Israel Government Press Office · Public domain

In the Vilna Ghetto in 1942, Abba Kovner wrote the first manifesto to identify, while it was happening, that the Germans intended to murder all of Europe's Jews — a warning that came before the ghetto uprising he tried and failed to organize. He escaped into the forest and fought with Soviet partisans through the rest of the war. Afterward he led Nakam, a group of survivors who plotted mass reprisal killings of Germans; British authorities arrested him before he could carry the plan out. He settled in Israel in 1947 and became one of the major poets of Modern Hebrew literature, winning the Israel Prize in 1970.