Five Points of Entry: Judy Lachman's Group Photo from August 1942

Through war, ghettoization, deportations, and forced labor, Judy Lachman (1921-1997) carried and protected from harm photographs of friends and family members, mementos of her life before and during World War II. 1 One of these pictures depicts members of the youth Zionist organization Akiva, active in the resistance movement at the Tomaszów Mazowiecki ghetto (1940-1943) in central Poland. 2 Jewish youth organizations like Akiva, which flourished in interwar Poland, provided spaces of belonging to young Jews in the wake of growing national unrest and antisemitism.During the war, these networks were instrumental to the spiritual and cultural survival of young Jews, and Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis.3