The novel's importance grew during World War II. Musa Dagh has often been compared to resistance in Jewish ghettos. Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote that it was the most-read book in the Warsaw ghetto. The Białystok Ghetto population found itself in a similar situation as Musa Dagh, in February 1943, when Mordecai Tannenbaum, an inmate of the Vilna ghetto, was sent with others to organize resistance there. The record of one of the meetings organizing the revolt, suggests that the novel was used as a guide for resistance: "Only one thing remains for us: to organize collective resistance in the ghetto, at any cost; to consider the ghetto our 'Musa Dagh', to write a proud chapter of Jewish Białystok and our movement into history" noted Tannenbaum. Copies of the novel were said to have been "passed from hand to hand" among the ghetto defenders who likened their situation to that of the Armenians. According to extensive statistical records kept by Herman Kruk at the Vilna ghetto library, the book was the most popular among ghetto readership, as is recounted in memoirs by survivors who worked at the library.