Call to Arms

Abba Kovner’s “Call to Arms” (also known by its opening line, “Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter”) is a document of Jewish resistance that helped shift the mindset of Jews in the Vilna ghetto to active revolt. Kovner first read this manifesto at a meeting of Zionist youth movements. He stressed that the German plan was for systematic and total destruction of European Jewry. To maximize the text’s impact and to reach the widest possible audience, “Call to Arms” was immediately reproduced via mimeograph and circulated in Yiddish, the common language of the ghetto’s residents. Although the revolt in Vilna was not successful, Kovner became a leader of the United Partisans Organization, which continued to carry out attacks against the Germans, from surrounding forests.