Rachel Zilberberg

Sarenka reentered the Warsaw Ghetto in January 1942, with two objectives. The first was to bear the message, as an eyewitness, of the methodical extermination of Jews in Punar, near Vilna; her fellow Jews had not heard these details until then. The second was to arouse and motivate rebellion against the Nazis from inside the ghetto. On her return to the ghetto, a group of youth united around her, some of whom she had instructed as a counselor. She detailed the Nazi massacre.

On 22 February 1941, Sarenka's daughter Maya was born. On 22 June 1941 the German army attacked the Soviet positions in eastern Poland under the code-name Operation Barbarossa. Sarenka later described the 'deportation' of Jews from the Ghetto to nearby Ponary in the suburbs of Vilna, where the Ponary massacre was carried out by Nazi Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators. She wrote:

Rachel (Sarenka) Zylberberg (5 January 1920 – 8 May 1943; 3 Iyar 5703 in Hebrew calendar) was an underground activist and participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She held a key role in rousing the rebellion. Zylberberg was a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist-socialist youth movement. After the German invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, she left the capital for Wilno in northeastern part of prewar Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), then returned to Warsaw together with Chajka (Chaikeh) Grossman and was actively involved in the Jewish resistance.

Rachel Zylberberg was born Rachela Zylberberg on 5 January 1920 in Warsaw, interwar Poland, to Orthodox Jewish parents: Alexander (Sender) and Masha née Nordwind. Her parents owned a dairy-goods store at 37 Nowolipki Street, and later at 40a Nowolipki. Rachela Zylberberg studied at the Jewish Gymnasia and joined Hashomer Hatzair, where she became member of the "Frontline Brigade" eventually, along with Mordechai Anielewicz, Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. While in school, she excelled at her studies and sports, and was known for her strong organizational abilities. As of 1938, she became a group leader for the younger students who greatly admired her. She received her matriculation certificate just as the Second World War broke out on 1 September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. Two weeks later, the USSR invaded Poland from the east.