WJC mourns the passing of Ziuta Hartman-Rutenberg, one of the last surviving participants of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the last known fighter of the ZZW (Jewish Military Union).
Ziuta Rutenberg was born in Kielce in 1922 and escaped from there to Warsaw. A chance meeting on the street with a friend from Kielce, Avraham Rodal (younger brother of one of the ZZW commanders, Leon Rodal), led her to join the resistance. Years later, she recounted that because of her "Aryan" appearance, she was used as a courier between the ghetto and the Aryan side, smuggling in guns, food and medicines in a false-bottomed bucket. She had a cyanide pill in case she got caught.
After the collapse of the uprising, she was captured by the Germans and sent first to Majdanek and then to Skarzysko Kamienna. Later still, she was sent as a forced laborer to an ammunitions factory in Leipzig. At war's end, she returned to Poland, but left for France shortly thereafter. She immigrated to Israel in 1952.
In 2010, Ziuta Hartman was named an honorary citizen of Warsaw. When she left Poland, Ziuta made a vow never to return. She kept the vow and did not go to Warsaw to collect her award. "I think I'm the last one left alive now," she told the Israeli press. Asked why she agreed to receive the honorary citizenship, she said "I'm accepting it on behalf of those who perished. I can close the circle. After all, it's the Warsaw municipality that is doing it and the whole world can hear it. It makes me proud."
Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, director of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, which operates under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress, and co-author of an authoritative study on the Jewish Military Union published by the Polish Academy of Sciences, said: "Ziuta was a true life super hero—an intrepid, indomitable woman full of moxie. Unlike others in the Herut who accused the left of deliberately suppressing the story of the ZZW, she blamed the leadership of her own movement for failing to do more to draw attention to the heroism of the men and women who fought and died in the ranks of the Revisionist underground in the uprising. The last known survivor of the ZZW, her passing symbolizes the closing of a chapter in the history of the ferocious struggle of the Jewish remnant in Warsaw."
In a eulogy at her funeral in Holon, Weinbaum showed mourners an album published by the Ghetto Fighters' Kibutz (Lochamei HaGettaot) in which Hartman's name appeared on a list of those killed in the revolt. He recounted that when he first met Hartman and interviewed her for his book, she showed him that volume and proudly declared "But as you can see I am alive!"
Ziuta left two sons, six grandchildren and a number of great grandchildren. May her memory be a blessing.