User:AlexanderRoy1/sandbox

Early Life
Zofia Yamaika was born to a prominent Hasidic Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland in 1925.

Resistance and Death
With the looming inequality between the Polish and small Jewish community, Zofia joined a communist student club named the Spartacus League, which produced and distributed antifascist media--actively campaigning against the looming European fascist movement. Germany seized power of Warsaw on September 28, 1939--Zofia was 14 years old. Because of the war, she dropped out of school. Although the Nazis disbanded Spartacus, Zofia helped in rebirthing the Spartacus League with some resistors. The constant surveillance by German troops made this work very dangerous. In 1940, nearly half a million Jews, including Zofia and her family were resettled in a sealed Warsaw Ghetto. Through the Spartacus League, Zofia's communist partisans helped her commandeer a small pistol with which she trained. Zofia wanted to escape with her communist partisans, but doing so would ultimately put her family at risk. In July 1942, Zofia and her family were deported from the ghetto, but she quickly escaped and joined the Lion Partisans in Radom, Poland. On February 9, 1943, 300 Nazis attacked the Lion Partisans' camp, leaving Zofia and two additional resistors to cover her unit's retreat. Zofia manned a machine gun and shot any German that came within two meters of her position, allowing for the majority of her unit to escape. Germans troops ultimately took over her position and killed Zofia. Zofia Yamaika's I.D. card is enshrined at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Recognition
Zofia's selflessness was recognized even by the Germans, who gave her a proper military burial. In 1963, Zofia was posthumously awarded the Virtuti Militari--for military virtue--which is one of the Polish government's highest military decorations. Her likeness is also part of a mural titled "La Lucha Continua" in San Francisco dedicated to honoring freedom fighters and their sacrifices.