Eta Wrobel, who led a partisan unit that fought the Nazis in World War II, was born in 1918 in Lukow, Poland, into a large Jewish family of ten children. Out of the ten, she was the only one to survive the Holocaust. Below are some interesting facts about this remarkable woman.
“Born a Fighter”
Eta Wrobel’s father taught his children to help others, no matter the circumstances, and she took that to heart. When the Nazis conquered Poland at the start of WWII, things got horrifically bad for Poland’s Jews. Eta, who described herself as “born a fighter”, was determined to do what she could to resist. She worked in a restaurant, where she stole weapons from Nazis when they hung up their coats, and passed them on to the resistance. She also worked as a cleaner, and passed on to the resistance any useful information she overheard. In addition, she forged false identity papers for Jews until 1942, when her ghetto was liquidated.
Eta’s resistance activities eventually got her arrested by the dreaded Gestapo. She endured ten months of torture and abuse in a Nazi prison, before she was ordered sent to Majdanak concentration camp. En route, she managed to flee and hide in the woods, where she eventually encountered her father. The two were the only survivors of their large family: all the rest had been seized when the Nazis liquidated Lukow’s ghetto and sent to Treblinka concentration camp. None came out alive.
Leading a Partisan Unit and Taking on the Nazis
Eta helped organize, and eventually led, a Jewish partisan group of about eighty members, and took the fight to the Nazis. They mined roads, ambushed supply convoys, waylaid German soldiers, carried out hit and run raids, and otherwise harried the occupiers whenever and however they could. They had to fight not only the Nazis, but sometimes other Polish resistance members who hated Jews only slightly less than did the Germans. It was a harsh existence, without sufficient food, adequate shelter, supplies, or medical care.
On one occasion, Eta was shot in the leg, but there was no doctor around to treat her wound. After months of pain, she finally decided to extract the bullet herself. Gritting her teeth, she dug it out of her leg with a knife, then sterilized the wound with vodka. When the Nazis retreated in 1944, Eta was asked to become mayor of her town. She got married later that year, and the couple moved to the US in 1947, settled in New York City, and raised a family. Looking back at her partisan years, Eta reasoned that: “The biggest resistance that we could have done to the Germans was to survive”. Eta Wrobel spent her final years in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and passed away in 2008.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation – Eta Wrobel
Wrobel, Eta – My Life My Way: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Jewish Partisan in WWII Poland (2006)
