Study Guide Tuvia Bielski: Rescue is Resistance www.jewishpartisans.org Before his death in 1987, and the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Tuvia Bielski told his wife, In fact, their resistance was more successful Lilka, “I will be famous when then both the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and I am dead.” Bielski and Lilka the work of Schindler in both numbers of lives were living in Brooklyn, New saved and numbers of Germans killed. Tuvia York, where they seemed to Bielski was a deeply complex man: cruel and be a typical immigrant family. tender, charismatic and profane, hotheaded and Bielski, who spoke thickly composed. But he was above all passionate and accented English, worked utterly determined, possessing a connection to as a truck driver delivering the sufferings of the Jewish people that bordered plastic materials to companies on the mystical. Members of the partisan group throughout the New York remember him as super-human, riding atop a metropolitan area. Bielski was white horse in their forest enclave. “He was sent in reality the man who many by God to save Jews,” said Rabbi Beryl Chafetz, consider among the greatest who as a rabbinical student took refuge in the heroes of anti-German Bielski camp. “He wasn’t a man, he was an angel,” resistance in World War II—a said Isaac Mendelson. man who master-minded and During World War II, the majority of European led one of the most significant Jews were deceived by the German’s meticulous Jewish rescue and resistance “disinformation” campaign. The Nazis detained operations of the Holocaust. millions of Jews and forced them into camps, It is a profound irony that he promising them safety in exchange for their work. Tuvia Bielski. Date unknown. would be forced to wonder when he would get Source: Novogrudek, The History of a In reality, many of these “work camps” were Jewish Shtetl, www.novogrudek.com. full credit for his achievements. death camps where men, women, and children In its outlines, Tuvia Bielski’s story sounds like the were systematically murdered. Yet approximately far-fetched creation of a Hollywood scriptwriter. 30,000 Jews, many of whom were teenagers, From a small village in the country now called escaped the Nazis to form or join organized Belarus, Tuvia and his brothers Asael, Zus, and resistance groups. These Jews are known as Aron escaped from invading Germans into a the Jewish partisans, and they joined hundreds nearby forest and then created a refuge for of thousands of non-Jewish partisans fighting other local Jews there. But the Bielskis did more against the enemy throughout much than hide and save lives: periodically a group of Europe. of them emerged from the trees on horseback, Sometimes they fought alongside non-Jewish sub-machine guns strapped to their shoulders, partisan units. In some units they had to hide to ambush the enemy. In time, the forest their Jewish identity, even though they shared settlement became like a small town, complete Teaching with ‘Defiance’ a common enemy, the Germans. Many partisan with shoemakers and tailors, carpenters, and hat This guide can be used with JPEF’s units were so antisemetic that fighters of the multimedia curriculum for the film makers, a central square for social gatherings, a ‘Defiance’, starring Daniel Craig and same unit could not openly reveal that they were Liev Schreiber. For additional resources tannery that doubled as a synagogue, and even Jews. Other partisan units were purely Jewish. In and information, go to: a theater troupe. Ultimately, the Bielski brothers www.jewishpartisans.org/defiance the case of the Bielski’s, they were composed not saved the lives of 1,200 Jews and killed more than merely of fighters, but of women, children, and 300 enemy soldiers. the elderly. The Bielski partisans’ achievement is on par Jewish partisans blew up thousands of German with more famous acts of wartime courage Conforms to Common Core Standards supply trains, convoys, and bridges, making it jewishpartisans.org/standards such as those performed by Oskar Schindler 1 Members of the Bielski unit, on guard harder for the Germans to fight the war. Partisans was thought by many that he was destined for duty at an airstrip in the Naliboki Forest. Approximate date 1943-1944. also destroyed German power plants and factories, great things. Source USHMM. focusing their attention on military and strategic Asael was the most reticent of the three older targets, not on civilians. Most partisan units brothers. 