Abba Kovner

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Abba Kovner
אבא קובנר‎
Kovner testifies at the trial of Adolf Eichmann
Born	(1918-03-14)14 March 1918 Ashmyany, Lithuania District, German Empire
Died	25 September 1987(1987-09-25) (aged 69) Ein HaHoresh, Israel
Nationality	Polish Israeli
Occupation	Poet
Notable work	"Let us not go like lambs to the slaughter!"
Political party	Mapam
Spouse	Vitka Kempner ​ (m. 1946)​
Children	2

Abba Kovner (Hebrew: אבא קובנר; 14 March 1918 – 25 September 1987) was a Jewish partisan leader, and later Israeli poet and writer. In the Vilna Ghetto, his manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to murder all Jews. His attempt to organize a ghetto uprising failed. He fled into the forest, joined Soviet partisans, and survived the war. After the war, Kovner led Nakam, a paramilitary organization of Holocaust survivors who sought to take genocidal revenge by murdering six million Germans, but Kovner was arrested in British-occupied Germany before he could successfully carry out his plans. He made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1947, which would become the State of Israel one year later. Considered one of the greatest authors of Modern Hebrew poetry, Kovner was awarded the Israel Prize in 1970.