In the year 1941 the Jews of Eastern Europe were being massacred by the thousands. Amid the chaos, carnage and bloodshed, three brothers managed to escape certain death and take refuge in the dense forests [of Belarus] they had known since childhood.
There they began their desperate battle against the Nazis. The brothers turned a primitive struggle to survive into something far more consequential – a way to avenge the deaths of their loved ones by saving thousands of others.
At first, it was all they could do to survive and stay alive. But gradually, as whispers of their daring exploits spread, they began to attract others – men and women, young and old – willing to risk everything for the sake of even a moment’s freedom.
As the brutal winter descended, they worked to create a community, and to keep faith alive when all humanity appeared to be lost.
Join me as we follow the exploits and explore the fascinating story of Tuvia Bielski and his brothers – Jewish partisans who dared to defy the iron fist of Hitler and the Nazi regime. This is an epic tale of family, honour, vengeance and salvation.
NOWOGRÓDEK GHETTO
It was early in 1943, and the Nowogródek Ghetto was buzzing with whispers. There were rumours of an impending Nazi raid, rumours that the ghetto would be liquidated, which was a code word for the mass murder of all Jews living inside its walls.
When war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941, there had been over 6000 Jews in Nowogrodek. In December 1941 all these Jews were forced into a ghetto.
Between July 1941 and May 1943 the Jews of Nowogrodek were murdered in a series of Nazi raids dwindling the Jewish population from over 6000 down to less than
300. This small, bedraggled group of Jews were determined to survive.
As rumours of a final liquidation of the camp increased, leaders in the community decided that they needed to act in order to save themselves. However, escape seemed like an impossible dream.
The ghetto was guarded around the clock by a unit of armed Nazi soldiers. In addition, the entire ghetto was surrounded by two walls. Even if one or two of the ghetto inmates could manage to make it past the guards, and walls and barbed wire, it was impossible for all of them to escape.
And the Nazi policy was to kill everyone left behind, in the event that a handful did manage to leave. If the Jews of the Nowogrodek ghetto were to escape, then they needed to make sure that no one was left behind.
ESCAPE BY TUNNEL
Finally, they decided that their only option was to tunnel out of the ghetto. Choosing the space under someone’s bed as the entry point of the tunnel, a group of 50 diggers began to slowly shovel their way under the ghetto.
Finally, after months of digging and a spate of challenges the tunnel was ready. On the 26 September 1943 at 9pm the first Jews slipped through the entrance of the tunnel and disappeared into the depths of the earth.
Realising that something was amiss the guards sounded the alarm and began to open fire indiscriminately. But by this time many of the evacuees were emerging on the other side of the tunnel, outside the ghetto walls, breathing in their first taste of freedom.
One of them, a young fourteen-year-old girl, stumbled into the dark, moonless night. It was raining and the sounds of gunfire and the barking of attack dogs surrounded her in the distance. Seeing a farm-house, she made a run for it.
She hid in the outhouse, sitting in it for hours, too fearful to sleep, listening to the shouts and the gunshots and the dogs. Finally, at dawn when the activity had died down, she decided to run to the forest. She had heard of a group of Jewish resistance fighters.
NALIBOKI FOREST PARTISANS
Partisans, who lived in the forest, defending themselves against Nazi attacks, scavenging for food, and above all else, refusing to bow to the tyranny of the Nazi machine. After hours of wandering the girl stumbled onto the camp in the Naliboki Forest in Western Belarus.
She was welcomed with open arms, given food and a place to stay. She had reached the campsite of the Bielski Otriad, a group of 1200 Jews led by the Bielski brothers, determined to survive the war.
When the Nazis rose to power in 1933 their leader, Adolf Hitler had only two agenda items in mind; the first was to create a German superstate that dominated Europe and the world. The second was to systematically eradicate the Jewish race from the face of the earth.
Quietly he began to put in place measures to separate, exclude and expel Jews from every facet of German society. Germans were ordered to boycott Jewish businesses and Jews were systematically removed from civil service.
