Yitzhak Gitterman was born in Gornostaypol, Ukraine in 1889. He was the director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Poland and was prominent among the organizers of aid in occupied Poland, and active in underground activities in the Warsaw ghetto as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB).
In 1921 Gitterman became director of the JDC (AJJDC – American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee) in Warsaw. When World War II broke out, Gitterman traveled to Vilna to aid the large number of refugees there. He embarked on a trip to Sweden to enlist assistance, but the Germans captured his ship and sent him to a prisoner of war camp. On his release he returned to Warsaw in April 1940, where he immediately took charge of the Jewish Self-Help Society (ZSS - Zydowskie Towarzystwo Spoleczna) and the Jewish Mutual Aid Society, and worked to alleviate the economic crisis of Polish Jewry.
With the first reports of the mass murder of Jews in the East, Gitterman supported the establishment of a fighting alliance and sent funds for purchasing weapons to the underground fighters in the Bialystok ghetto. After the formal establishment of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) in the Warsaw ghetto in October 1942, he became a member of the ZOB's financial department, whose main purpose was to gather funds to buy weapons for the fighters in the Warsaw ghetto. Yitzhak Gitterman was murdered on the first day of the second Aktion in the Warsaw ghetto. An improvised marker was placed on his grave that included the wording "died a tragic death" and the date of his murder, 18 January 1943.
Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection.
Donated by Mrs. (Gitterman) Wertheim