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Partisans of Vilna

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This is the most thorough film of the resistance movement in Vilna, made in 1986 but only now getting widespread release on DVD. The documentary is told in retrospect by the survivors of the holocaust in Vilna, which resulted in the killing of over 90% of the Jews in what was regarded as the Jerusalem of Lithuania. For centuries Vilna had been a safe haven for Jews, a center of religious scholarship and a vibrant Yiddish community. As one survivor noted, Vilna isn't Vilna without its Jewish culture.

The film deals with the very troubling aspect of the Jewish police, or Judenrat, which was used by the Germans to keep the ghetto in line. Jacob Gens essentially served as the constable of the Jewish community during the German occupation, turning over members of the resistance with the false hope that this would spare the community at large. This led to horrible divisions within the crumbling Jewish community, which were painfully retold by the survivors.

The partisans took to the woods outside Vilna, joining up with Russian, Lithuanian and Polish partisan forces, and mounting a very effective resistance to German occupation until the Soviet tanks rolled in late in 1943. It was a tragic victory for the Jewish partisans, caught up in the wave of euphoria surrounding the defeat of the Germans, but having to bear witness to the destruction of the once proud Jewish quarter in Vilna.

The well-known Warsaw Ghetto uprising was going to be producer Aviva Kempner's focus when she went to Israel to interview survivors, but a recommendation by a museum director turned her attention to a lesser-known partisan movement. In the Jewish-quarter-turned-ghetto of Vilna, the partisans -- mostly Socialist, Communist and Zionist youths -- unified and slowly came to the realization that the Nazis meant to exterminate the 20,000 Jews left.

Partisans of Vilna tells the story of these courageous men and women, many of whom fought and fought for years only to be rewarded with the fact at the end of the war that 20,000 Jews had dwindled to 3,000. They had no national army to back them and were even faced with antisemitism from their Russian, Polish and Lithuanian partisan tallies in the cold Eastern European forests. Their hardest conflict, however, came against the local Jewish police, who tried to appease the Nazis by letting them take small numbers of Jews to the death camps in order to save the majority. That was a hopeless idea, but the film demonstrates that a hope that time would save the Jews was not ridiculous and eventually made sure more of Vilna's Jews chose not to join the armed insurgents.

DVD Extras: Accompanying this 20th-anniversary edition are plenty of educational bonuses. An audio CD of Yiddish songs from the film, mostly inspired or written by the fighting partisans themselves, is accompanied by a 10-page Yiddish and English songbook with voluminous notes. Also here is a 29-page study guide, with historical background, questions for discussion, a timeline and a stellar bibliography that will be perfect for those whose curiosity is sparked. Commentaries include a filmmaking-focused one from director, co-writer and narrator Joseph Waltezsky, and another by producer and co-writer Aviva Kempner, who gives greater historical context and reveals tidbits of information about the people and places that didn't make it to the film.

There is not nearly as much of this kind of material as there could be available. I feel this dvd did a good job of showing that the Jwish community in Vilna put up a heroic resistance even with the local community and he Soviet Union putting roadblocks in their way. To many people can only look to Sobibar or Warsaw when this shows how wide spread the desire was to fight back.

The educational materials, the CD of partisian songs with translations make this an outstanding resource for teachers as well.

Waletzky's DVD in an excellent way, through interviews with still surviving Partisans, outlines the psychological stances of the victims of the extermination of nearly all jews in Vilnius during the German occupation there (1941-1944).

And Waletzky's commentary on the DVD adds significantly to the deapth of the film.

There are a few points that are often misunderstood concerning the participants in Ghetto uprisings - such as in Vilna or Warsaw.
For example, one reviewer of this DVD writes "The Jewish community in Vilna put up a heroic resistance". The didn't. Part of the tragedy is that the Partisans were an avant-guarde minority. The Jewish Community in Vilna (as almost most places in Europe) were totally unprepared to meet the magnitude - an even then unthinkable extermination that was approaching them with the stream of refugees from Poland that poured into Vilna and other Lithuanian towns. This, to an extent, is an unrecognized aspect of the tragedy. An additonal reason for this is because the jewish leadership were the first to be liquidated. And then there were the human psychological reasons, described in th film, for example, of the hope to "live it out". And armed resistance, due to tragic misunderstandings, was thought to increase the likelyhood of dying.

