Adolf Berman was a politician and Zionist. In the fall of 1940, he was forced to move into the Warsaw ghetto. There he ran the charitable organization Centos, which cared especially for Jewish orphans. In 1942 he was a cofounder of Blok Antyfaszystowski (Antifascist Block), a Jewish resistance group that was planning an armed uprising in the ghetto. In the summer of 1942, Berman barely avoided being deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. He then decided to flee the ghetto together with his wife Barbara. Outside the ghetto he contacted Polish underground organizations. When the ghetto uprising began in 1943, Berman kept the Polish exile government in London informed. He was also active as the secretary general of the Polish underground organization Żegota (Council to Aid Jews). Berman organized escapes from the ghetto and arranged hiding places and forged documents for the refugees. In 1944 he participated in the Warsaw uprising.
After the war, Berman became chair of the Central Committee of Polish Jews. After he had to step down from the position in 1949 he went to Israel, where he was a politician and journalist.