The Bielski partisans were a unit of Polish Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought the German occupiers and their collaborators around Novogrudok and Lida in German-occupied Poland (now western Belarus). The partisan unit was named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who organized and led the community.
The Bielski partisans spent more than two years living in the forest. By the end of the war they numbered as many as 1,236 members, most of whom were non-combatants, including children and the elderly. The Bielski partisans are seen by many Jews as heroes for having led as many refugees as they did away from the perils of war and the Holocaust. However, as their relations with the non-Jewish population were strained and occasionally violent, their wartime record has been the subject of some controversy in Poland.Kazimierz Krajewski – "Opór"? "Odwet"? Czy po prostu "polityka historyczna"? nr 3/2009 - Instytut Pamięci Narodowej page 105
Background Before World War II, the Bielski family had been millers and grocers in Stankiewicze (Stankievichy), near Novogrudok, an area that at the outbreak of the war belonged to Poland and in September 1939 was occupied by the Soviet Union (cf. Polish September Campaign and Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)) in accord with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Before the war, Tuvia Bielski had received training in the Polish Army. After performing reserve duty, he engaged in trade, eventually becoming a smuggler.Gazeta Wyborcza - 12 January 2009 Piotr Gluchowski, Marcin Kowalski< PIOTR GŁUCHOWSKI, MARCIN KOWALSKI Wojna polsko-ruska pod bokiem niemieckim
Under the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, the remainder of the Bielski family served as low-level administrators for the Soviets, with Tuvia Bielski becoming a commissar.Snyder, Timothy, "Caught Between Hitler & Stalin", The New York Review of Books, vol. 56, no. 7 (30 April 2009), (restricted) This strained the Bielskis' relations with their neighbours, many of whom were subjected to Soviet repression.
During Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union beginning 22 June 1941, a Jewish ghetto was established within Novogrudok, as the Germans took over the area and implemented their genocidal policies (see Holocaust in Poland and Holocaust in Belarus).
Partisans
Formation The four Bielski brothers, Tuvia, Alexander (also known as "Zus"), Asael, and Aron, fled into the nearby forests after their parents and other family members had been killed in the ghetto on 8 December 1941. In the spring of 1942, together with 13 ghetto neighbors, they formed the nucleus of a partisan combat unit. The unit originally numbered some 40 people, but quickly grew.
The unit's commander was the oldest brother, Tuvia, who had served in the Polish Army from 1927 to 1929, rising to the rank of corporal. He had been interested in the Zionist youth movement. He sent emissaries to infiltrate the area's ghettos, recruiting new members to the unit, which was sheltering in the Naliboki forest. Hundreds of men, women, and children eventually found their way to the Bielski encampment; at its peak, the unit hosted 1,236 people, 70 per cent of them women, children and elderly; no one was turned away. About 150 people engaged in armed operations.
Organization The partisans lived in underground dugouts (zemlyankas) or bunkers. In addition, several utility structures were built: a kitchen, a mill, a bakery, a bathhouse, a medical clinic for the sick and wounded and a quarantine hut for those who suffered from infectious diseases such as typhus. Herds of cows supplied milk. Artisans made goods and carried out repairs, providing the combatants with logistical support that later served the Soviet partisan units in the vicinity as well. More than 125 workers toiled in the workshops, which became famous among partisans far beyond the Bielski base. Tailors patched up old clothing and stitched together new garments; shoemakers fixed old and made new footwear; leather-workers laboured on belts, bridles and saddles. A metalworking shop established by Shmuel Oppenheim repaired damaged weapons and constructed new ones from spare parts. A tannery, constructed to produce the hide for cobblers and leather workers, became a de facto synagogue because several tanners were devout Hasidic Jews. Carpenters, hat-makers, barbers and watchmakers served their own community and guests. The camp's many children attended class in the dugout set up as a school. The camp even had its own jail and court of law.Peter Duffy, The Bielski Brothers. New York, HarperCollins, 2003, , pp. 214-17.
Some accounts note the inequality between well-off partisans and poor inhabitants of the camp. Piotr Zychowicz, "Bielski pomagał Żydom, ale też ich wykorzystywał" ("Bielski Helped the Jews, but Also Exploited Them") , Rzeczpospolita (The Republic), 23 January 2009. According to one of Tuvia Bielski's cousins who lived in the camp, relayed to her daughter, women were forced to strip naked upon entry and give up their underwear as a form of "entry ticket".