The witnesses in the film, clearly express their frustrations, concerning this and other things, and their own understanding of their hopeless situation. Nevertheless, that which set them apart from the overwhelming majority, decisive for their fate, was that rather than escape death they wanted to decided the when and where aspects of it. They were going to die anyway, they thought. Paradoxically, this psychological stance, dramatically increased their chance of surviving the genocide, even though, many did not.

As it turned out, fighting effectively back became a viable option towards the end of the occupation, but at that point, most of Lithuania's Jewery were already exterminated.

So the resistance had no effect on the genocide. Their actions were uncoordinated and often hindered by Jews in the Ghetto who tragically misunderstood their situation and thought they would possibly live out the occupation, and their extermination that came with it, or were often hindered by other (Russian and Polish) partisan groups. And the film describes why and how these things came about through the interviews with surviving partisans.

Most of the Jews in Vinius were exterminated in Ponar.

Ponar is the site where most of the Jews of Vilnius who could not escape before the German invasion in 1941, about 90,000 - 100,000 of them, where exterminated. Certainly this included the jews who were forced into the Vilna Ghetto, and in stages removed, and most shot at Ponar. Rumours and few eye-witness accounts did escape into the Jewish community. But the magnitude - was even then - nearly unbelieveable. Also it is estimated over 10000 further individuals were exterminated at Ponar, mostly none Jewish, Lithuanians, Russians, and Poles. As rumours in West-Europe concerning the extermination spread, and the Germans realized they might loose the war, from around the middle of 1942 onward in Poland and from 1943 on-ward in the Russian territories (including Lithuania) the bodies of murdered individuals were most often immediately burned to destroy the evidence.

The bodies of thousands of previously exterminated individuals from the previous year and half were dug out to be burned - mostly by forced jewish labor. On April 15, 1944, there was a mass escape of these prisoners from Ponar. 15 succeeded and joined Partisan units in the Rudninkai forest, to fight out the last 3 months of the German occupation. But survivors of this escape are not interviewed in Waletzky's film.

The Partisans, jewish or not, did not stage any raid against Ponar. There is no discussion of this by the Partisans in Waletzky's film. Nor BTW in Lanzman's Film, Shoah, where a couple of these escapees are interviewed.

THIS IS A REPLY TO THE ONE STAR REVIEW BY "ERUDITE":

There are "good and bad" Jews....just like there are "good and bad 'real Lithuanians'". By blaming "The Jews" you become one of the "bad Lituanians" yourself! Why? Because you paint all, or most, of one group with one brush. This is considered "a thought mistake" or "a category mistake" by most educated people. I suggest you stop spreading HATE and instead spread LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING. Let's face it, ALL PEOPLE AND ALL COUNTRIES COMMITTED ATROCITIES DURIN WW2. Remember what happened to Dresden with the "carpet bombings" during April 1945? "War is Hell"...for EVERYONE...including "Real Lithuanians"....with good and bad deeds commited by everyone. Fortunately our/your side was "less immoral" than the other side! My suggestion for "Erudite" is to STOP LIVING IN THE PAST AND BEGIN TO SPREAD LOVE AND KINDNESS TO ALL PEOPLE, EVEN TO JEWS, IN THE PRESENT. If you started to spread LOVE and KINDNESS...instead of HATE.......then, and only then...would you finally become "one of the real and good Lithuanians"!

