Customer Reviews

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

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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

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".

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.

The Bielski Brothers were brutal men. What set them apart from others was that they rescued 1,200 Jews. They did not turn away the old, women, or children, though factions within their partisian group felt that the non-combatants were too much of a burden. Not only were the non-combatants not turned away, they were sought out from the ghetto's and led to the enclave.

The Brothers all had flaws, and the author Peter Duffy, does not gloss over the flaws. The Brothers were vengeful, murderous, and tyrannical. However, I feel that more "compassionate" men would never have been able to accomplish what the Bielski Brothers did. They maintained a enormous community within the forests of Belorus, not for weeks or months, but for years. This took strict discipline, which the Bielski's were capable of, including execution of those who disobeyed. Duffy reveals that at times, Tuvia, the leader, crossed the line of reason.

Duffy is able to show the humanity of these men. Men who lost their parents, wives and children, to the Nazi's, and risked their lives to save the lives of strangers.

This is a well written book, that tells a fascinating, little known story from the most horrific times in modern history.

The brothers witnesses such unbearable cruelty at the hands of the Germans and many local gentiles that they saw no choice but to fight if they were going to survive. Their fight included their protection of hundreds and hundreds of Jews. Through their charisma, organizing skills, and aggressiveness, they successfully accomplished their task. Along the way, however, it appears that they developed a certain hubris, a feeling of such self-importance that they became what can only be called tyrannical. Although there is a question of whether they or some of their people were unduly robbing the surrounding peasants and appeared less than completely with their Soviet sponsors, there is no question that they took what ever they wanted for themselves, including accommodations and women. Perhaps as with Moses, Tuvia committed such a cruel act upon the dissolution of the camp that he paid for it by becoming a failure in later life, never able to re-capture his former authority and self-satisfaction.

Excellent telling of the heretofore under-reported story of WWII anti-German partisans who faced a double danger. Unlike many other partisans, these partisan's could not go home for food, clothing or shelter. While some other partisan's could go to their homes and, upon encountering German authorities, whip out authentic identity papers to prove they belonged in their homes, the main subjects of this story risked being subjected to murder simply because of what they were. Encounters with Germans had to be avoided, except with a gun. In addition, the partisans who are the central figures of this history included infants, toddlers and elderly people.
The leader of these partisans was a true HUMAN hero.
Author Peter Duffy gives us a well-researched and EXCITING history of what he describes as the largest Jewish partisan group in the German-occupied part of the Soviet Union. Nothwithstanding the purported error reported by reviewer Charles Chotkowski (who does NOT refute Duffy's principal contention in the portion of the book Chotkowski criticizes that the Polish AK partisans targeted Jews), Duffy clearly has researched this material extensively, including sources close to non-Jewish anti-German partisans.
Like what the excellent "Behind Enemy Lines," by Marthe Cohn, does for France, author Duffy provides very interesting portraits of the non-Jewish residents of Belarus.
A great work. Too bad such a well-written, accessible book were not written 30 years ago when most of these partisan's were still alive.
Congratulations, Peter Duffy, on bringing this story back to life.

This book is written for a general, rather than a scholarly,
readership. The publisher's claim that the Bielski story was
"untold until now" is true only regarding a popular treatment.
There is a more scholarly book available: Nechama Tec, "Defiance:
The Bielski Partisans" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Unfortunately, Duffy repeats (at page 232) an erroneous and long
since discredited accusation against General Tadeusz Bor-
Komorowski, commander of the Polish underground Home Army (Armia
Krajowa or AK): "Indeed, General Bor-Komorowski, the AK's top
commander, issued an order on September 15, 1943, calling for the
extermination of Jewish partisan groups, which he regarded as bandits."

This allegation is false. General Bor-Komorowski did issue his
Order No. 116 of September 15, 1943, which ordered action against
bandits, but there was no mention whatsoever of Jews or Jewish
partisan groups.

The allegation has been ably refuted in the following two papers:

John Lowell Armstrong, "The Polish Underground and the Jews: A
Reassessment of Home Army Commander Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski's
Order 116 Against Banditry," Slavonic and East European Review,
Vol. 72, No. 2, (April 1994) pages 259-276.

