Eva Etkin

In the early 1930s, Eva studied nursing in Vilna and graduated as a certified nurse before finding a job at the Glubokie Hospital. She was a member of Hashomer Hatzair - The Young Guard - where she met Menachem-Mendel Etkin who was born in Dokshitsy, Belarus on August 5th, 1909. Along with his father and brothers, Menachem-Mendel managed multiple family businesses including a sawmill, a flour mill, restaurant, and furniture carpentry.  

Eva made contact with Jewish forced laborers from the Glubokie Ghetto who were working in German munitions factories. They methodically took weapons from the Germans, and Eva helped smuggle the pistols, grenades, and ammunition to the partisans. If caught, Eva would have been instantly killed. On August 20th, 1943, the Nazis destroyed the Glubokie Ghetto after a week of armed Jewish resistance. Eva''s son, Michael, escaped to the forest and joined the Rokosovsky Partisan Brigade. Eva heard from a partisan that he saw a red-haired child in one of the partisans'' camps. She assumed it was one of her twins but was not sure which one. On a brown paper bag, Eva wrote in Yiddish: "My dear son, I found out that you are in the forest not so far from me. Be a good boy. Behave well. We will meet each other soon. I love you very much – your mother." On June 3rd, 1944 the Nazis caught and tortured the medical unit of the October Partisan Brigade. Eva was among them. The partisans were taken to the center of Dokshitsy and hanged in the city square just a few weeks before the liberation. Eva was thirty-one years old.