On this day in 1943, Jewish resistance fighter Zofia Yamaika died protecting her partisan unit’s retreat from a Nazi attack. Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1925, Yamaika was raised in an affluent and distinguished Hasidic family. In the 1920s, Jews were excluded from working in government, while the 1930s introduced limits on education and business participation for Jews. Yamaika joined “Spartacus”, a Communist club run by students that spoke out about the growing presence of fascism in Poland.Yamaika was 14 years old when Germany invaded Poland, leading to Warsaw’s surrender in September 1939. Warsaw became part of the general government, governed by the Nazi Party’s lawyer, Hans Frank. Though she was no longer able to attend school or participate in student activities, Yamaika ignored the Nazi ban on Spartacus and continued the club’s activities. When the city began filling with German armed forces, Yamaika and other Spartacus members secretly distributed anti-fascist posters and leaflets across Warsaw.In 1940, the Nazis established the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto to exist in Europe during the Holocaust. Yamaika and her family, along with 450,000 other Warsaw Jews and Polish refugees, were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. Yamaika continued working with underground resistance despite the unbearable conditions in the ghetto. Her ties to Spartacus allowed Yamaika to connect with partisans who trained her and taught her how to use a pistol. She wanted to escape and fight with these Communist partisans, even though doing so put her parents in danger.In July of 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka. Yamaika and her parents were deported, but she managed to escape by jumping off the train and pretending to be dead. Yamaika ran into the forest and joined resistance fighters near the city of Radom. These partisan fighters lived in camps in the forests and traveled lightly and frequently as they fought back against the Nazis.Yamaika remained in the forest with a partisan group of 50 people until February 9, 1943, when they were attacked by 300 Nazis. She and two Polish resistance fighters offered to cover while the rest of the group retreated. Yamaika let the Nazis approach until they were eight feet away from her, and only then did she fire at them with a machine gun.Yamaika’s position was overtaken and she, along with the other two Polish fighters, was killed by the Nazis; her act of resistance allowed the rest of her unit to retreat. She was 18 years old.