Defiance The Bielski Partisans

European History : Defiance The Bielski Partisans

Fugitives of the Forest: The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival During the Second World War

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ISBN13: 9780195376852
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Bravery in the forest
An amazing story about survival. After reading it, it is amazing to read about how these people survived, made their own community and rules and basically defied the Nazi's just by survivng and thriving. And the bielski's managed to create a safe haven for the jews of europe was truly inspiring, given the circumstances. The only reason I did not give it a five, was, as someone else pointed out, the repetition of the family history, and the details of daily life were a little dull, and sometimes it was easy to mix up who belonged with whom. Overall, worth the read

Nechama Tec's Authoritative Study of the Bielski Otriad
There have been many reviews of this book, and I feel somewhat intimidated at the eloquence of a few of them, but perhaps my opinion can be of value to at least one or two people. This book by Nechama Tec is an outstanding study, thoroughly researched, sourced and annotated. Yet, and probably on account of its very truth, it is deeply moving. It is the story of three brothers from a family of 12 siblings, during the time of the Nazi 1941 invasion of those countries which Germany had not already conquered. That is, the invasion of what remained of Poland, then Belorussia, the Ukraine, Romania and Russia itself. The invasion was accompanied by mass killings of Poles, Russians and Jews. Mainly Jews. The disappearance of Jewish life from Eastern Poland and Western Belorusssia was marked, astounding and appalling, and the Bielskis could see this happening. Tuvia, the oldest of the three brothers, quite simply knew that the Jews of Eastern Europe were lost. He and two of his brothers, Zus and Asael, set about forming an Otriad or Partisan Group in the forests of Western Belorussia, enormous tracts of land where entire villages could hide. They called themselves an Otriad, but their basic aim was to save as many of the remaining Jews as possible. To this end they let it be known in the surrounding ghettos that their group existed; they invited ghetto inhabitants to join them; they sent guides to assist them in finding the group; they sent group members out to find Jews who had escaped the ghettos and Einsatzgruppen (groups of SS who specialized in an organized gunning down of thousands upon thousands of Jews), and were wandering around lost and starving. Simultaneously, the brothers had to deal with the Russian Otriads established also in the forests. The Russians, they knew, would resent them as "Jewish non-fighters", and indeed the Bielskis had many narrow escapes from death at Russian hands. So they joined forces with Russian Otriad members and, together with them, stole food from peasant Nazi collaborators, and gunned down Germans whenever possible. The Jewish group certainly played its part in the Partisan movement, but its basic aim was to save Jewish lives. There is a warmth and tenderness about this aspect of the story which is startlingly at odds with the colossal destruction wrought by the Germans and their war. Whether Jews brought weapons with them to the Bielski Otriad or not, whether they could fight or not, they were made welcome. Everyone worked; all took their turns at various jobs; the group grew throughout the remainder of 1941, then 1942 and 1943. By war's end, at the time of liberation by the Russian armies, the Bielski brothers had saved the lives of more than 1,200 Jewish people. This is a story of resistance not well-known, because the world prefers saying that "Jews went to their deaths like lambs to the slaughter." In other words, the only people to blame for the annihilation of Europe's Jews are the Jews themselves. This, of course, is a nonsense, and this remarkable book by Nechama Tec details resistance to murder by only one group of Jews. There were others, and it is time more was written about them, about the many attempts at resistance by people stripped of everything, people homeless, starving, weak and ill, and targeted for annihilation. It is sad, in spite of Mr Zwick's fine motives, that the movie made of this book is a travesty of the truth, setting out to depict the Bielski Otriad as far more aggressive than it was, and the brothers as far greater rivals of each other than they really were. But at least the movie does stick to the truth in one important respect, perhaps the most important: That Jews did resist Nazi evil; that they did not go meekly towards destruction, despite the stark facts that they were homeless, jobless, starving, ill, betrayed, hated and hunted.
Sheila McLaren.

Some flaws, but as good a telling from the inside as the Bielski story will get
You gotta love any story where, in the movie, a Jewish hero gets played by the same guy who played James Bond.

Tuvia Bielski was a real-life character who, with his brothers, saved 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust in the forests of Belorussia. He didn't stop at being a Jewish bandit or gunslinger, which he might have done; he insisted on saving as many of his fellows as possible, including a large number of civilians, total strangers, unable to fight - women, children, old people. This largesse was almost unknown among the partisans. Each life he saved was one that almost certainly would have been annihilated otherwise.

This and the accompanying movie are a timely telling of the Bielski story, timely because more attention is being paid now to the Holocaust inside the former Soviet Union, inaccessible during the Cold War. The Communists suppressed this history for any number of reasons, including the collaboration of local peoples in the killing of the Jews in their midst, their own anti-Semitism as expressed in the purges, and because Communists were never going to lead inquiries into genocide. Glass houses, etc.

This story's milieu will be unfamiliar to many readers - the small towns and primeval forests of Western Belorussia, land Polish before 1939, invaded by the Russians after their non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1939, overrun by the Germans in 1941, only to be retaken by the Soviets in 1944 and finally (for now) to become part of today's Belarus in 1989. The Bielskis were rural Jews, who farmed amidst their Belorussian neighbors, who knew the back country and how to survive there. Many other Jews in this story are rural or small town people, types unfamiliar to American Jews.

