Study Guide Tuvia Bielski: Rescue Is Resistance
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Study Guide Tuvia Bielski: Rescue is Resistance Before his death in 1987, Tuvia heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In fact, Bielski told his wife, Lilka, “I their resistance was more successful then both will be famous when I am the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the work of dead.” Bielski and Lilka were Schindler in both numbers of lives saved and living in Brooklyn, New York, numbers of Germans killed. Tuvia Bielski was a where they seemed to be a deeply complex man: cruel and tender, typical immigrant family. charismatic and profane, hotheaded and Bielski, who spoke thickly composed. But he was above all passionate and accented English, worked as a utterly determined, possessing a connection to truck driver delivering plastic the sufferings of the Jewish people that bordered materials on the mystical. Members of the partisan group to companies throughout the remember him as super-human, riding atop a New York metropolitan area. white horse in their forest enclave. “He was sent Bielski was in reality the man by God to save Jews,” said Rabbi Beryl Chafetz, who many consider among who as a rabbinical student took refuge in the the greatest heroes of anti- Bielski camp. “He wasn't a man, he was an angel,” German resistance in World said Isaac Mendelson. War II—a man who master- During World War II, the majority of European minded and led one of the Jews were deceived by the German's meticulous most significant Jewish rescue “disinformation” campaign. The Nazis detained and resistance operations of millions of Jews and forced them into camps, by the Holocaust. It is a profound promising them safety in exchange for their work. irony that he would be forced to wonder when he Tuvia Bielski. Date unknown. In reality, many of these “work camps” were death Source: Novogrudek, The History of a would get full credit for his achievements. Jewish Shtetl , www.novogrudek.com. camps where men, women, and children were In its outlines, Tuvia Bielski's story sounds like the systematically murdered. Yet approximately far-fetched creation of a Hollywood scriptwriter. 20,000 to 30,000 Jews, many of whom were From a small village in the country now called teenagers, escaped the Nazis to form or join Belarus, Bielski and his brothers Asael and Zus organized resistance groups. These Jews are escaped from invading Germans into a nearby known as the Jewish partisans, and they joined forest and then created a refuge for other local hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish partisans Jews there. But the Bielskis did more than hide fighting against the enemy throughout much and save lives: periodically a group of them of Europe. emerged from the trees on horseback, sub- Sometimes they fought with non-Jewish partisan machine guns strapped to their shoulders, to units. In some units they had to hide their Jewish ambush the enemy. In time, the forest settlement identity, even though they shared a common became like a small town, complete with enemy, the Germans. Many partisan units were shoemakers and tailors, carpenters, and hat so antisemetic that fighters of the same unit makers, a central square for social gatherings, a could not openly reveal that they were Jews. This guide is part of JPEF’s Teaching tannery that doubled as a synagogue, and even a with Defiance multimedia curriculum Other partisan units were purely Jewish. In the which includes: theater troupe. Ultimately, the Bielski brothers case of the Bielski's, they were composed not • Defiance Film on DVD saved the lives of 1,200 Jews and killed more than • Educator’s DVD of Excerpts merely of fighters, but of women, children, and • Educator’s Lesson Guide 300 enemy soldiers. Educator’s DVD and Guide are currently the elderly. available ONLY through workshops. The Bielski partisans' achievement is on par with Jewish partisans blew up thousands of German To bring Teaching with Defiance to more famous acts of wartime courage such as your community, call 415.563.2244 or supply trains, convoys, and bridges, making it email defi[email protected] those performed by Oskar Schindler and the 1 Part of the BIelski unit towards the end harder for the Germans to fight the war. Partisans thought by many that he was destined for great of the War. Approximate date 1943- also destroyed German power plants and factories, things. 1944. Source USHMM. focusing their attention on military and strategic Asael, the middle son, was the most reticent of targets, not on civilians. Most partisan units the three. Hardworking and loyal, he enjoyed wanted young men who could fight to join their operating the family's business and planned ranks, and many were hostile to Jews. Not the eventually to take over his father's responsibilities Bielskis, however. They took in hundreds of the at the mill. Zus was the brash one. He would elderly, infirm, women, and children. throw punches first, ask questions later; his parents, it seemed, were always negotiating IN THE WOODS, WE WERE FREE with the police to keep him out of trouble. Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski were three of 12 When the Germans arrived in western Belarus, children born to a miller and his wife in the then part of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, the village of Stankevich, near Novogrudek. The only three brothers were 35, 33, and 29. In the first Jews in a small community, they quickly learned months of the occupation, Bielski family members how to look after themselves. Unlike their father, avoided the German onslaught, but by December who had a conciliatory nature, the three wouldn't 1941 the invaders had captured and killed the hesitate to fight to defend their family's honor. brothers' parents and two of their younger Their reputation was fearsome: it was rumored siblings. Thousands of other Jews from the region among the peasants that Asael and Zus had were either killed by the Germans and their murdered a man. collaborators or forced to live in the nearest ghetto. The three brothers had three different personalities, but one common purpose. Tuvia, The brothers sought refuge in the woods where however, was more refined than his two younger they had spent time as children. Asael and Zus, brothers. A tall, dark-haired man known by who were hiding together, set about finding safe neighbors as the “Clark Gable of the Bielskis,” he homes for a dozen or so of their surviving was an avid reader who loved to recount religious relatives, including their younger brother, Aron, stories to illustrate current dilemmas. It was who was 12 at the time. Tuvia, who was staying further to the north, moved relatives in with 2 Wolozyn Emissaries were sent into the ZYNA RIVER RE ghettos to retrieve Jews or urge E B MINSK them to leave; despite the NALIBOCKA FOREST Iwieniec dangers, many were eager to Lida BYSIRA RIVER Naliboki risk flight. By the autumn of Wsielub 1942, the Bielski group Novogrodek included nearly 100 members. R E IV Korelicze Stolpce R “It seemed like EN R M Zdzieciol E IE D a fantasy from another world,” N R O 9 B 3 wrote one inhabitant after the 9 T Horodyszcze 1 E I - V 9 2 O war. “A kind of gay abandon 9 S - 1 H S filled the air; biting frank talk I L Baranovichi O Slonim P spiced with juicy curses; LIPICZANSKA FOREST galloping horses and the laughter of children. Suddenly LITHUANIA I saw myself as an extra in a Wild West movie.” BELARUS “Compared to the ghettos, it USSR felt like heaven,” said Charles Bedzow. “In the POLAND woods, we were free. That's all I can tell you. We friendly non-Jews. had freedom.” But by the spring of UKRAINE 1942, the three CZECHOSLOVAKIA decided it was time JERUSALEM IN THE FOREST to relocate all the The brothers moved quickly to build a fighting HUNGARY relatives into a force from the escapees, who joined forces with ROMANIA single location in the woods. Many the growing army of Soviet partisans engaging in were wary of guerrilla attacks against the occupiers. In October venturing into 1942, a squad of Bielski and Soviet fighters raided a German convoy loaded with supplies, killing at MAP OF AREA: Approximate activity the wild, but the brothers were insistent. In a of Bielski partisans in Eastern Poland forest about a mile from the nearest road, they least one German soldier. (now Belarus) during war. Source: made an encampment where everyone slept under Defiance: The Bielski Partisans , by “It was satisfying in a larger sense,” Tuvia wrote Nechama Tec. Oxford University Press, blankets propped up by tree branches. The 1993. of the first attack on Nazis in his 1955 Yiddish brothers also sought to obtain weapons for the language memoir, “A real spiritual high point, that group's protection. the world should know that there were still Jews As the murders and torture of the Jews increased alive, and especially Jewish partisans.” in the Novogrudek ghetto, and in others further The strength and reputation of the brothers' away, Tuvia decided to expand the group beyond unit—formed as a military outfit with Tuvia as their relatives. Asael and Zus initially opposed the commander, Asael as deputy commander, and Zus plan, thinking that it was best to keep the unit as chief of reconnaissance—grew throughout late small and manageable. But Tuvia insisted. “I 1942. The young fighting men, a minority of the would rather save one old Jewish woman than overall Bielski population, spent long nights kill 10 Nazi soldiers,” he said. He argued that obtaining food—sometimes stealing it—from the they couldn't sit idle while their people were local peasant population to feed everyone.