Activities The Bielski unit's partisans were primarily concerned with survival. Due to their poor equipment and training, they were not assigned main combat roles. Instead, its members operated field kitchens, hospitals, and bakeries and provided tailoring and cobbling services for Soviet soldiers.Kazimierz Krajewski, ""Opór"? "Odwet"? Czy po prostu "polityka historyczna"?", Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, no. 3/2009, p. 104. Their main task, though, was forced requisitioning of food and other supplies from the local population. The Bielski partisan group decided to prioritize saving Jews;War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1939-45 , chapter by Kenneth Slepyan, Palgrave Macmillan, pages 52-53 Tuvia Bielski said "I would rather save one old Jewish woman than kill ten German soldiers".The Morality of Self-defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition , David B. Kopel, Praeger, page 119
The Bielski partisans' targets also included the Germans and their collaborators who had betrayed or killed Jews, such as Belarusian volunteer policemen and local inhabitants, as well as their families. In one case, the Bielski partisans killed some 12 people from a Belarusian family who had betrayed two Jewish girls to the Germans. In another, the Bielski partisans killed several collaborators whose names they extracted from Ivan Tzwirkes, a collaborator with a Jewish wife."Nowogrodek: The Story of a Shtetl." Yad Vashem Studies 35.2 (2007): 59.M, Yehuda Bauer. They also conducted sabotage.
At the beginning of 1943 German planes dropped leaflets in the area promising a 50,000 Reichsmark reward for assistance in the capture of Tuvia Bielski; this figure was subsequently doubled to 100,000 RM. The leaflets, which were intended for the Christian population, also reached Jews and provided motivation and courage to attempt an escape to the forest camp.Defiance , Oxford University Press, Nechama Tec, 2009, page 315
In August 1943 the Germans conducted a major clearing operation, Operation Hermann (also dubbed the "big hunt"), against villages and partisan groups in the Naliboki forest. Partisan groups in the forest and surrounding villages suffered major casualties. The Bielski partisans, however, split into small groups and assembled back in their former base in the Jasinowo forest.Defiance , Oxford University Press, Nechama Tec, 1993, pages 116-124 The communities around the Naliboki forest were devastated, the Germans deported the non-Jewish residents fit for work to Germany for slave labor and murdered most of the rest. Prior to the manhunt, homeless refugees were mainly Jews who had escaped the ghetto, but in the fall of 1943 non-Jewish Belarusian, Polish, and Roma who managed to flee roamed in the forest. Many joined partisan units, special family camps set up by the Soviets, and some joined the Bielski group who returned to the area and accepted anyone willing to join. While the Germans wrecked many communities, much was left behind in and around the forest that could sustain life. Fields, orchards, and beehives all had their produce and farm animals roamed the area around the forest. While the buildings of the villages were partially demolished, much of the building material was left usable as well as some household goods. The Bielski group foraged and gathered much of these materials, and tended to the fields.Defiance , Oxford University Press, Nechama Tec, 1993, pages 127-129
The Bielski partisans eventually became affiliated with Soviet organisations in the vicinity of the Naliboki forest under General Platon (Vasily Yefimovich Chernyshev). Several attempts by Soviet commanders to absorb the Bielski fighters into their units were resisted, and the Jewish partisan group retained its integrity and remained under Tuvia Bielski's command. This allowed him to continue his mission of protecting Jewish lives and engaging in combat activity, but it would prove a problem later on.
In September 1943 General Platon ordered the splitting of the group. The first group, named Ordzhonikidze (a famous Georgian communist), was a 180 mainly Jewish fighting detachment (commanded by a non-Jew Lyushenko). All the rest were designated as Kalinin (named for the Soviet head of state) and included some 800 people, including 160 armed defenders, that were based in Naliboki forest and provided services to other partisan groups in the forest as well as participating in sabotage and diversionary actions. On 1 April 1944, the group was renamed as the Bielski otriad.
Like other Soviet-affiliated partisan groups in the area, the Bielski partisans raided nearby villages and forcibly seized food; on occasion, peasants who refused to share their food with the partisans were subjected to violence, even murder. This caused hostility toward the partisans on the part of the peasants, though some willingly helped the Jewish partisans. Other peasants informed on the Jewish partisans in the forests to the Germans.http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/28/bielski_brothers.asp#09 The International School for Holocaust Studies Solidarity in the Forest – The Bielski Brothers By Franziska Reiniger As the region was already pacified by the Germans and many villages were burned to the ground, the local population was in an especially dire situation.Kazimierz Krajewski – "Opór"? "Odwet"? Czy po prostu "polityka historyczna"? nr 3/2009 - Instytut Pamięci Narodowej page 104 Assessment of combat operations According to partisan documentation, in the period from the fall of 1943 to summer 1944 the Bielski fighters (1,140 Jews, 149 of whom were armed combatants) claimed to have carried out 38 combat missions, destroying two locomotives, 23 train cars, 32 telegraph poles, and four bridges.The Morality of Self-defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition , David B. Kopel, Praeger, page 119 In total, the Bielski partisans claimed during the war to have killed 381 enemy fighters (in part, jointly with Soviet groups) and to have lost 50 members.Duffy, Peter, The Bielski Brothers. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. . p. 281: "The numbers are cited in the partisan histories of Ordzhonikidze (Fond 3618; Opus I; File 23) and Kalinin (Fond 3500; Opus 4; File 272) in the Minsk archives. The Kalinin history is also available at Yad Vashem (M.41/120).The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection , ABC-Clio, Paul R. Bartrop, Michael Dickerman, page 83