Tec doesn't supply enough historical background for my taste; I wanted to know if these were the remainders of the shtetls of the Jewish Pale, or if these had dissipated by this time and the Jews more intermingled in the surrounding communities. She notes a large percentage of the Bielski group were uneducated people, working class before the war. I'm unclear whether this was the makeup of the Jews of this area generally, if it reflects the Nazi targeting of Jewish elites for annihilation, or if it reflects who survived to get to the forest.

The book would have been improved by better maps. The only one included in the softcover version was cursory, barely a line drawing, that didn't include most place names referenced in the book. And the book needs more reference to outside military history. It may sustain the mood to tell it entirely from the partisans' limited viewpoint - unclear what nearby Germans were doing - but I'd like a better description of why the Nazis vanished after a summer 1943 anti-partisan offensive, torching nearby towns and murdering or deporting a lot of non-Jewish residents, only to reappear in mid-1944 just before being finally vanquished. Did they pull back to the major population centers, leaving the towns and villages unsecured? Or did they vacate the entire area, leaving only their front armies to retreat in disorder back through it almost a year later? The Bielskis, no longer having to move every few weeks, take this opportunity to build their forest camp into a small town complete with tannery, gun repair shop, synagogue and Turkish bath. If the area was that devoid of Germans for an entire year, though, where was the Red Army?

Some of Tec's story is surprising, showing conventional timelines of the war to be incomplete - for instance, there are still Jewish ghettos in Belarus in the summer of 1943, when the destruction of Polish Jewry has already been completed, the Warsaw Ghetto now a smoking ruin for several months, and Auschwitz turning farther afield to Hungary, Greece, and Yugoslavia for Jews to provide grist for its death mill. She might want to explain this further. The Belarus chapter is still being added to the Holocaust canon.

Tec's telling is studious, a bit too much at times. A retired sociology professor, she too often lapses into abstractions or sociological analysis when she could be documenting more historical facts instead. There is much rumination about Tuvia Bielski's role as a charismatic leader. It's clear he was one; say so and move on.

She makes numerous passing references to fighting missions the Bielski partisans participated in, yet describes almost none of them, despite her access to many surviving partisans who undoubtedly could have supplied her with more. This in turn may feed criticisms that perhaps they didn't really fight much.

She values their having saved lives, yet remains skeptical about the notion of fighting the Germans. Underlying her skepticism is the attitude that this was some foolish male need for revenge, and perhaps she thinks telling war stories also a foolish male preoccupation. She never seems to get her arms around the concept that these were Jews who fought, and who fought as Jews, on their own terms, protecting their own - not only from the Nazis but from non-Jewish partisans, bandits, peasants, and the Soviets - when no one else would, and that this was not only survival or respect for life, it was an amazing blast of dignity, a heroic story. And that most of those among the Bielskis who died, died fighting, with their boots on, not as victims, an inspiration to . . . well, to people less academic than Nechama Tec. That the Bielskis protected unarmed civilians and to some extent avoided combat to favor that mission, is notable, admirable, unique and heroic, but Tec seems not to value resistance itself. Don't get me wrong, I am not questioning the Bielskis in the least; whatever decisions they made were proved right by history, by their survival and by having saved saving so many lives. I am questioning Tec's seeming need to question whether that kind of resistance was worth it.

She does spends an entire chapter, meanwhile, on the role of women in the forest - who slept with whom on what terms. Despite efforts at objectivity, she cannot withhold her own judgment, or class prejudices, when considering why more refined women, having linked up with lower-class protectors in the forest, often stayed with them after the war. "Yet, after the war, like Sulia, most of the women continued with the men they had married in the forest. When I asked why they did not change their seemingly unsuitable partners the women had no answers." Hello? Maybe they fell in love with them? Maybe they felt they owed their lives to them? Maybe they had kids with them? Maybe everyone they ever knew from their own social class, was dead? Maybe they discovered these were good men even if they hadn't read Proust in the original French? Maybe not every woman waits for Mr. Perfect forever, or wants to? Maybe they weren't part of today's divorce culture? She finds no inherent merit in the long marriages that resulted. She seems to admire women in the forest who rejected men entirely, and refuses to be at all judgmental of those whose sexual favors were offered freely and perhaps variously. She saves her greatest skepticism for those who found a man, who waited a while before yielding sexually, and who then stayed with him for good. What's up with that?

Although Tec's style grates on me, it takes away but marginally from her otherwise very good work - one unlikely to be replicated, as firsthand witnesses have died since her interviews with them and as the camp's own official account was confiscated to disappear down the Soviet memory hole. Tec, who herself survived in Poland as a hidden child, undoubtedly could open doors with the survivors based on language and common history. She has interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses, does her best to cross-check facts and notes conflicting accounts where she can, and frequently cites the Bielski family's own memoir, unpublished in English.

More recent books on the Bielskis may put their story in better historical perspective, but this is as good as it's going to get on how it looked to those who were there.

Interesting story that is poorly written
The story is interesting but the writing style is very amateurish. When I started reading the book I was quickly disppointed by the choppy writing style and hoped that it would improve. Unfortunately the quality of the writing does not improve at all. One reviewer on Amazon said it sounded like a high school term paper and I think that was a "kind" assessment.

It is not a good read.

Excellent Book
This book is really good. I saw the movie first and was really impressed with that so I later bought the book. What the Bielski brothers did was wonderful.