Bielski Partisans: These WWII Jewish Resistance Embodied ‘Defiance’
The Bielski Partisans waged plenty of combat action against the Nazi scourge, much to the chagrin of the oppressors.
January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and to commemorate that solemn day, I chose to write an article in honor and recognition of the brave Jewish resistance fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943; theirs was a story I first learned of during my undergraduate days at the University of Southern California in a course taught by the highly erudite scholar Rabbi Mordecai Finley.
As a follow-up to that article, I shall now cover another group of Jewish freedom fighters who chose not to meekly submit to Nazi tyranny: the Bielski Partisans of German-occupied Poland (in a region that now comprises western Belarus). The Bielski Partisans are undoubtedly better known to Western moviegoing audiences thanks to the 2008 motion picture Defiance starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.
However, as truly thrilling and inspiring a film as “Defiance” is, it still contains embellishments and dramatizations, as Hollywood is known to do. Accordingly, I am now setting out to tell The National Interest’s loyal readers about the real Bielski Partisans story.
Bieslki Brothers Bios in Brief
The film primarily focuses on Tuvia (portrayed by Craig) and Alexander Zeisal “Zus” (portrayed by Schreiber). However, two other Bielski brothers, namely Asael (played by Jamie Bell in the motion picture) and the youngest brother Aron (aka Aharon, the last living Bielski brother, played by George MacKay in the movie) are equally deserving of credit as founders of the fighting force, according to the Facing History & Ourselves website.
These four brothers comprised one-third of a total stable of twelve siblings, parented by David and Beila, who owned a mill; they were the only Jewish family in the village of Stankiewicze—located between the towns of Lida and Nowogródek—that was populated by six families.
In June 1941, Nazi Germany initiated Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. On the heels of the main Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS invasion force came the brutal (even by Nazi jackboot standards) Einsatzgruppen, death squads that rounded up the Jews, murdered them, buried them in mass graves, and forced the remaining Jewish population into ghettos. When these death squads murdered the Bielski brothers’ parents and two of their other brothers on December 5, 1841, the die was cast, and the fearless foursome established their partisan unit.
Tuvia Bielski, already a seasoned Polish Army veteran, was placed in command of the group. Asael was made his second-in-command, Zus was placed in charge of reconnaissance, and Aron’s initial role was to rescue children from the ghetto.
Bielski Battles
Tuvia saw the group’s primary objective as saving the lives of fellow Jews rather than fighting the German invaders; as he’s quoted on the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center info page, “Don’t rush to fight and die. So few of us are left, we need to save lives. It is more important to save Jews than to kill Germans.”
Accordingly, Tuvia and his brothers fled to the Belorussian forest, whereupon they offered shelter and protection to their fellow Jews. As Aron said in an April 2020 interview with Jackson Richman of Jewish News Syndicate (JNS):
“Life in the forest was great. [There was] freedom. You saw the sunshine. All we needed was food, and we [felt that we] won. If you wanted to sleep, you slept. If there was no bed, you slept on the snow. Whatever it was, it was. It’s hard to believe, but that’s what it is.”
Although the Bielski Partisans may not have prioritized fighting, they still waged plenty of combat action against the Nazi scourge, much to the chagrin of the oppressors. As noted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
“With the help of non-Jewish Belorussian friends, they were able to acquire guns. The Bielski partisans later supplemented these arms with captured German weapons, Soviet weapons, and equipment supplied by Soviet partisans … [T]he Bielski group carried out several operational missions. It attacked the Belorussian auxiliary police officials, as well as local farmers suspected of killing Jews. The group disabled German trains, blew up rail beds, destroyed bridges, and facilitated escapes from Jewish ghettos. The Bielski fighters often joined with Soviet partisans in operations against German guards and facilities, killing many Germans and Belorussian collaborators.”
Aftermath
The Bielski Partisans story has a much happier ending than their Warsaw Ghetto counterparts; the latter suffered 56,000 killed or deported to the horrors of the camps, in exchange for either 110 or 300 Nazi casualties (depending on which source you consult). By contrast, by the time the Red Army destroyed the German Army in Belorussia, the Bielski group had reached its peak of 1,230 persons, with over 70 percent of these survivors being women, children, and the elderly; a mere 50 of the Bielski fighters were killed in action.
Sadly, Asael would not survive to see the end of the so-called “Great Patriotic War (Vělikaja Otěčestvěnnaja vojna),” as he was drafted into the Red Army and perished on the Eastern Front in February 1945, a mere two months shy of the capitulation of the would-be “Thousand Year Reich.”
On a happier note, Tuvia, Zus, and Aron emigrated with their families to Palestine, whereupon they continued to display their indomitable fighting during the 1948 war that established the modern State of Israel. The three brothers subsequently emigrated a second time, this time to the United States; Aron officially changed his surname to Bell and fathered three children with his first wife, Judith. Aron’s second wife, Henryka, is also a Holocaust survivor (albeit twelve years younger than her husband).
We shall conclude this article with these parting words from Aron’s JNS interview:
“People should be nice to each other, to help each other, whoever needs help. Be good to your family and to people. If you see a person needs help, help him or her. Because the good Lord will know about it.”
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr was previously a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ) and 19FortyFive. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
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