Tosia Altman (24.08.1918/9 – 05.1943)

Others spoke of her with admiration and awe: ‘a seemingly untamed, rather “wild” and vivacious girl’.*

Tova (Taube) Altman, known as Tosia, was born on 24 August 1918 or 1919 in Lipno near Włocławek into a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family. Her parents, Gustaw and Anna Altman, belonged to the elite of Wloclawek’s Jews. Although Tosia’s father was raised in the Hasidic tradition, he provided his daughter with a thorough education, putting her in a respectable secondary school where she could learn both Hebrew and Polish.

Growing up, Tosia got involved in community activities. As an eleven-year-old, she joined Ha-Szomer ha-Cair (Hebrew: Young Guard), a Zionist-socialist youth organisation whose members were called Szomers. Energetic and inquisitive, she quickly moved up through the movement’s ranks. She soon became an instructor and educator at Szomer colonies and an editor of the Hebrew newspaper Hanavadim, then a delegate to the Fourth World Convention of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair in Poprad (in 1935). As a seventeen-year-old, she assumed leadership of the Wloclawek branch of the Szomers, which numbered about four hundred people. All this time, she had been planning to emigrate to Palestine – she even took a kibbutz training course in Częstochowa in 1938. Her plans changed after Altman was appointed to the central command of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair in Warsaw, where she took over the department educating the Szomer youth.

After the outbreak of war, Tosia Altman joined some of the leadership and left Warsaw, making her way to Soviet-occupied Wilno (presently: Vilnius, Lithuania) via Rivne, probably intending to emigrate to Palestine. She returned at the end of the year, when the leadership of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair decided to remain in Poland and continue its activities under the occupation.

From the very beginning, Altman was involved in organising the Jewish resistance movement, including the underground structures of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair in the General Government, raising funds for the organisation’s activities and obtaining false documents. Fluent in unaccented Polish and good-looking, she travelled throughout occupied Poland as a courier. She infiltrated the ghettos of Wilno, Grodno, Białystok, Częstochowa, Tarnów, Radom, Krakow and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie, among others. Following these visits, she prepared reports on the situation in the confined districts. She also organised self-defence groups, some in the Wilno Ghetto.

She corresponded with other members of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair, including those abroad. In 1942, she sent a letter from Hrubieszów to Vienna, addressed to her mentor, Adam Rand:

Israel’s illness and my illness – and you know how long we have been struggling with it – has turned out to be terminal, or so the doctors have ruled. So we must slowly get used to this thought. Israel is dying in front of my eyes, and I am wringing my hands and cannot do anything to help iy. Have you ever tried to smash a wall with your head?

The liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began on 22 July 1942. Over the course of two months, approximately 240–280,000 Jews were murdered in Treblinka, including Tosia’s parents, most likely displaced to Warsaw from the ghetto in Żychlin.

Altman joined the Jewish Combat Organisation, formed six days after the deportations began, and was almost immediately sent with Ari ‘Jurek’ Wilner to the ‘Aryan’ side to make contact with the Polish underground and organise weapons. She also continued to travel around occupied Poland, compiling reports and carrying messages.

She returned to the Warsaw Ghetto on several occasions, the last time in the spring of 1943. After the outbreak of the uprising, she fought in the central ghetto, and on 8 May she was in the bunker at 18 Miła Street, where the ŻOB command had moved. After it was discovered by the Germans, most of the fighters committed suicide or died of gas poisoning; a few escaped – among them Tosia Altman – through the only undiscovered exit. They made their way to the bunker at 22 Franciszkańska Street and that same night, with other insurgents, Kazik Ratajzer led them out through sewers behind the ghetto wall. They were then transported to Łomianki, where they hid in the forest for several days, intending to join the partisans.

Altman was wounded and unable to join the fight, so she returned to Warsaw, where she and other members of Ha-Szomer ha-Cair were tucked away in a factory attic. On 24 May, a fire broke out in their hideout. According to some accounts, a badly burned Tosia Altman managed to jump out of the building. She was later found by Polish policemen, who handed her over to the Germans. The latter took her to hospital, where they forbade anyone to help her.

In 1948 Tosia Altman was posthumously awarded the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari War Order.

Bibliography

• Błażejowska K. Tosia Altman. Przebić głową mur [in:] Kwestia charakteru. Bojowniczki z getta warszawskiego, red. S. Chutnik, M. Sznajderman, Wołowiec-Warsaw 2023.
• Folman-Raban C., Nie rozstałam się z nimi…, Warsaw 2000.
• Meed W. Po obu stronach muru. Wspomnienia z warszawskiego getta, tłum. Katarzyna Krenz, Warsaw 2003.
• Shalev Z., Tosia Altman 1918–1943, [w:] Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, Jewish Women’s Archive [online:] 27.02.2009, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/altman-tosia [dostęp: 13.08.2024].
• Strachman Nachbaum, Tosia Altman, „Mosty” 1947, nr 4.