Warsaw ghetto fighter dies

ISRAELI PRESIDENT Reuven Rivlin led tributes to the last surviving fighter from the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, who died in Jerusalem at the age of 94.

Simcha Rotem — who was also known as Kazik — was among those who took part in perhaps the act of Jewish resistance by opposing the deportations to concentration camps.

The uprising had little prospect of success, but still held Nazi forces back for nearly a month, killing 16 of them and wounding nearly 100.

Kazik, a native of Warsaw who was just 13 when the War broke out, helped save the last survivors by smuggling them out of the burning ghetto through sewage tunnels.

His death leaves a single remaining survivor of the ghetto uprising alive in Israel: Aliza Vitis-Shomron, 90, who distributed leaflets and smuggled weapons before being ordered to escape and spread the word of the uprising.

President Rivlin said: “When asked about the message he would want to pass on to Israeli youth, he answered: ‘To be a human being. We are animals on two legs. No more than that — that’s what I think, that’s what I feel. But amongst us animals, the two-legged ones, there are some who are also human beings, and who deserve the name.’

“Thank you for everything, Kazik. We promise to try, every day, to be worth of the name ‘human being’.”