Yitzhak Suknik

Yitzhak Suknik (Yiddish: יצחק סוקניק, 1920 – 8 May 1943), frequently known as Koza, was a fighter in the Jewish Fighting Organization (Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa ŻOB). and a member of Hashomer Hatzair. He played a crucial role in the organisation and building of small arms to be used in the Uprising. He took part in the first action of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on January 18, 1943, saving the life of Mordechai Anielewicz. During the Uprising in April he was a member of the fighting unit led by Mordechai Growas in the Central Ghetto, and known as an excellent marksman. He died on 8 May 1943 whilst trying to escape to the Aryan side via the sewers.

Yad Vashem - List of Jewish Resistance fighters who died in battle during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 Polish Centre for Holocaust Research Warsaw Ghetto Museum - People of the Ghetto

When the Z.O.B was formed in July 1942 they had no arms. By August they received their first shipment of weapons from the Polish side, five pistols and six hand grenades. It did not improve much in the months that followed and more often than not the weapons were in a poor condition and were only partially usable. On his own initiative, Yitzhak founded a workshop in the ghetto to prepare hand grenades and to repair small weapons. By the end of 1942, he became one of the most important producers of weapons, heading two workshops, whose production reached a significant volume of up to 50 grenades a day. He also trained other recruits in the Ghetto in the use of guns, going twice a week to the house of Lotek Rotblat on 44 Muranovska Street to give weapons training.

In September 1941, Suknik escaped Warsaw to join a Hashomer Hatzair training farm near Częstochowa. In mid-1942, they disbanded and he returned to Warsaw to take an active part in Hashomer Hatzair. joining the Jewish Combat Organisation. Small arms manufacture and weapon training

On the 10th September 1939 Suknik's mother and his younger brother Srul were killed during the German attack on Warsaw. Suknik returned to Warsaw, where the city's Jewish population was forced to live in the Ghetto. During 1941 the remaining members of his immediate family died; his grandfather Josef in June, his older brother Moszek in August and finally his father in November; the latter two dying of Typhus.

Yitzhak was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920. His family were middle-class Jews; his parents were Meier Suknik and Cesia (née Lament). They had two other sons Moszek (born 1918) and Srul (born 1926). Both his maternal and paternal families originated from the town of Chmielnik, near Kielce in central Poland.