Defiance

I am aware that for some of you, what you will read in this post might blow your mind and you will simply refuse to believe in it. So don’t take my words for granted. If you are interested in this subject do your own research and find out for yourself what was really going on in “Jerusalem” and what Bielski’s were doing during WW2. Please don’t missunderstand me. I know history o Jews in II World War a bit. I know about their truly HEROIC fight in Jewish Upraising in ghetto in Warsaw in 1943(do not mistake it with Warsaw Upraising done by Polish Home Army in 1944) and I admire them for that. But the reason for writing this post is my awarness that most of you guys are not familiar with very delicate and complicated history of Poland, Ukraine and other Easter Europeans countries during WW2. So I hope that you will be open to hear some real facts about Bielski’s brothers. So let’s put some facts on the table. 1. There were actually 4 Bielski’s brothers: Tewje (Tuvia), Asael, Zus and Aron. Youngest of them -Aron Bielski (he changed his surname to Bell from 1951) together with his wife Henryka Bell is currently charged of kidnapping 93 yers old polish lady Janina Zaniewska living in Florida and stealing from her about $250 000 . 2. Bielski’s Brothers were operated in Naliboki Forest between 1942-1944 (before WW2 it was Polish-Russian border) and there were 2 “family camps” organized by Jews. First one: “Jerosolima” (950 people included lots of women and children) were runs by Bielski’s Brothers and has about 162 armed peple. Second one (560 people, mostly Jews escaped from ghettos) was commanded by Simcha Zorin and had 73 armed people. The main goal for this family camps was not to fight with Germans but to survive the war. 3. Polish civilians living near Naliboki Forrest were regularly raided for food confiscations by Germans, Soviets, ordinary robbers and also by Bielski’s and Zarin’s “partisans”, and as reported by Polish Home Army (PHA) to HQ- they were most cruel from all. Polish civilians were complaining to PHA that Bielecki’s and Zorin’s partisans were constantly abusing them, raping women and sometimes children and threaten that if they don’t give them food and animals Soviets will burn them to the ground (( Soviets were controlled Jews family camps). So PHA has requested from Soviets to stop sending Bielecki’s people for food confiscation . 4. According to Jozef Marchwinski, polish communist who married Jews girl named Ester living in “Jerosolima” camp and Tuvia’s assistance for some time: “there were four of Bielski’s brothers, strong and handsome lady-killers for women in family camps. They were quick to alcohol and girls but very slow to fight. The oldest one,Tuvia, were commanding not only all Jews in family camp, but also a beautifull and not small “harem” like king Saud in Saudi Arabia. In the camp, where Jews families very often were going to bed hungry, where mothers where tried to feed their babies with dry brests, begging for additional spoon of soup them - in this camp another live was flourish, other rich world. In Bielecki’s dug-outs and their closest cammerades, tables were heavy from food and drinks, and large bunch of beautiful women always encircles Tuvia and his 3 brothers. Those women doesn’t know hunger and poorness. They were always beautifully dressed and full of expensive jewerly, and never used their delicate white hands for work”. From Soviets reports: “Tuvia Bielski doesn’t engage in fight but he is speculate in units. He was taking gold from his partisans to buy guns but instead of buying guns he kept gold for himself.” Tuvia Bielski himself in his memories published in Palestine in 1947 emphasizes that his “Jerosolima”: “never antered in action with occupant”. 5. The Institute of National Remembrance in Poland is currently running an investigation about pacification of Naliboki village done by Soviets and Bielski’s partisans and this is qualified as a communist crime and crime against humanity ( 128 people were slaughtered ). The villagers have a really bad luck. Naliboki village was excactly on route for Bielski’s men heading to the Naliboki forrest and for Soviets units coming back from the forrest. Many times food and animals were confiscated from them, women were raped and some men killed. So at some point when villagers saw them coming they ring church bells to warn other villages and men were preparing themselves for defending their households. That annoyed Bielski’s very much, but Soviets even more. So in 8 of may 1943 at 5am, together (Soviet’s and Bielski’s “partisans”) surrounded the village and within 2 hours they sloughtered 128 people, mostly when sleeping in beds. These are just handfull of information about real history of Bielski’s brothers. And I hope you will spend a minute to think about them. It’s not so cristal clear like some people wants. They saved many Jews over there and no one will take that from them but the way they’ve done that is far from being heroic fighters… They do almost no fight with Germans, 90 percent of their time they spent sitting in the camp or “organizing” food (through robbery and confiscations) which affects badly civilians living in the area (mostly polish ones).I wish they story was as pure, as beauty as they put it in the film but that simply is not true.

