The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews is a non-fiction book by Peter Duffy, which was published in 2003. It tells the story of Tuvia Bielski, Alexander Zeisal Bielski (Zus), Aharon Bielski, and Asael Bielski, four Jewish brothers who established a large partisan camp in the forests of Belarus during World War II which participated in resistance activities against the Nazi occupation of the country, and so saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazis. The book describes how, in 1941, three brothers witnessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their eventual murders. The brothers fought back against Germans and collaborators, waging guerrilla warfare in the forests of Belarus. By using their intimate knowledge of the dense forests surrounding the towns of Lida and Novogrudek, the Bielskis evaded the Nazis and established a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other Jews to join their ranks. The Germans came upon them once but were unable to get rid of them. As more Jews arrived each day, a robust community began to emerge; a "Jerusalem in the woods". In July 1944, after some 30 months in the woods, the Bielskis learned that the Germans, overrun by the Red Army, were retreating back toward Berlin.
The Bielski partisans were a unit of Polish Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought the German occupiers and their collaborators around Novogrudok and Lida in German-occupied Poland. The partisan unit was named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who organized and led the community.
Operation Hermann was a German anti-partisan action in the Naliboki forest area carried out between 13 July 1943 and 11 August 1943. The German battle groups destroyed settlements in the area. During the operation, German troops burned down over 60 Polish and Belarusian villages and murdered 4280 civilians. Between 21,000 and 25,000 people were sent to forced labour in the Third Reich.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union started on 22 June 1941 and led to a German military occupation of Byelorussia until it was fully liberated in August 1944 as a result of Operation Bagration. The western parts of Byelorussia became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in 1941, and in 1943, the German authorities allowed local collaborators to set up a regional government, the Belarusian Central Rada, that lasted until the Soviets reestablished control over the region. Altogether, more than two million people were killed in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation, around a quarter of the region's population, or even as high as three million killed or thirty percent of the population, including 500,000 to 550,000 Jews as part of the Holocaust in Belarus. In total, on the territory of modern Belarus, more than 9,200 villages and settlements, and 682,000 buildings were destroyed and burned, with some settlements burned several times.
The Belarusian resistance during World War II opposed Nazi Germany from 1941 until 1944. Belarus was one of the Soviet republics occupied during Operation Barbarossa. The term Belarusian partisans may refer to Soviet-formed irregular military groups fighting Germany, but has also been used to refer to the disparate independent groups who also fought as guerrillas at the time, including Jewish groups, Polish groups, and nationalist Belarusian forces opposed to Germany.
Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.
The Naliboki massacre was the 8 May 1943 mass killing of 127 or 128 Poles by Soviet partisans in the small town of Naliboki in German-occupied Poland.
The Dzyatlava Ghetto, Zdzięcioł Ghetto, or Zhetel Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto in the town of Dzyatlava, Western Belarus during World War II. After several months of Nazi ad-hoc persecution that began after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the new German authorities officially created a ghetto for all local Jews on 22 February 1942. Prior to 1939, the town (Zdzięcioł) was part of Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic.
Bielski is a Polish-language toponymic surname derived from one of placenames derived from the adjective biały, "white": Biała, Białe, Bielsk, Bielsko. The Lithuanized form is Bielskis/Bielskiene/Bielskytė, Latvian: Beslkis, East Slavic: Belsky.
Tuvia Bielski was a Polish Jewish militant who was leader of the Bielski group, a group of Jewish partisans who set up refugee camps for Jews fleeing the Holocaust during World War II. Their camp was situated in the Naliboki forest, which was part of Poland between World War I and World War II, and which is now in western Belarus.
Roland Tec is an American writer and movie director. His 1997 film All the Rage is widely considered a hallmark of the Queer Indie Film Movement of the '90s for what was then its unprecedented critical view of A-list gay male culture of perfection.
Nechama Tec was a Polish-American historian who was Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University, where she studied and worked with the sociologist Daniel Bell, and was a Holocaust scholar. Her book When Light Pierced the Darkness (1986) and her memoir Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood (1984) both received the Merit of Distinction Award from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. She is also the author of the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans on which the film Defiance (2008) is based, as well as a study of women in the Holocaust. She was awarded the 1994 International Anne Frank Special Recognition prize for it.
Asael Bielski was the second-in-command of the Bielski partisans during World War II.
The Holocaust in Belarus refers to the systematic extermination of Jews living in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic during its occupation by Nazi Germany in World War II. It is estimated that roughly 800,000 Belarusian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. However, other estimates place the number of Jews killed between 500,000 and 550,000.
Aron Bielski, later changed to Aron Bell, is a Polish-American Jew and former member of the Bielski partisans, the largest group of Jewish armed rescuers of Jews during World War II. He was also known as Arczyk Bielski. The youngest of the four Bielski brothers, he is the only one still living.
Naliboki Forest ) is a large forest complex in northwestern Belarus, on the right bank of the Neman River, on the Belarusian Ridge. Much of the area is occupied by pine forests and swamps, and some parts of the Naliboki are rather hilly. Rich fauna include deer, wild boars, elks, beavers, bears, bison, wood grouses, heath cocks, snipes etc. The forest is named after a small town of Naliboki situated in the middle of it, although the title of "informal capital of the forest" belongs rather to the town of Ivyanets.
Alexander Zeisal "Zus" Bielski was a leader of the Bielski partisans who rescued approximately 1,200 Jews fleeing from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.
Koldichevo (Kaldyčava/Koldychevo/Kołdyczewo) was the site of a Nazi concentration camp 16 kilometres (10 mi) north of Baranovichi, Belarus. About 22,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed in the camp between 1942 and 1944. The murders in the camp were done as part of The Holocaust in the Baranavichy District.
The Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF) is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California, that produces short films and other educational materials on the history and life lessons of the Jewish partisans. During World War II, approximately 30,000 Jewish men and women fought back against the Germans and their collaborators as partisans (armed resistance fighters behind enemy lines).
