of the phrase "like sheep to the slaughter" in a Holocaust context. Kovner informed the remaining Jews that their relatives who had been taken away had been murdered in the Ponary massacre and argued that it was best to die fighting. Nobody at that time knew for certain of more than local killings, and many received the manifesto with skepticism. For others, this proclamation represented a turning point in an understanding of the situation and how to respond to it. The idea of resistance was disseminated from Vilnius by youth movement couriers, mainly women, to the ghettos of occupied Poland, occupied Belarus and of occupied Lithuania. Kovner, Yitzhak Wittenberg, Alexander Bogen and others formed the United Partisan Organization ("Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye", or FPO), one of the first armed underground organizations in the Jewish ghettos under Nazi occupation. Kovner became its leader in July 1943, after Wittenberg was named by a tortured comrade and turned himself in to prevent an attack on the ghetto. The FPO planned to fight the Germans when the end of the ghetto came, but circumstances and the opposition of the ghetto leaders made this impossible and they escaped to the forests. From September 1943 until the return of the Soviet army in July 1944, Kovner, along with his lieutenants Vitka Kempner and Rozka Korczak, commanded a partisan group called the Avengers ("Nokmim") in the forests near Vilna and engaged in sabotage and guerrilla attacks against the Germans and their local collaborators. The Avengers were one of four predominantly Jewish groups that operated within the command of the Soviet-led partisans. A log of partisan activity recorded that 30 fighters from "Avengers" and "To Victory" partisan groups participated in the massacre of at least 38 civilians at Koniuchy in January 1944. After the liberation of Vilnius by the Soviet Red Army in July 1944, Kovner became one of the founders of the Berihah movement, helping Jews escape Eastern Europe after the war. Nakam At the end of the war, Kovner was one of the founders of a secret organization Nakam (revenge), also known as Dam Yisrael Noter ("the blood of Israel avenges", with the acronym DIN meaning "judgement") whose purpose was to seek revenge for the Holocaust. Two plans were formulated. Plan A was to kill a large number of German citizens by poisoning the water supplies of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, and Nuremberg, Nakam intended to kill 6