The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest [Hardcover]

Peter Duffy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

It is one of the most remarkable dramas of World War II -- untold until now.

In 1941, three young men -- brothers, sons of a miller -- witnessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their eventual murders. It was a grim scene that would, of course, be repeated endlessly throughout the war. What makes this particular story of interest is how the survivors responded. Instead of running or capitulating or giving in to despair, these brothers -- Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski -- did something else entirely. They fought back, waging a guerrilla war of wits and cunning against both the Nazis and the pro-Nazi sympathizers. Along the way they saved well over a thousand Jewish lives.

Using their intimate knowledge of the dense forests surrounding the Belorussian towns of Novogrudek and Lida, the Bielskis evaded the Nazis and established a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other Jews to join their ranks. When the Nazis began systematically eliminating the local Jewish populations -- more than ten thousand were killed in the first year of the Nazi occupation alone -- the Bielskis intensified their efforts, often sending fighting men into the ghettos to escort Jews to safety. As more and more Jews arrived each day, a robust community began to emerge, a "Jerusalem in the woods." They slept in camouflaged dugouts built into the ground. Lovers met, were married, and conceived children. The community boasted a synagogue, a bathhouse, a theater, and cobblers so skilled that Russian officers would wait in line to have their boots reshod.

But as its notoriety grew, so too did the Nazi efforts to capture the rugged brothers; and on several occasions they came so near to succeeding that the Bielskis had to abandon the camp and lead their massive entourage to newer, safer locations. And while some argued in favor of a smaller, more mobile unit, focused strictly on waging battle against the Germans, Tuvia Bielski was firm in his commitment to all Jews. "I'd rather save one old Jewish woman," he said, "than kill ten Nazis."

In July 1944, after two and a half years in the woods, the Bielskis learned that the Germans, overrun by the Red Army, were retreating back toward Berlin. More than one thousand Bielski Jews emerged -- alive -- on that final, triumphant exit from the woods.

The Bielski Brothers is a dramatic and heartfelt retelling of a story of the truest heroism, a historic testament to courage in the face of unspeakable adversity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A fascinating story!” (The Economist )

“Fast-paced and deeply moving...inspiring in its representation of the heroism of ordinary people.” (Washington Post )

“An extraordinary story of resistance.” (The Spectator )

“Remarkable [and] surprising ... Duffy’s book is a gripping and overdue tribute to the brothers’ resourcefulness and courage.” (London Times )

“As amazing as Schindler’s List.” (People )

“This remarkable story would make a terrific movie…. A story about heroes, and Duffy does a masterful job.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

“[A] dramatic and heartfelt story of unbelievable courage in the face of unspeakable adversity.” (PW Daily )

“An exciting, well-paced story about honor, courage and duty. An inspiration.” (Howard Blum, author of THE BRIGADE )

“An engrossing, inspiring narrative ... of an incredible victory amid an immeasurable tragedy.” (Dallas Morning News )

“A haunting book...with the grip of good fiction and the punch of hard truth.” (Chicago Tribune )

“Captivating...a welcome story of bold, determined, and successful resistance....[An] unjustly neglected story.” (San Francisco Chronicle )

“Powerful! The strength of the human spirt shines on in [this] beautifully written book.” (Paula Zahn, CNN Live from the Headlines )

“A wildly daring, untold tale of resistance .... inspiring and harrowing.” (Jewish Bulletin )

“Uplifting....A powerful recounting of a little-known story.” (Kirkus Reviews )

About the Author

Peter Duffy lives in New York City with his wife and daughter. The Bielski Brothers is his first book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First edition (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066210747
• ISBN-13: 978-0066210742
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #894,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > History > Asia > Belarus

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Hardly a plaque bears their names.", July 5, 2003

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest (Hardcover)

When the Germans finally retreated from Belarus in the summer of 1944, almost twelve hundred Jewish survivors of the Holocaust shocked the world by materializing from the forest where they had lived in hiding during the German occupation. Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski, three brothers, had managed to establish a well-organized community in the forest which lasted for almost three years, protecting hundreds of Jewish citizens while wreaking havoc on their German occupiers. Author Peter Duffy places this extraordinary story of survival in context by describing the Bielskis? lives and achievements, quoting from Tuvia Bielski?s previously unknown journal, and revealing the sociopolitical history, including the anti-Semitism, of Belarus, a region south of Lithuania.

In establishing their forest community, open to all Jews, the Bielskis had to fight "wars" on four fronts: the immediate threat from the Germans and the local police; the danger from local peasants and collaborators; the suspicions of Soviet partisans who questioned whether the Bielskis were sufficiently dedicated to their cause; and most of all, internal dissension. This was no "utopian community of enlightened democratic and egalitarian governance," and many readers may cringe at the extremes to which the leadership occasionally resorted in order to eliminate dissension.

