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The Defiant: A True Story of Escape, Survival, & Resistance

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More and more survival accounts are starting to come out in regard to Jewish partisans, whether they were Soviet or Polish. This is one of the most interesting accounts I've read and goes to show that Jews did not just sit by and idly wait for death, on the contrary they tried the best they could to come to grips with reality and take revenge for what was happening to them and their families. A quick and compelling read, the author wrote all his memories down right after the war so that they were still fresh and much of what he describes rings true and is worth knowing and acknowledging. A worthwhile account of a struggle rarely remembered or thought about.

A well written story. Consise and able to take the reader on a journey. Full of lessons in life, and examples of what a person is able to live thru and do in their life.

Amazing perspective from a person who was not only able to survive unbelievable odds but do so with a determination and stile.

The Defiant: A True Story Of Escape, Survival & Resistance is the personal memoir of Shalom Yoran, a young man who dared to become a Jewish resistance fighter in Poland during the grim years of World War II. Yoran's story (and the story of the brave men and women who fought with him), is brought forward from a manuscript which he drafted fifty years ago while recuperating in an Israeli hospital. A vivid and memorable account of survival and fighting back in spite of atrocity and anti-Semitism on all sides, The Defiant is a welcome and highly recommended addition to World War II History collections, Holocaust Studies, and 20th Century Jewish History reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

The Defiant is the story of Shalom Yoran (born Selim Sznycer)
, and his time spent with the partisans fighting the Nazis in Poland. After three years on the run , with his family , from Nazi mobile killing units , the Nazi terror finally caught up with them and in the little town of Kurzeniec , 1 040 Jewish men , women and children where dragged from their homes and hiding places , murdered and burned. Included among those slaughtered where Selim's parents.

Selim and his brother escaped into the woods and joined the partisans , and heeded the last words of their mother to survive and take vengeance for them.

This is the story of the partisan guerilla warfare against Nazi terror.
Although Selim fought among non-Jews , he always fought first and foremost as a Jew - with them but not as one of them. He dreamed of having his own country , of fighting for it and even dying for it-that is what kept him alive. The dream of surviving and living in the Land of Israel as a free Jew and building it.
After the war , his dream was fulfilled , and having escaped the Soviet Army that tried to draft him , and the British blockade that tried to keep Jews out of Palestine , he settled in Israel and joined the airforce , becoming a prominent businessman in Israel.
The Zionists in Europe where always the backbone of Jewish resistance to Nazism.

I read the original hardbound edition of this book maybe five years ago, after chancing upon a copy with no prior knowledge of its contents or author. I read the book quickly, and recall being on the edge of my seat with each turn of a page. The author, named at birth as born Selim Sznycer, tells briefly, of his family's flight from the Nazi invasion of western Poland to the eastern, Soviet-occupied town of Kurzeniec, where they remained until the Germans bombed there too, killing his parents.

Rather than surrender to a certain death, Selim (who later changed his name to Shalom Yoran) and his brother Musio fled to a deeply forested swampy area, at whose center they constructed a hidden bunker with some friends. There, they struggled merely to stay clothed, warm and fed. They had little to trade and no money with which to buy, and were reduced to infrequent forays into villages several miles distant, where they could steal enough rags and potatoes to survive. Lighting fires was difficult; the smell or sight of smoke could attract attention.

At one point, Yoran left the hovel to search for food only to return and find several comrades dead. He and his brother then fled further east, and ultimately joined the Soviet and Polish partisans. This was not only an act of extraordinary defiance, it was itself fraught with danger, as both the Polish peasants and Russian partisans with whom they fought were themselves highly distrusting, and hateful, of Jews. At first, Selim was not trusted with guns. He was left to fight with sticks, a fake rifle, and in one case, a pitchfork. But gradually, a few comrades developed trust and respect for him, as he became an expert at bombing the railroad tracks carrying German supply trains. He derailed several trains; the sabotage stopped German war materiel transports--and required extensive new track construction, significantly slowing Germany's war machine in the region.

Ultimately, the author survived and fled Europe for Israel, where he broke through the British blockade, joined the Israeli air force and built a successful Israeli business. Although Yoran necessarily survived only by fighting, success (as I have written before) is the best revenge. And for Yoran, that came through building a new life, business and family in Israel.

--Alyssa A. Lappen