lemonade bottles, text written on a 1941 calendar and other papers held in archives that were not accessible under Soviet rule. Beginning in 2008, the Lithuanian prosecutor general wanted to question Margolis as part of the investigation of the

Koniuchy massacre The Koniuchy massacre () or the Kaniūkai massacre () was a World War II massacre of civilians, mostly women and children, carried out in the village of Koniuchy (now Kaniūkai, Lithuania) on 29 January 1944 by a Soviet partisan unit together ...

when Soviet and Jewish partisans killed at least 38 civilians. Lithuanian newspapers referred to her as a terrorist and a murderer. Margolis also lived in

Rehovot Rehovot (, / ) is a city in the Central District (Israel), Central District of Israel, about south of Tel Aviv. In it had a population of . Etymology Israel Belkind, founder of the Bilu (movement), Bilu movement, proposed the name "Rehovot ...

, Israel.

References

External links

Profile
at the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies,

Keene State College Keene State College is a Public college, public Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Keene, New Hampshire. It is part of the University System of New Hampshire. Founded in 1909 as a teacher's college (originally, Ke ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Margolis, Rachel 2015 deaths 1921 births Lithuanian Jews Historians of the Holocaust Vilna Ghetto inmates Jewish female partisans Scientists from Vilnius Jewish women scientists Jewish biologists Lithuanian women scientists Lithuanian biologists Soviet biologists