At its height, the forest village consisted of long, camouflaged dugouts for sleeping, a large kitchen, mill, bakery, bathhouse, tannery, school, jail, theater, and two medical facilities. Tailors, seamstresses, shoemakers, watchmakers, carpenters, mechanics, and experts in demolition provided the 1200-member community with necessary skills, and about sixty cows and thirty horses provided food and transportation. Many of the men served as part of the armed contingent which secured food and engaged in sabotage and the murder of Germans officials.

By concentrating on one family and its life during the war, Duffy creates a powerful documentary about Jewish life. Breaking the narrative into six-month installments, he details the progress of the war throughout the region, relentlessly revealing cold statistics--the thousands of people killed in a single ghetto in a single day. As the numbers mount, the reader?s horror at the immense scale of the genocide grows, the victims? utter helplessness becomes obvious, and the reader?s amazement at the Bielskis? achievement increases. None of the Bielski brothers ever received public recognition for these heroic efforts, and Duffy?s attempts to rectify this historical omission by telling their story will resonate with readers. Mary Whipple

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very accurate depiction., October 24, 2003

By 

Ruth Levy (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest (Hardcover)

My mother and brother spent some time in the Bielski brothers camp after escaping a "selection" in the Lida Ghetto. My mother just finished reading this book and remarked that all of the details are amazingly accurate. Obviously Peter Duffy verified and cross-referenced all of the stories he heard from the various survivors, even after so many years have passed. Duffy glorifies no one, but depicts the situation, the conflicts, the characters just as they were.

This is really a more miraculous story than "Shindler's List".

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring story, March 17, 2007

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest (Hardcover)

The story of Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski and the village they built in the woods of Belarus, while waging a continual war against the Nazi occupiers and their anti-Semitic local collaborators, is an inspiring story proving that, contrary to what some people insist upon, there were those out there who did NOT let themselves be led like sheep to the slaughter. These men had been fighters since they were boys, unwilling to take guff or indignities from anyone, unafraid to defend themselves, even physically. They were not the stereotypical pale-faced yeshiva boys of Eastern Europe who ran and cowered from confrontation with anti-Semites.

The Bielski brothers were three of the dozen children (eleven surviving past childhood) born to David Bielski and Beyle Mendelavich of Stankevich, Belarus, in an area that, through all of the wars and territorial treaties in those years, often changed hands between the Russians, the Poles, the Belarussians themselves, the Soviets, and finally the Germans. Drawing on their background of defending themselves and not running away from people trying to harm them, the brothers took an active role in partisan activity after the Nazi occupation. Though the three of them had managed to find residence away from the Lida and Novogrudek areas where their parents and most of their siblings were, they could see that what was happening was no small stuff, wasn't liable to stop anytime soon, and cried out to be avenged fully. Rescuing as many of their own people as possible became even more imperative after the murder of their parents, two of their brothers, and Asael's wife and baby daughter. Against all odds, they gave shelter and protection to roughly 1,200 people, began a fully-functioning village in the forest, moved their people to safer locations several times (under active Nazi pursuit and flying bullets no less), made connections with the Soviet partisans, and got many of their residents out of the Lida and Novogrudek ghettoes. They were so successful at getting their people out of the two closest ghettoes, in fact, that 240 of 250 people left in the Novogrudek ghetto on the eve of a planned deportation escaped through a tunnel in a mass escape that was amazingly successful (150 survived and weren't killed in the Nazi gunfire that followed, and the few remaining hidden in the ghetto escaped several days later). Along the way, they had to contend with enemies on four fronts--the Nazis, pro-Nazi collaborators, Soviet partisans who weren't always on the same page as they when it came to why they were fighting the war, and internal dissention among their own people. So much of the Jewish community in the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union had been completely decimated (particularly since most of them had been murdered by Einsatzgruppen instead of being killed in ghettoes or camps where they at least had a small chance of survival), so it was an astonishing thing to see these 1,200 survivors come walking out of the woods in July of 1944 after the area was liberated by the Red Army. (Although it was never really said just how many of the Bielski siblings survived, apart from Tuvia, Asael, Zus, their baby brother Aron who worked as a scout in the woods, their sister Taibe, and an older brother in America; are we to assume they were killed or that some of them were also in the woods? We know two of their brothers were killed, but we're never told anything about the fates of most of their other siblings.)

There are those who claim that all books about the Shoah are just the same story over and over again, or are too depressing, but how many of those books are written about Jewish partisans who actively fought back and in the process also saved over a thousand of their own people, complete with creating their own village where life went on in (relatively speaking) normal circumstances? This is an inspiring story about three heroic brothers, not just some tale of sadness, woe, despair, and having to wait to be rescued by an outside force. I've also never read a book about the Shoah in Belarus; it's not too common to run across books with the Nazi-occupied USSR as the setting, seeing as how most of the people living there were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen early on, no chance of surviving the way someone in, say, Holland, France, or Hungary might have. This was hands-down one of the largest groups of Jews saved by anyone during the Shoah. It's about time these unsung heroes of the Shoah got more recognition.