Comment by artkicz — January 12, 2009 @ 8:05 am

Heroes
By: Peter Duffy

Date: Wednesday, January 14 2009

        And yet the slurs continue.
On December 31, Paramount Vantage released “Defiance,” which tells the story of Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski, three Jewish brothers from a tiny village in Nazi-occupied Belarus. They formed a guerrilla unit in the dense woods, created a makeshift village from ghetto escapees and, in the end, saved some 1,200 Jews from Hitler. The Bielski brothers have long deserved to be mentioned with Oskar Schindler and the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The film, which is based on a book of the same title by Nechama Tec, has garnered a shower of positive attention. It stars Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, as the visionary Tuvia, who ended his life as a Brooklyn truck driver. Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell (of “Billy Elliot” fame) play Zus and Asael respectively.
The project has also drawn a more negative response. Although smears against the brothers have long enjoyed currency among Polish anti-Semites - who can’t seem to decide whether the Bielskis were simpering cowards or heartless savages - they had not reached the respectable press until word of the film’s release began to spread.
In June, Gazeta Wyborcza, an important Polish daily edited by Solidarity hero Adam Michnik, gave prominent airing to the charge that “Bielski partisans were involved in the massacre of 128 [Polish] civilians by a Soviet partisan unit in the village of Naliboki in May 1943,” according to an English language translation of the article on its website.
As a source, the paper cited an investigation being conducted by the Lodz branch of the Instytut Pamiêci Narodowej or Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a Polish government-affiliated body charged with prosecuting crimes against the Polish nation.
Since the Gazeta Wyborcza article appeared, other periodicals have followed suit. A Polish “historian” named Jerzy Robert Nowak told Variety, the daily newspaper of the entertainment industry in Hollywood, “We Poles are furious. It is a scandal that anyone could think of making a film casting the murderers who massacred Polish villagers as heroes.”
On December 31 The Times of London published a story, “Poland Split Over Whether Daniel Craig is Film Hero or Villain,” which repeated the IPN accusation and said that some “Poles fear that in telling Bielski’s story Hollywood has airbrushed out some unpleasant episodes.” (The piece concluded by pointing out that “several members of the Bielski family served in the Israeli armed forces,” which the writer seemed to regard as a damning fact.)
The Daily Mail (of London) followed up a few days later with a story on Tuvia Bielski headlined, appallingly, “Jewish Savior or Butcher of Innocents?” It said that “critics” accuse him of “terrorizing ethnic Poles.”
None of the articles noted that the IPN’s accusation is utterly lacking in solid evidence. It is, in fact, little more than an exercise in character assassination.
The IPN, which has been investigating the Naliboki incident since 2001, has said that Soviet partisan detachments - which began a covert war against the Nazi occupiers soon after the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 - murdered a group of 128 Polish individuals, mostly men but also three women, an unspecified number of teenage boys and a ten-year-old child, on May 8, 1943.
In the roughly 300-word description of the investigation e-mailed to me in 2007, the word Bielski is only mentioned once, in the final line: “Jewish partisans from Tweje Bielski’s detachment also participated in the attack on Naliboki.”
Then in June 2008 the IPN issued another statement, one that backtracked considerably from its previous statement. Noting that some eyewitnesses claimed Bielski partisans were “among those who attacked,” it added that the “eyewitnesses don’t say on what factual basis this statement is based.”
Their statements were “not supported by any other proof, for instance by archival documents.” (The Soviet documents on the Naliboki attack do not mention the Bielskis.) The IPN also said that “some historians” allege the Bielski detachment was involved “but the authors don’t give sources of this information in their works.”
“So the fact of the participation of the partisans from the Bielski detachment in the attack on Naliboki is only one of the versions accepted in the course of the investigation,” the IPN said.
