In 1986, representatives of the Organization of Partisans, Underground Fighters and Ghetto Rebels in Israel approached Holocaust scholar Nechama Tec to write a historical account of the Bielski partisan unit—the single most massive rescue operation of Jews by Jews. The group offered to set up interviews with former partisans, including Tuvia Bielski, its charismatic leader, whom Tec met two weeks before his death in New York. The book, Defiance, was published in 1993 and became the basis for the 2008 film.
Even for those who saw the film, reading Defiance is essential to understanding the extent of the Bielskis’ accomplishment. Tuvia, Asael, and Zus—three brothers from a family of ten—were large, strong, handsome men who grew up on a farm in Western Belorussia. They knew how to survive in the surrounding woods. When Germany invaded Russian-occupied Poland in 1941, they fled to the forests with a small group of friends and relatives instead of following orders to enter the ghettos. Soon they actively began to enlarge the camp: they sent guides into ghettos to help Jews escape and sent scouts to find fugitive Jews hiding in the forests. Tuvia, the commander, reportedly often said, ”Would that there were thousands of Jews who could reach our camp, we would take all of them in!” Unlike the Soviet partisan units, which only accepted men with weapons, the Bielski partisans accepted all Jews, including women, children, and older people. As one partisan recalls, “Tuvia was eager to accept into his unit as many Jewish fugitives as possible and he continued to implement this policy despite vigorous internal opposition.” Unlike the movie version—in which Tuvia and Zus quarrel over this issue and Zus leaves the camp to join a Russian fighting unit—the brothers in fact never separated, despite Zus’ real concerns over whether they would be able to feed them all.
Tuvia showed brilliant leadership skills in organizing a functioning forest community that numbered 1,200 people by 1944. He negotiated deals with the Soviet partisans that enabled their camp to survive as a Jewish otriad (official partisan unit) with its own policies, though ostensibly under Soviet authority. The Bielski camp was organized mainly for defense and rescue, but at times had to contribute fighting men to Russian partisan units to join in acts of sabotage against the Germans. Nevertheless, when in 1943 the Nazis launched a massive invasion of the forests called “The Big Hunt,” the Russian units in the area fled and left the Jewish group to fend for itself. The Bielski brothers led their group across a 12-kilometer swamp to safety, taking care to leave no one behind and going back for stragglers. After the war, these modest men faded into oblivion (Asael died in the Red Army months before the war’s end), remembered mainly by those who knew them as true heroes.
Bonny V. Fetterman is the literary editor of Reform Judaism magazine.
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