Then in November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish-German Jew living in France, shot and killed Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat living in Paris. Grynszpan was seeking revenge for the German treatment of Jews, including his own family who had been forced into exile in Poland.
NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS
Soon after vom Rath’s death Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister in charge of propaganda, ordered mob violence. This took the form of what was later known as the Kristallnacht Pogrom, or The Night of Broken Glass.
During Kristallnacht, German paramilitary troops and Hitler Youth units burned, looted and vandalised thousands of Jewish homes, stores and synagogues. Soon after this, 30,000 Jewish men were arbitrarily arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Then, on the 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, kicking off World War II. By June of 1940 Germany had invaded and occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Northern France and The Netherlands.
Then in June 1941 Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union. However, Hitler’s ever-expanding empire held an increasing number of Jews and he soon began to look for ways to deal with what he referred to as, ‘the Jewish Problem’.
HITLER’S ‘PROBLEM’
His deadly response became known as ‘The Final Solution’. Jews across Europe were labelled with yellow stars, and herded into ghettos or shipped off to concentration camps – to be exterminated.
Today we are familiar with the harrowing images of emaciated Jews peering through wire fencing, and the leering smokestacks of death camps like Auschwitz, where millions of .
These images are deeply disturbing and give us a glimpse into what the human heart is capable of at its worst. But one aspect of Jewish history during World War II that is overlooked or more often unknown, is the story of Jewish partisans who defied the Nazi war machine.
THE BIELSKI FAMILY
Many of these partisans occupied the forests of Western Belarus within the Soviet Union, and the most successful of these groups, that saved the most Jewish lives during World War II, was the Bielski Otriad or the Bielski Partisans.
The Bielskis were a poor peasant family based in the village of Stankiewicz in Western Belarus. The father, David Bielski owned a small mill, farmed the land and kept some livestock. His wife Biela gave birth to twelve children, ten sons and two daughters.
The Bielskis lived in a small two roomed hut and were the only Jewish family living in Stankiewicz.
POLAND INVADED
On the 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland from the West. Sixteen days later, on the 17 September the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. The military invasion lasted three weeks, until on the 6 October 1939, the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
For many of the Jews in the eastern part of the Polish Republic the arrival of the Red Army was a welcome sight. They were glad to see Soviets because they would shield them from the far greater terror of Nazi hatred towards Jews.
But their sense of relief was short lived. Nine months later, in June 1941 Germany declared war on the Soviet Union. The German onslaught against the Soviet Union was as unexpected as it was sudden, taking Soviet authorities and civilians by surprise.
To escape the Luftwaffe raids Tuvia and Zus Bielski, David and Biela Bielski’s sons, fled to the family home in Stankiewicz with their families. As the situation unfolded and the Germans gained the upper hand, most Jews began to realise that time was running out.
Many believed that German occupation would pose a real threat to their lives, though the majority of them still refused to believe reports of Nazis murdering Jews for no apparent reason. While they felt threatening, they didn’t realise the full extent of the danger.
The first German army unit rolled into Stankiewicz on the 1 July 1941. They chose the Bielski’s farmland to set up camp and set up their headquarters in the backyard of the family’s small home.
At first the Germans appeared friendly, but soon they issued orders demanding that all Jews who were not permanent residents of Stankiewicz immediately evacuate the village, on pain of death. Tuvia and his brother Zus were forced to leave and return to their respective homes.
During this time Tuvia went to the nearby town of Nowogrodek to visit his brother Asael. While he was there, both brothers were arrested by the Germans and forced into a labour camp.
They managed to escape in the dead of night, and vowed that they would never allow themselves to be captured by the Germans again.
NAZI REIGN OF TERROR
As the Nazi reign of terror began to sweep over Russia, Jews began to get a taste of what their Western European counterparts had experienced. By the time the Nazi’s invaded the Soviet Union they had perfected their methods of Jewish extermination.
Determined to accelerate the process of Jewish annihilation, they introduced specialised killing units, specially trained to murder Jews. This group, known as the Einsatzgruppen, would follow close on the heels of the advancing army.
