The Fall of a sparrow: the life and times of Abba Kovner

ENAbba Kovner's life can be divided into four periods. The first period is 1918-1941, covering his childhood and youth in Sevastopol and Vilna in the midst of a large, loving extended family; his studies at the Tarbut (culture) Hebrew Gymnasium and later at the Faculty for the Arts at the Vilna University; his activities as a young member, guide, and leader of Hashomcr Hatzair (Young Guard), a Zionist-Socialist youth movement, in Polish- and Russian-occupied Lithuania; and the beginnings of his literary work. The second period, 1941-1944, took place during World War II and the Holocaust. When the Germans invaded Lithuania, Kovner hid in a convent near Vilna and from there returned to the ghetto to read his manifesto before the assembled members of the various youth movements still active at the time. In the manifesto Kovner asserted that Hitler was planning to kill all the Jews in Europe and hence self-defense was their only alternative. He participated in founding and training the ghetto underground and eventually became its commander. [...].