Yet even the Polish journalist who co-authored the original Gazeta Wyborcza story, Piotr G³uchowski, has come to believe the charge is shockingly flimsy. In a December 28, 2008 e-mail message to me, he said he tracked down a Polish war survivor, Wac³aw Nowicki, who wrote a memoir in 1993 suggesting the Bielski unit was involved in the attack.
The book has been a primary source for Polish anti-Semites wishing to denigrate the brothers’ achievements. “After a two-hour interrogation he said to us that he is not sure that the Bielskis were in Naliboki on May 8, 1943,” he wrote.
Nowicki claimed he was relying on testimony from “Lova from Novogrudek,” whose words were confirmed for him by “Vanya from Lubocz,” wrote G³uchowski in a subsequent article for Gazeta Wyborcza.
Here’s the simple truth: The Jewish unit was not “stationed in the Naliboki dense forest” nor “active in the area” in May 1943 at the time of the Naliboki attack, as the IPN has alleged.
The Bielski brothers, strapping sons of a miller, hailed from Stankevich, a speck on the map in a borderland region that has been part of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia at various points in its history. After the Nazis and their collaborators began conducting mass slaughters of the Jewish population, they slowly built a ragtag community of desperate Jews in the woods where they had tromped as boys. On the day in May 1943 when the Naliboki attack occurred, the brothers’ group was located in a forest called Stara-Huta near Stankevich. It is more than 50 kilometers to the west of Naliboki village.
It is true that since February 1943 the brothers’ unit (then a few hundred strong) had been formally integrated into the Soviet partisan structure, pledging allegiance to a cause that provided cover for its rescue and resistance efforts. At the time of the Naliboki attack, it was officially known as the second company of the October Detachment of the Lenin Brigade in the Lida District. (The official name would change a handful of times over the course of the war.) All of the group’s movements were recorded in Soviet documents that now reside in the archives of the Belarussian branch of the Soviet partisan movement in Minsk and in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
According to the IPN, the attack on Naliboki village was not perpetrated by detachments from the Lenin Brigade in the Lida District. Instead, the IPN said it was carried out by three detachments from the Stalin Brigade and “partisans from” the Chkalov Brigade. Both brigades, based in the Naliboki forest, were members of the Ivenets District.
The IPN didn’t respond when I asked if wandering members of the Jewish unit participated in the attack, acting under the orders of someone other than the Bielski brothers and operating outside of their designated brigade structure. It probably doesn’t need to be stated that the Soviets were very serious about adhering to lines of authority. Soviet partisans were executed for violating even the most minor of regulations.
The Bielski partisans eventually did reach the Naliboki forest, which may explain why they have become mixed up in this allegation. They first arrived in August 1943, after it became too dangerous to remain in the area near Stankevich, only to be driven out by German attack. Then in September and October 1943 they returned with nearly a thousand men, women, and children and created a legendary shtetl, an extraordinary place with tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and gunsmiths.
It had a large kitchen, a central square for gatherings, a mill powered by a horse, a main street, a theater troupe, and a tannery that doubled as a synagogue. It was well known to the gentile peasants in surrounding communities like Naliboki village on the forest’s eastern edge. They called it Jerusalem.
It is an outrage that wartime achievements of this magnitude can be so casually denigrated. The Bielski brothers were far from perfect. But what they accomplished in the woods of Belarus deserves the highest of acclaim.

        Peter Duffy is the author of “The Bielski Brothers” (HarperCollins, 2003). His latest book, “The Killing of Major Denis Mahon: A Mystery of Old Ireland”  (HarperCollins), has just been published in paperback. He writes for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

Copyright 2008 www.JewishPress.com

Comment by bellskee from new york usa — July 30, 2009 @ 1:06 pm