Zylberberg Rachel Lea, also spelt Zilbergberg, alias Sarenka (5 January 1920, Warsaw – 8 May 1943, Warsaw) – member of HaShomer HaTzair, fighter of the Jewish resistance movement under the German occupation of Poland during World War II, participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

She was born in a religious Jewish family from Warsaw, as the daughter of Aleksander and Masha née Norwind. Her parents ran a shop at 34 Nowolipki Street. Her sister Rut survived the Holocaust and died in Israel.

Rachel attended the “Yehudiyah” female secondary school in Długa Street and graduated in 1939. At that time, she “somewhat secretly” joined the left-wing Zionist organisation HaShomer HaTzair. 

After the outbreak of the war, she and her husband Moshe Kopita left Warsaw for Vilnius. For a short time, they lived in a kibbutz together with other members of HaShomer HaTzair (including Mordechai Anielewicz, Tosia Altman, Chaja Grossman, Józef Kaplan). After its dissolution in 1940, Zylberberg went into hiding in the convent of the Dominican Sisters in Kolonia Wileńska together with ca. 20 activists of HaShomer HaTzair, among them Aba Kower and Jurek Wilner.

On 20 February 1941, Zylberberg gave birth to her daughter Maya. Moshe Kopito was shot by the Germans in the streets of Vilnius. After these events, Rachel returned to Warsaw, probably together with Chaja Grossman. She had previously placed her daughter in an orphanage in Vilnius under the assumed name of Jadwiga Sogak (Suchak?). Maya probably survived the Holocaust.
In January 1942, Rachel resided in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she worked in a tailoring cooperative together with Mira Fuchrer and Tova Frenkel. She lived at 40a Nowolipie Street. From the beginning of her stay in the ghetto, she was actively involved in organising the resistance movement. She would give reports on the scale of the extermination of Jews in Lithuania, including the mass murder in Ponary, and tried to persuade others to put up armed resistance.
She took part in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. She was killed on 8 May 1943 in the bunker at 18 Miła Street. Her name is inscribed on the stone obelisk commemorating the insurgents.
In 2012, Rachel Zylberberg’s nephew, Ofer Aloni, found a box with photographs and several letters in Polish sent from Lithuania by “Sarenka” to her sister Rut. One of the finds was an original photograph taken in 1938, with Rachel posing together with Mordechai Anielewicz, Moshe Domb, Shifra Sokolka, and Zvi Braun.

Bibliography

• Grupińska A., Odczytanie listy. Opowieści o warszawskich powstańcach Żydowskiej Organizacji Bojowej, Kraków 2003
• Wittis-Shomron A., Youth in Flames: A Teenager's Resistance and Her Fight for Survival in the Warsaw Ghetto, 2002.
• Neustadt M., Destruction and rising: the epic of the Jews in Warsaw, 1946.
• Bernard M., Walka i zagłada warszawskiego getta, Warszawa 1959.