Tosia Altman (; 24 August 1919 – 26 May 1943) was a courier and smuggler for Hashomer Hatzair and the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) during the German occupation of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Born into a well-off family of Zionist leanings, she joined Hashomer Hatzair and became part of the central leadership before the war. After the invasion of Poland, she fled with the leadership of the youth movements to Vilnius. Volunteering as a courier, she passed herself off as a Polish gentile and risked her life to visit ghettos, first to organize underground education and later to warn them of the impending mass extermination of Jews.
After the formation of the ŻOB in the Warsaw Ghetto, Altman was appointed a liaison to the Home Army. She smuggled weapons and explosives into the ghetto and established a chapter of the ŻOB in the Kraków Ghetto. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, she acted as a courier between bunkers. Seeking shelter at the command bunker at 18 Miła Street, she was one of six to escape when the Germans discovered it. Despite suffering wounds to the leg and head, Altman escaped from the ghetto via the sewers. She was captured two weeks later when the factory she was sheltering in caught fire. Severely burned, she was handed over to the Gestapo and died two days later.
Early life
Altman was born on 24 August 1919 to Anka and Gustaw Altman in Lipno, Poland, near the city of Włocławek. Her father, a watchmaker, owned a jewelry shop in Włocławek and the family was relatively well-off. Although her father had been raised in a Hasidic household, Altman's parents had a liberal interpretation of the Jewish faith and encouraged Altman to study Polish and Hebrew. Altman joined the headquarters of Hashomer Hatzair in Vilna, and helped to organize several unsuccessful attempts to send members of the youth movements illegally to Palestine.
The youth movements were concerned about their friends and relatives trapped under Nazi occupation. Because most of the leaders had fled, the remaining members of youth movements could not organize effectively. It was therefore decided to send some of the leadership back into the General Government region of occupied Poland. Altman was considered to be an inspiring leader and good at organizing. Her blonde hair and fluent Polish meant that she could easily pass as a gentile. On her trip back to Warsaw, Altman visited several eastern Polish ghettos, including Grodno, to pass along this message.
She was portrayed by American actress Leelee Sobieski in the 2001 television film Uprising.
Further reading
- Elizabeth R. Hyman, The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising – The Holocaust Biography of Female Resistance Leaders (Harper Perennial, 2025).