Icchak Cukierman, also known by his nom de guerre "Antek", or by the anglicised spelling Yitzhak Zuckerman, was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II.

Marek Edelman is a Jewish-Polish political and social activist, cardiologist, and the last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Born in 1922 in Homel (now Belarus), he soon moved with his parents to Warsaw. In 1942, as a youth leader in the Bund, Edelman was among the founders of the underground Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization). In the Warsaw ghetto uprising of April-May 1943, led by head-commander Mordechai Anielewicz, …

Jakub Berman (born December 26, 1901, in Warsaw, then Russian Empire - died April 10, 1984), was a Polish communist politician of Jewish origin. As a member of the Polish United Workers' Party's Politbiuro he was in charge of the Urzad Bezpieczenstwa and considered Josef Stalin's right hand in Poland between 1944 and 1953. He received a Law degree in 1925 from the Warsaw University, and was an assistant to Marxist sociologist Prof. Ludwik Krzywicki.

Mordechai Anielewicz, also known as ŻOB, during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Born to a poor family in Wyszków near Warsaw, he joined and became a leader of the Zionist-socialist youth movement "Hashomer Hatzair" after he completed his high school studies. On September 7, 1939, a week after the German invasion of Poland, Anielewicz escaped with his members of the group from Warsaw to the eastern regions in the hopes that the Polish would slow down the German advance.

Adam Czerniaków was a Polish-Jewish engineer and senator, born in Warsaw, Poland. He committed suicide in the Warsaw Ghetto on July 23, 1942. He studied engineering and taught in the Jewish community's vocational school in Warsaw. From 1927 to 1934 he served as a member of the Warsaw Municipal Council, and in 1931 he was elected to the Polish Senate. On October 4, 1939, a few days after the city's surrender to the Nazis, Czerniakow was made head of the 24 member Judenrat, …

Berek Joselewicz was a Jewish-Polish merchant and a colonel of the Polish Army during the Kościuszko Uprising. Joselewicz commanded the first Jewish military formation in modern history Joselewicz was born in Kretinga, near Kaunas, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and worked as the financial agent for a local magnate, who often sent him abroad on various tasks, during which he learned to speak French.

Szmul Zygielbojm, sometimes spelled Zygelbojm or Zigelboim, (February 21, 1895 - May 12, 1943) was a Jewish-Polish socialist politician, leader of the Bund, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile. He committed suicide to protest the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust.

Władysław “Władek” Szpilman was a Polish pianist, composer, and memoirist. Outside Poland, Szpilman is widely known as the protagonist of the Roman Polański film "The Pianist", which is based on his autobiographical book recounting how he survived the Holocaust. In November 1998 Wladyslaw Szpilman was honoured by president of Poland with a Kommandor Order with a Star of Polonia Restituta.

Henryk Iwański, nom de guerre Bystry, was a member of the Polish resistance during WWII. He is known for leading one of the most daring actions of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) in support of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. For his assistance to the Polish Jews he is counted among the Righteous Among the Nations. Before the Second World War Henryk had reached the rank of captain in the Polish Army.

Jacob Frank was an 18th century Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi, and also of King David. Frank and his followers were excommunicated on account of his extremely unconventional doctrines that included acceptance of the New Testament, Enlightenment and some controversial concepts such as purification through transgression.

Zivia Lubetkin, also known by her nom de guerre "Celina", was one of the leaders of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and the only woman on the High Command of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB).

Henryk Woliński was a member of the Polish resistance movement in World War II, specifically the Armia Krajowa (AK), where he reached the rank of colonel. He was the head of the "Jewish Department" in AK's Bureau of Information and Propaganda. His codename was "Wacław". He was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations. He himself harbored in his apartment over 25 Jews for a period going from a few days to several weeks.

Saul Wahl (1541-1617) was a remarkable personage who according to legend occupied the throne of Poland for a single day, August 18, 1587.

Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz, code name “Alinka"” or “Alicja”, was a leading figure in Warsaw's underground resistance movement throughout the years of German occupation during World War II in Poland. As the well-connected wife of a former ambassador to Washington, she used her contacts with both the military and political leadership of the Polish Underground to materially influence the underground's policy of aiding Poland's Jewish population during the war.

Simcha Rotem (1924-) also known as Kazik, the name he used as a member of the Jewish Underground in Warsaw, he served as the head courier of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), which planned and executed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis.

Tova (Tosia) Altman (1918-1943) worked with Mordechai Anielewicz as a member of the ZOB during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. She initially worked as a courier, making contact with Jewish resistance groups outside of the ghetto and providing them with updates on resistance clashes, as well as providing educational material that was banned by the occupying Nazi forces. Later, she was critical in helping to smuggle weapons and explosives into the Warsaw ghetto.

