Iser Lubotzky — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Iser Lubotzky (1922-2009) was a member of Betar, active in the underground of the Vilna Ghetto, a partisan fighter and an officer in the Etzel. He was the national recruiting officer for the Etzel and leader of a group in Ramat Gan. He was a lawyer in Israel and served as presiding judge for the Herut movement and he was the first legal advisor of the Likud. The story of his life and legacy were written up in Lo Darkhi Ha'aharona.

He was born to a traditional Jewish family in Vilna, when Vilna was still part of Poland. His father was a successful businessman and a member of the Revisionist movement; his three children were educated in the spirit of the movement. Iser learnt at Tarbut, the Zionist Hebrew high school in Vilna. He was active in Betar from an early age and became a troop leader. At the same time he was recruited as a cadet officer in the Polish army.

When Germany invaded Poland at the beginning of World War Two, Lubotzky was recruited to command an observation post at the front of the Polish army. He served in the short skirmish until the air bombardment in which most of his unit was killed.  He was one of the few to survive. After Poland surrendered and was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union according to the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Vilna was governed by Lithuania. He returned to Vilna, completed his studies and enrolled to study law.

In 1941 Germany invaded the U.S.S.R. in Operation Barbarossa and within a few days had occupied Vilna and set up a ghetto. Jews were interned in forced labor camps and during the Aktions they were taken to the Ponary forest and exterminated there. Iser and his brother escaped from the ghetto before one of the Aktions and returned some time later. Lubotzky joined the united partisans (FPO, the secret underground that arose in the ghetto and worked against the Germans). With the support of the officers of the underground, he was recruited to the crime police in the ghetto in order to collect intelligence. He was arrested by the local police and found himself in a cell with Yosef Glazman, the leader of Betar in Vilna and one of the heads of the underground. Glazman explained the objectives of the underground to him and shared other secret plans with him. After he was released, he worked even harder for the underground. When the ghetto was liquidated in September, 1943, there was a mini-revolt. Lubotzky, together with about one hundred partisans, under the leadership of Abba Kovner, left the ghetto through the sewers and joined the partisans who were operating in the forests in the area.

Lubotzky lived with a group of partisans in the Rudninkai Forest and participated in attacks on German convoys and local villages. His sister, who was the only other survivor of his family, fought alongside him with the partisans. In one of the battles in May, 1944, he was injured by a bullet in his leg, the wound festered, he had a raging temperature and his fellow partisans, envisaging his death, had already dug a grave for him. However, a Jewish nurse treated him with bandages of leaves and medical supplies that they had taken from the German convoys and nursed him back to health. Years later, when Lubotzky's son Assael was injured in the Second Lebanese War he was treated by a doctor who was that nurse's son.

Lubotzky participated in the liberation of Vilna by Red Army forces. After the Germans withdrew he was recruited to the Soviet secret police, the N.K.V.D. because of his facility with the local languages and was raised to the rank of officer, partly because of an attack he led against terrorists. Later, he received a "Partisan of the War of Liberation" medal. In 1945 he was able to leave the service and return to Poland where he was appointed head of the illegal immigration to Israel on behalf of Betar. He organized several boatloads of illegal immigrants and, after he heard that he and his sister Nyussa were the only survivors of their family, he boarded the Transilvania from Romania to Israel.

Once in Israel, Lubotzky completed his law degree with honors and worked for his living. A short while after arriving in Israel he met Menahem Begin in a safe apartment; he knew Begin from the time that Begin, a refugee in Vilna, had hidden at Lubotzky's parents' home. Begin asked him to leave his job and work as recruiting officer for the Etzel. In this capacity he recruited approximately two thousand new members for the Etzel; he was also leader of a group in Ramat Gan. During one of the Etzel activities he was arrested by the British Criminal Investigation Department and put on trial; he exploited his legal knowledge and was acquitted on the grounds that the prosecutor had not brought proof that the Etzel was a terrorist organization. He knew that he would be put into administrative detention by the British Criminal Investigation Department within a short time, so he crept out of the courtroom, changed his identity and his address.

Lubotzky participated in the Etzel attack on the British airfield at Lod and the attack on Jaffa. When the Altalena arrived, together with Begin, he tried to bridge the gap between Etzel and the government representatives who proposed to Begin that they would purchase all the arms on the boat; at a meeting of the leaders of the Etzel, Lubotzky was in favor of accepting the proposition but Begin rejected it claiming that the members of the Etzel were not arms dealers. In the War of Independence he was recruited to the Golani brigade and fought in the containment battles in the north of the country.

After the War of Independence, he continued to serve in the army for a short time and was then forced to retire because he had been a member of the Etzel. He returned to practice law at the office of Aharon Polonski. Eventually he opened his own practice and was active in the Herut movement, chairman of the election committee of the movement and president of the court. During his stint as president of the Herut court he presided over the case of Shmuel Tamir whom he expelled from the movement for a long spell. At the beginning of the 70's he was appointed legal advisor of Herut and, after the Likud was formed, was its first legal advisor; he held this appointment voluntarily until 1992. He was also a member of the Freemason Lodge and president of the Tel Aviv branch.

His sister, Nyussa survived the war, married Dr. Grisha Delugi and lived in New York. Iser Lubotski married Rivka (née Bilzovski), a survivor who immigrated to Israel illegally and they had four children: Alex Lubotzky , a professor of mathematics and  a former member of the Knesset, Dr. Yitzhak Lubotzky, a judge in the labor court in Tel Aviv,  Dr. Shoshana Weiler and  Dr. Mordechai Lubotzky.

Iser Lubotzky died in 2009. On his tombstone was the inscription: a jurist, a book lover, a member of Betar and the underground in the Vilna Ghetto, a partisan and fighter in the Etzel, an activist in the national camp of Israel.

Translated from: Wikipedia