Harold Werner (1918–1989)

In 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in World War II, Harold Werner was a young Jewish man trying to make a living in Warsaw. He decided to leave the city and seek a safer haven in Hola, a village to the east. Before long, the Jews of Hola and the surrounding villages were ordered into the Wlodawa ghetto. Werner and two dozen other Jews decided to seek refuge in the woods instead, to live in hiding, using their wits to obtain food and shelter. It was the start of a saga of privation, danger, escape, and resistance. In his memoir, Fighting Back: A Memoir of Jewish Resistance in World War II, completed shortly before his death and published in 1992, Werner recounted his experiences in a large Jewish partisan unit that harassed the German army in occupied Poland. This group of mostly young Jews -- which included both men and women -- conducted daring sabotage missions such as blowing up German trains and road and rail bridges. In addition, they rescued Jews from ghetto imprisonment and slave labor details. They provided a safe haven in the Parczew Forest for other Jews who escaped the Nazi extermination camps. By the time the Red Army liberated eastern Poland, the unit consisted of about 400 fighters and 400 non-combatant Jews under their protection.