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski , Polish-Jewish industrialist and Zionist activist, functioned as the Nazi-nominated head of the "Judenrat", or Jewish authorities in the Łódź Ghetto. Some remember him for his haunting and controversial speech, "Give Me Your Children". Before the Nazi German invasion of Poland, Rumkowski, a Russian Jew by origin, had had a career as an unsuccessful businessman and director of an orphanage.

Salomon (also Solomon or Shlomo) Morel was a Polish Jew, who, between February and November 1945, was a member of Communist State Security, known in Polish as Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, and the commandant of the Stalinist-era concentration camp "Zgoda" in Świętochłowice, Poland. Officially people held in the camp were political prisoners and German nationals, …

The history of Abraham ben Abraham, also known as Count Valentine (Valentin, Walentyn) Potocki (Pototzki or Pototski) is a controversial subject. According to Jewish traditions he is regarded as someone known even to the revered Jewish Talmudic sage, the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Elijah (Eliyahu) Ben Solomon Kremer (1720-1797)).

Jerzy Kosinski (orig. Kosiński with Polish diacritic sign; birth name: Josek Lewinkopf was a Polish-American novelist. He is best known for his novels "The Painted Bird" (1965) and "Being There" (1971), which was made into an Oscar-winning movie in 1979.

Roza Berger the only verified named victim of the 1945 Kraków pogrom, was born Reizel Leser in Kraków on 20 June, 1889. She was married in Kraków on 17 September 1911 to Josef Berger. She escaped Kraków during the war and was deported to Auschwitz in August of 1944 (prisoner identification number 89186) with her daughter and granddaughter.

Itzhak Katzenelson (also transcribed "Icchak-Lejb Kacenelson", "Jizchak Katzenelson"; "Yitzhok Katznelson") (1886–1944) was a Jewish teacher, poet and dramatist. He was born in 1886 in Karelits near Minsk, and was murdered May 1, 1944 in Auschwitz. Katzenelson lived as a teacher near Łódź, Poland. Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939 he and his family fled to Warsaw, where they got trapped in the Ghetto.

Salo Finkelstein was a mental calculator, ranked #8 in "100 Greatest Mental Calculators". He was born in Lodz (then within the Russian Empire, now Poland) to a Jewish family. While at school he was above average in mathematics, he discovered his calculating abilities in the age of 23, began demonstrating this in public but soon lost interest for some time. Later he was employed by the Polish government in State Statistical office.

Sacha Pecaric is a rabbi of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in Kraków. After studies in Prague, Pecaric continued to study at the rabbinic department of the Yeshiva University in New York and the department of philosophy of the Columbia University (M.A.) and Charles University (Ph.D.). He has been living in Kraków since 1997 where he runs the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation aimed at providing education to the small local Jewish community as well as local Gentiles, …

Tobias Cohn or Tobias Kohn (in Hebrew, Toviyyah ben Moshe ha-Kohen; in Polish, Tobiasz Kohn) (also referred to as Toviyah Kats) (1652-1729) was a Polish-Jewish physician of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was born at Metz, 1652.

Solomon Ettinger (circa 1800-circa 1855) was a 19th century Yiddish- and Hebrew-language playwright, poet and writer of songs and fables whose emblematic play "Serkele" has remained a classic of the Yiddish theatre. His given name has appeared variously as Shlomo or Shloyme and his family name has also been rendered as Ettingher. The exact dates of Ettinger's life are uncertain, …

Felix Landau, was a SS Hauptscharführer, a member of an Einsatzkommando during World War II, based first in Lemberg (today Lviv, Ukraine) and later in Drohobycz. He was a "central figure in the Nazi program of the extermination of Galician Jews". He is known for his daily diary and for temporarily sparing the life of the Jewish artist Bruno Schulz in 1942. Landau liked Schulz's art and supplied him with protection and extra food.

Abraham Prochownik was a Jew said, in some legendary sources, to have been nominated prince of Poland, in 842 CE. After the death of Prince Popiel, the Poles allegedly held a council at Kruszwica, to elect a successor. According to the legend they disagreed for a long time, and finally decided that the person who first entered the city on the following morning should be their ruler. This was none other than the Jew Abraham the Powder-maker (prochownik), …

Rutka Laskier (1929-1943) was a Jewish teenager from Poland who is best known for her 1943 diary chronicling four months of her life during the Holocaust.

Józef Unszlicht (July 28, 1938), a communist (Bolshevik) activist. A member of Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania from 1900, he took part in Vladimir Lenin's October Revolution and in 1918 joined the Red Army. In 1919 Unszlicht served briefly as an authority in Lithuania and Belarus, and in 1920 joined the Politburo of the Communist Party. During the Polish-Soviet War in August 1920 he became a member of Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee, …