68 Vilna

stark relief what happened to us, while at the same time providing some
emotional coordinates within which the frightening new reality would per-
haps seem less absolute a rupture. It seems likely that such a well-known
melody would have reaYrmed a sense of communal identity, once again
placing the understanding of these new events within the context of what had
come before.

Partisans and the Youth

The ghetto Jews did notor, more accurately perhaps, could notview what
was happening to them as a radical severance from their past. It was terrifying,
unanticipated, and diYcult to comprehend, but it was still something that
could acquire meaning within the broader narrative of Jewish suVering.
David Roskies has argued that the essence of the Jewish commemorative
tradition has long been to make sense of contemporary events in terms of
ancient texts, and to seize upon the symbols of the past in order to give
meaning to the present. He further maintains that in their responses to
catastrophe, Jewish communities have almost always sought to deWne their
place along the continuum of the nations history.25 This conception of what
was happening was evident in a range of writings from the ghetto. The ways
in which diVerent people chose to frame and promote it through the
framework of cultural activity, however, often depended on their political
convictions and aims.
One of the most signiWcant political forces in the ghetto was the under-
ground Fareynigte Partizaner Organizatsye. Established at the beginning of
1942, the FPO was active in armed resistance primarily in the forests
surrounding Vilna, in cooperation with the Soviet partisan movement. It
was made up of young men and women, mostly in their twenties, of varying
political leanings, drawn from Zionist youth organizations including Hasho-
mer hatsair (The Young Guard), Hanoar hatsiyoni (Zionist Youth), and the
Revisionist movement Betar. Movements such as these had played an im-
portant role in Jewish eastern Europe during the inter-war period, encour-
aging young people to rebel against the passivity of the older generations.
During the war years, they came to play an active role in the various Wghting
organizations in Warsaw, Biaystok, Krakow, and other cities.26
25
David Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture
(London, 1984), 48, 54.
26
Gutman (ed.), Encyclopedia, 16981702.