Dawid Wdowiński

Who was Dawid Wdowiński?

Dawid Wdowiński was a psychiatrist and doctor of neurology. He was a member of the right-wing Jewish organization Hatzohar and political leader of the Żydowski Związek Wojskowy resistance organization before and during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Before World War II, Wdowiński was a chairman of the Revisionist Zionism party in Poland. Together with many Jews in the Polish Army and Polish Jewish political leaders, he founded the ŻZW group in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was never a military commander, serving instead as political head of the ŻZW. In 1963 he published his memoir, in which he told about his involvement with the ŻZW and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

After the war, accounts of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising were filtered through former members of the left-leaning ŻOB. These accounts diminished both the roles and the importance of the ŻZW and Wdowiński. One writer, Israel Guttman, was an activist in Ha'Shomer Ha'Tsair.