They would encircle and trap large Jewish population centres, before their unsuspecting victims had a chance to figure out what was happening, and it was too late to escape. In the massacres that followed, this elite Nazi killing machine was assisted by the German army and local collaborators.
But even though thousands of Jews were rounded up and herded into ghettos and concentration camps there were those who refused to submit. Though exposed to the most threatening situations some Jews defied the Nazis regardless of the costs. The Bielski family fits into this category.
COVERT MOVES
By October 1941, Tuvia, Asael and Zus Bielski began to covertly move in and out of society. They spent time with their families, picked up work as casual day labourers on farms, and would hide in the surrounding forests when circumstances posed a threat, but they refused to settle into ghettos.
Ghettos were large enclosed districts where Jews were isolated from the rest of society. In order to place Jews in a ghetto, Nazi authorities would follow a familiar pattern. First, Jews were identified and separated from their non-Jewish counterparts. Often their property was confiscated, and they were refused employment.
Once this phase was completed, they were rounded up and forced into ghettos, where living conditions were appalling. Extreme overcrowding in the confined area led to the outbreak of epidemics, and the abject poverty of the inhabitants led to starvation and often death.
Then towards the end of 1941 the Bielski farm in Stankiewicz was raided by the Germans. The Bielski brothers learned that their parents had been arrested and taken to the Nowogródek ghetto, along with Zus Bielski’s wife and baby daughter.
Then on the 7 December 1941 there was a massive raid at the Nowogrodek ghetto. Four thousand Jews were massacred, and among them were the Bielski’s parents and the wives of two of the brothers; Tuvia and Zus.
TURNING POINT
This tragedy was a turning point for the Bielski brothers. Now, more than ever, they were determined to concentrate on defying the German army, and freeing themselves and those who were dear to them from their clutches.
By March 1942, Asael Bielski had gathered 9 fugitive Jews around him in the forest near Nowogrodek. By then it was impossible to work in exchange for food. This was because the local non-Jewish population was terrified of the severe punishments that would inevitably follow if they were caught assisting or harbouring Jews.
So in order to gather food Asael Bielski’s little group began to venture out of the forest at dusk with their guns in their hands, visiting local farmers and asking for food. Bit by bit they realised that a large group of well organised, well-armed Jews was the best solution to surviving the Nazi reign of terror.
As time progressed and German raids became more aggressive, many Jewish fugitives began to realise that the forest offered them more safety than hiding in sympathetic neighbour’s homes.
Then. in May 1942 there was another mass murder at the Lida Ghetto. Tuvia Bielski urged his friend Alter Ticktin, who had survived the murder, to prepare to leave the ghetto with his family. The heavy security surrounding the ghetto made it impossible for Tuvia to infiltrate it.
However, he managed to orchestrate Ticktin’s escape from outside the ghetto. Soon Tuvia and his small group of fugitive Jews joined his brother Asael’s group and they fused into a single unit.
BIELSKI OTRIAD FORMATION
The group began to increase in size, as more and more Jews escaped the surrounding ghettos and joined them. Finally, around mid-May 1942, they decided that they needed to formally organise themselves into a partisan group.
Though they went under several different names they were always known as the Bielski Otriad, under the command of Tuvia Bielski, the oldest of the three brothers.
What made the Bielski Otriad so unique was their willingness to accept and integrate all Jews who came to them as fugitives, whether they were armed and able-bodied or not. This meant that their group had a high percentage of unarmed women, children and elderly people who were protected and provided for by those who were able to fight.
Most Russian Partisans who operated in the forests focused on armed conflict or sabotage against the Germans, but the Bielskis focused more on saving lives. Tuvia Bielski insisted that
self-preservation was intricately linked to the preservation of others. He believed that in working to save others we inevitably save ourselves.
Tuvia Bielski often said, “It was simple. The Germans caught my father, mother and two brothers…they were taken to their death. So, would I imitate them by killing some Germans? It didn’t pay. To me it made no sense. I wanted to save, not kill.”
