Chayele Porus Palevsky, a longtime stalwart of New York’s Yiddish cultural scene, who worked tirelessly to preserve the memory of Jewish Vilna, died Sept. 20, the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Palevsky, one of the last surviving Jews to have fought among the partisans of Vilna, died at the River Garden Hebrew Home in Jacksonville, FL, surrounded by her family.

Chayele and her family were imprisoned in the Svintsyan ghetto, where she joined a partisan group and helped steal guns from the Germans. After the ghetto’s liquidation, she continued fighting in the surrounding forests in a partisan group that called itself “nekome” (revenge). She served as a nurse and an ad hoc psychotherapist for her fellow fighters.

After the war, she married fellow partisan Simon Palevsky. They were active in a variety of Yiddish cultural organizations.