This film is in both Hebrew and Yiddish. It should have been in English and Yiddish, but it was clearly made for an Israeli audience. The Yiddish speakers probably emigrated to the U.S. while the Hebrew speakers emigrated to Israel. It has English subtitles. Before WWII Vilna was a center of Jewish learning and housed major rabinacle colleges, libraries and synagogogues. Lithuanians were anti-Semetic for centuries before the holocuast so they really didn't help their Jewish brethren who were persecuted and killed by the Nazis. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews of Vilna. Many were driven or marched to Polnar a site in the forest where about 100,000 Jews were gunned down and buried in pits. This could only have happened in an anti-Semetic country. Once the remaining Jews were in the ghetto, the Nazis murdered their leadership placing a man named Gens in charge of them. He had married a non-Jew and lived on an estate outside Vilna, but perhaps even erroneously he thought he could save some Jews by cooperating with the Nazis. Of course, he was wrong. But other members of the populace agreed hoping that they would be in the portion spared. Some of the people who were mostly teenagers believed they were all going to die. They vowed to resist and take as many Germans with them. Their organization was poorly coordinated in part because of the interference by those in power which prevented them from meeting in a group. Some did resist and escape into the forest where they fought with Lithuanian and Russian partisans. Even among the partisans with a common enemy there was anti-semitism. The Jews had to be split between the other brigades at least in part becuase they were more successful as a group and the others were jealous. Some were stripped of their weapons which they had acquired with great difficulty and sacrifice. They were then put in charge of requisitioning food for all the partisans by robbing or extorting the neighboring peasants. They were not allowed the more dignified work of sabotoging the Germans. One Jewish partisan was afraid to turn his back on another non-Jewish partisan for fear he would shoot him in the back. When a communist brigade with a thinly disguised Jewish commander and Jewish solldiers engaged in operations, they were one of the most successful of all the partisan brigades. The extent to which hatred of the Jew permeated Lithuanian and Ukrainian culture boggles the mind. Though their reistence was often ineffective and unsuccessful resulting in member deaths, there was resistence in the Vilna ghetto. Had the Jews been given the wherewithall to fight, they would not have gone so easily to their deaths. These young Jews believing they would die whether they chose to resists or not, chose to die with dignity and resist with violence. this story is told with interivews of the surviving participants both in Yiddish and Hebrew with English subtitles. It is a decent documentary on a little know subject of WWII.

This documentary dvd The Partisans of vilna is an incredible story of the human spirit. Everyone should see this DVD. It is very well done. It should be shown in all schools as well to see the bravery of these young people.

I will order this DVD, following the reviews herewith, which tell the exceptional quality and historical interest of the material. However, I write this comment now, a anteriori, just to express my surprise on the editor's qualification of "Polish city of Vilna". What?! Polish??? Or Lithuanian? From when until when was Vilnius a Polish town, and from when to when was it Russian, and since when is it Lithuanian? What about "the Teutonic order city of Klaipeda"? or "Sumerian city of Cairo"? or "Mexican city of Houston and Albuquerque"? For the Polish people, that is the same to say "the German city of Wroclaw", bear in mind that this one would be more accurate (since Breslau was bohemian/german for the last 800 years before the world's biggest ethnic cleansing, in 1946, when 99,8% of the population was expelled and replaced by resettlers).

My point is: when an editor review insert such a nonsense, it destroys the credibility of the whole work that he advertises. This is the kind of thing that pushes me away from fake "history" books. In this case, the readers' reviews avoided it. Thanks to them four.

This video tries to make these people heroes... These people were not heroes, but traitors! They were only looking out for themselves and sold out Native Lithuanians to the Russians. Russian Bolshevism favored the Jews over native Lithuanians and so the "Partisans" sold out the "Real Lithuanians" to concentration camps in Siberia. Scalping, cutting off ears, plucking out eyes, torturing to death over 700 native Lithuanians. This, similar to what happened to the Polish Officers at Katyn (see the film Katyn, eye opening- war crimes carried out by the Soviets, some Jewish, but blamed on the Germans)was not known until after the fall of the Soviet Union. See discussion for further information.

This video is totally one-sided propaganda.