Stanislaus A. Blejwas, "Polemic as History: Shmuel Krakowski,
'The War of the Doomed. Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942-
1944'," Polin, Vol. 4 (1989), pages 354-362.

Both Armstrong and Blejwas show that Bor-Komorowski's chief
accuser, Shmuel Krakowski, failed to quote the right document,
and badly misinterpreted the document he did quote.

Charles Chotkowski
Fairfield, Conn.

I read the Bielski Brothers book written by Peter Duffy, I found it fascinating and truthful, I was there.

And how dare you to write a review like that.

The Bielski Brothers were great heroes, they protected us from people like you. I was there and I should know.

The Bielski?s detachment was near Huta in May 1943 therefore he was not in position to be in Naliboki. Sholem Zorin was near Koidenovo and not in Pobeda detachment.

As far as food missions was concerned, territory to take food from was allocated by the Russian headquarters. We were armed and had to get food to survive. I can understand your thoughts. How dare the Jews pick up arms and take food from the Polish farmers. We were over 1,000 in Naliboki forest, your type expected us to hide there and die from hunger, and freeze in the winter. Our camp was not a luxury camp. The danger was everywhere from people like you, anti-Semites that have tried to kill all the Jews. When the Germans occupied Novogrudok, the local police was formed by Poles. You robed the Jews in the small towns even before the Germans entered. Now with out evidence you are shouting that the Jews have made a pogrom against Poles. You don?t even want to wait for the inquiry to finish.

This is a document sent by a Russian Commandeer to Moscow. Jewish Question.
To the Plenipotentiary of the Central Committee of the
All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) of Belorussia and to the representative of the General Staff of the Red Army Revolutionary
Committee, Comrade Platon.

Report 10.11.42

Jewish question.
There are many Jews in partisan detachments, not a few of them are excellent fighters trying to avenge brutal murdering of Jews by the fascists. According to the commanders of some of the brigades regarding this question, who are not right, separate Jewish detachments must not be set up. The population here doesn?t like Jews, they don?t call them otherwise than ?zhidy?. If a Jew calls at a house and ask for food, the peasant says that he has been robbed by Jews. When a Russian comes together with a Jew, everything goes smoothly. The Orlyanski detachment ?Struggle? from the Lenin Brigade consists of 80% Jews. There were cases that when a Jewish group went for food products to the other bank of the Neman, it was disarmed, the confiscated weapons were given to the peasants, and they all together gave them a terrible beating, shouting: ?Without Jews we will save Russia?. Many Jewish families hide in the forest, there are a few armed people among them. These Jews burst into villages and grab the first thing that comes to hand. There are detachments where Jews are not accepted.
This document was found in the Minsk National archive.
This should explain to you the situation.

About Naliboki you one report accuses the Stalin brigade, the Stalin brigade had 1404 partisans 554 Russian, 544 Byelorussian, 103 Ukrainians, 140 Jews, 19 Poles and 44 others. Yet the claim was that the Jews from the Stalin brigade were the killers.

In one of the writing you accused Bielski of robbing the Poles with 200 tons of potatoes, 3 tons of cabbages, 5 tons of sugar beets, 5 tons of various grains. That is also a lie. The Germans burned Naliboki some of the men were killed other were taken to Germany. After the German retreat in the ?Herman? operation., Bielski partisans took the harvest from the ground and put it away for the winter reserve.

Great book! I can't wait for the movie in 2006! :) I also recommend Lala's Story and Survival in Auschwitz!

The Bielski Brothers is a fascinating, unblelievably true account during the time of World War Two. After the second chapter i was hooked. The three brothers: Tuvia, Zus, and Asael demonstrate courage and defeat after escaping from the horrors of the Nazis. An outrage grew amongst the three brothers after their parents and loved ones were involved in a mass murder by the anti-seminists, causing them to hide within the trees,build a villiage in the forest, and save nearly 1,200 Jews (as much as Oskar Schindler) Making the woods a safe haven for Jews.
The escapees are separated into groups of fighting men and non-fighting men, As they battle it out against the Nazis.
Coming to the end, i would say The Bielski Brothers is a very good book. I strongly recommend it!!! ;)