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, ill, women, and children. throw punches first, ask questions later. His parents, it seemed, were always negotiating with Additional Resources on the Bielski IN THE WOODS, WE WERE FREE the police to keep him out of trouble. Aron was brothers and the film‘ Defiance’ a pre-teen when the war began. Still, he helped t Tuvia, Asael, Zus, and Aron Bielski were four of 12 gather intelligence. His youth camouflaged Take the Teaching with the Film children born to a miller and his wife in the rural his role as a partisan, and it made him an ‘Defiance’ videocourse: village of Stankevich, near Novogrudek. The only indispensable member of the group. www.jewishpartisans.org/elearning Jews in a small community, they quickly learned t how to look after themselves. Unlike their father, When the Germans arrived in western Belarus, Download additional ‘Defiance’ curricula & other resources: who had a conciliatory nature, the three oldest then part of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, the www.jewishpartisans.org/defiance brothers wouldn’t hesitate to fight to defend their four brothers were 35, 33, 29, and 12. In the first t family’s honor. Their reputation was fearsome: it months of the occupation, Bielski family members See the Bielski partisans short film was rumored among the peasants that Asael and avoided the German onslaught, but by December (video version of pages 2-3): Zus had murdered a man. 1941 the invaders had captured and killed the www.jewishpartisans.org/films brothers’ parents and two of their younger t The four brothers had four different personalities, Get the ‘Defiance’ Educator’s DVD with siblings. Thousands of other Jews from the region 21 film excerpts and Bielski partisan but one common purpose. The brothers were either killed by the Germans and their testimonials: complemented each other’s strengths and collaborators or forced to live in ghettos. [email protected] weaknesses. Tuvia was more refined than his younger brothers. A tall, dark-haired man known The brothers sought refuge in the woods where by neighbors as the “Clark Gable of the Bielskis,” they had spent time as children. Asael and Zus, he was an avid reader who loved to recount who were hiding together, set about finding religious stories to illustrate current dilemmas. It safe homes for a dozen or so of their surviving 2 Wolozyn the dangers, many were eager ZYNA RIVER RE E to risk flight. By the autumn of B MINSK 1942, the Bielski group included NALIBOCKA FOREST Iwieniec Lida BYSIRA RIVER nearly 100 members. “It seemed Naliboki like a fantasy from another Wsielub world,” wrote one inhabitant Novogrodek after the war. “A kind of gay R E IV Korelicze Stolpce R abandon filled the air; biting EN M Zdzieciol IE N frank talk spiced with juicy BORDER 39 9 T curses; galloping horses and the Horodyszcze 1 IE 29- laughter of children. Suddenly I 19 saw myself as an extra in a Wild Baranovichi Slonim POLISH-SOV West movie.” LIPICZANSKA FOREST “Compared to the ghettos, it LITHUANIA felt like heaven,” said Charles Bedzow. “In the woods, we were BELARUBE S free. That’s all I can tell you. We had freedom.” USSR relatives, including POLAND Aron. Tuvia, who JERUSALEM IN THE FOREST was staying further to the north, moved The brothers moved quickly to build a fighting UKRAINE relatives in with force from the escapees, who joined forces with CZECHOSLOVAKIA friendly non-Jews. the growing army of Soviet partisans engaging in guerrilla attacks against the occupiers. In October By the spring of 1942, a squad of Bielski and Soviet fighters raided HUNGARY 1942, Tuvia, Zus, and a German convoy loaded with supplies, killing at ROMANIA Asael decided it was least one German soldier. time to relocate all the relatives into a “It was satisfying in a larger sense,” Tuvia wrote MAP OF AREA: Approximate activity single location in the woods. Many were wary of the first attack on Nazis in his 1955 Yiddish of Bielski partisans in Eastern Poland of venturing into the wild, but the brothers language memoir, “A real spiritual high point, that (now Belarus) during the war. Source: Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, by were insistent. In a forest about a mile from the the world should know that there were still Jews Nechama Tec. Oxford University Press, 1993. nearest road, they made an encampment where alive, and especially Jewish partisans.” everyone slept under blankets propped up by The strength and reputation of the brothers’ tree branches. The brothers also sought to obtain unit—formed as a military outfit with Tuvia as weapons for the group’s protection. commander, Asael as deputy commander, and As the murders and torture of the Jews increased Zus as chief of reconnaissance—grew throughout in the Novogrudek ghetto, and in others further late 1942. The young fighting men, a minority of away, Tuvia decided to expand the group beyond the overall Bielski population, spent long nights their relatives.