Sonia Madiskar

Sonia Madiskar was born in 1914 in the city of Vilna, Lithuania. From an early age she was involved with the communist underground and later, circumstances brought her to be a central activist in the Jewish underground. During her lifetime she spent much time in various prisons and even managed to escape the death penalty. Joseph Harmatz, one of the commanders of the Vilna underground, brings the heroic story of an unusual underground woman, who wanted to work with children, but fate destined her for entirely different tasks.Underground fighter from an early age

Sonia Madiskar’s parents were born in the 1880’s in the town of Malat in Lithuania. At the end of WWI her parents returned and settled in Vilna. They both were educated in a teachers’ seminary. Both her parents were murdered during the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943. Sonia was born in 1914. Her younger sister Dina tells: “Sonia had many interests, she liked to dress well, she was always well turned-out, her hair combed. She was an independent thinker and had opinions of her own. A sense of responsibility and obligation were almost an obsession with her. She also had a flair for dramatics, and in the school where she studied she always appeared in the musical performances. People said: ‘When she grows up she will be an actress’. She did not look Jewish. Sonia was talented and was a good student. She was fluent in the languages of the area”. Her underground activities against the Lithuanians (before the war) brought her before many courts and as a result she was familiar with several prisons. She “sat” in the Lokishkis prison in Vilna, afterwards in the Pawiak in Warsaw and in Siaritz, a prison for adolescents. In 1933, at the age of 19 she returned to Vilna and in the spring of 1935 she was accused of anti-government activities and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

In 1939 the Red Amy approached the area of Grodno, where Sonia was incarcerated, which awakened the hope in her to be liberated by the communists. But Polish police and other hooligans took control of the prison and sentenced all the prisoners to death. The prisoners were informed that the death sentence would be carried out early the next morning. Was this her last night? That very night the Red Army occupied the city, and Sonia’s life was saved.

Altogether, Sonia spent 6 of her 30 years in prisons. She loved children very much, and she used to say that if the Soviets reached Vilna, she would do anything to be able to work with them. But fate had other plans for her. Her dreams were not realized, and in 1941 the German forces invaded Lithuania and destroyed everything.

A brave liaison

In Vilna, Sonia met all her friends from her time in the communist underground, and discovered that they were all in the preparatory stage of organizing a new underground, this time against the Germans. She was appointed as the one responsible for organizing groups of youth, and she devoted herself totally to the task. Equipped with underground experience, she ran a printing press, prepared the calls to resistance, organized those who were leaving the ghetto, smuggled weapons and helped everyone with everything. Sonia was not a member of the staff of the FPO (United Partisan Organization of the Vilna Ghett0), but she was their faithful representative everywhere in accordance with the circumstances. Among other things she was a member of the platoon which I commanded. I shall never forget the brightness of her wonderful face and her beautiful eyes which conveyed seriousness and inner strength accompanied by pain and the suffering she had experienced. When it was decided to send representatives from the underground across the front lines to report on the hellish situation in which we were living, Sonia was chosen for the mission together with Tzesia Rosenberg. In this instance also the girls were caught and sentenced to death. And here too they knew how, with cunning and luck, to evade their captors and return safely to the Vilna Ghetto.

When the ghetto was liquidated in September 1943, Sonia remained in the city. She continued to direct the liaisons who came from the forest where most of the underground members who had succeeded in leaving the ghetto for the forests and had joined the partisan movements, were located. Sonia continued to enlist and convince the Jews who had remained in the city in two blocks – the furriers’ block and the block of theHKP where they worked in the vehicle industry (two essential professions for survival at the front) – to leave and join the partisans.

To her death with head held high

The Germans traced her and after following her discovered where she lived. In March 1944 a group of Gestapo soldiers surrounded her building. Sonia drew her gun, shot three of them, and with the last bullet shot herself in the face in order not to be caught alive. But one of the Germans grabbed her hand and she was severely wounded. It was important for the Germans to keep her alive in order to discover information about the underground. She was imprisoned but would not talk. Bella Maisel, who was arrested in the city holding a Polish passport, and who was moved from prison to the Stuffhoff concentration camp, saw Sonia in the Lokishkis prison. She relates: “It was impossible to recognize Sonia. Her face was black and swollen. She had lost her sight and hearing completely. She sat for hours facing the window, silent”.

The Gestapo believed that they would be able to force her to talk, and kept her alive until the Red Army neared Vilna. Before dawn they called her. She was aware that these were her final hours. With her head held high Sonia walked her final steps to the prison courtyard. Several shots were heard. The prisoners in their cells were shocked. Sonia, the heroine, had been executed.

A few days later the Red Army entered Vilna. After her death she was awarded military decorations by the Polish government and by the Soviet Lithuanian government.

Shlomo Kowarski, secretary of the communist youth in the Vilna Ghetto underground wrote in his book, Sonia the Heroine: “She was always in action; either with her party in the underground before the war, in the underground organization in the Vilna Ghetto, with youth education, smuggling and hiding weapons, editing and distributing the underground newspaper, or with helping friends and their families – she always found time for everything and everyone. Everything she did, she did with dedication, with her heart and soul. And most impressive was her way of thinking, her understanding of people and their circumstances, with the desire to find solutions in every situation. Not with words, always with action, and in the most difficult moments – and they were many.”

And this is what an underground fighter, Rozka Korczak said of her: “With Sonia’s death we have lost an incomparable fighter. She was a woman who did not know the concept ‘fear’. Her total commitment, readiness for self-sacrifice, have become and example and symbol for us all.”

Written by Joseph Harmatz, commander of the Vilna Ghetto underground and a partisan in the Rudniki Forests.

From: Organisation of Partizans

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Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel
Directions: Beit Vilna, 30 Sderot Yehudit, Tel-Aviv.

Mailing address: P.O.Box 1005, Ramat Hasharon, 4711001. [email protected].
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