However, regardless of their desire to stay away from waging war against the Germans, the Bielski Otriad was asked to cooperate in anti-Nazi raids alongside Russian partisans in the area. These joint military ventures began in the last quarter of 1942 and continued well into 1943. Much of this involved sabotaging railway stations, bridges, telephone lines and hacking supply trucks.
GERMAN RESPONSE
Then, in July 1943, the Germans planned an attack to eliminate the partisans hiding in the Naliboki Forest. The Bielski Otriad had set up a semi-permanent camp there and were in danger of being captured and killed.
When they heard that the Germans were coming, they hastily abandoned their camp and evacuated onto an island in the middle of a swamp. The evacuation took the group of nearly 700 Jews through dangerous terrain, but all of them managed to make it safely to the island.
After weeks of camping out in the swampland the partisans managed to make it through German lines and evacuate the forest, finding shelter in nearby villages, before eventually making it back to the Nalibocki Forest after the danger had past.
Eventually the Bielski Otriad grew to 1200 people, and by the autumn of 1943 they organised themselves into a small ‘shtetl’ or town, with workshops and a large communal kitchen. By the end of 1943 close to 3 million Polish Jews had been slaughtered. This was about 90% of the pre-war Jewish population.
ALLIES ARRIVE
Then on the 6 June 1944, the Allied Forces landed in Normandy France, and on the 23 June the Red Army opened its Great Offensive operation, targeting the Belarussian and Baltic fronts.
As Soviet troops surged forward, Jewish partisans played their part in disrupting the arrival of German reinforcements by destroying vital roads and bridges. Then in July 1944, the Red Army swept victoriously through Belarus, pursuing the retreating German army and liberating towns on the way.
When these soldiers encountered the Bielski Partisans they marvelled at the presence of Jewish resistance fighters. They didn’t think there were any! One surprised Jewish Major in the Russian army exclaimed:
“I passed from Stalingrad to Belarus, I freed many towns and villages and I did not meet any Jews at all!”
But the war still continued to rage, and the order came down from Soviet authorities for the Bielski Otriad to evacuate their camp and go to Nowogrodek, where they would be issued with new identification papers and relocated.
There, most of them were enlisted in the Red Army and sent to the front, where they died. Asael Bielski was among these recruits and he died in Marienburg, Germany, leaving behind his pregnant wife, Chaja.
A UNIQUE LEGACY
After the war, Tuvia and Zus with their families first settled in Israel, and then later relocated to the United States, where they ran a trucking business. Tuvia Bielski was a unique man, in fact there was no one else quite like him.
A Jewish resistance fighter who during the height of Nazi power not only defied capture, but saved 1,200 Jews from being murdered as well. He died at the age of 81 in New York, leaving behind his wife Lilka and three children.
The story of the Bielski partisans is inspiring because of its uniqueness. It is a singularity, an anomaly in an otherwise predictable pattern of massacre and victimisation. At a time when Jews were forced to go quietly into the dark night of annihilation, the Bielskis defied the norm and raged against the Nazi killing machine.
We live in a world besieged by another master of terror, an invisible being that the Bible in Revelation 12:7 calls the Devil and Satan. He is a master of cruelty and suffering, destroying anyone who places themselves in his power.
But we can choose to be a part of a small group that actively defies his reign, by placing ourselves under the banner of another commander. Jesus says in John 16:33,
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
Jesus offers us hope in a world besieged by uncertainty and fear. Instead of going quietly into the dark night of sin and hopelessness, Jesus lifts up the light of truth and invites us to join His band of Partisans – resistance fighters determined to defy Satan’s reign of terror and stand in alliance with God’s reign of love and hope. And just as the partisans experienced the joy of freedom, Jesus has promised us freedom too!
In Revelation 21:4 the Bible tells us,
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
We may live in a world besieged by hatred, violence and hopelessness, but Jesus offers us hope, not just for this world but for eternity.
SPECIAL OFFER AND CLOSING PRAYER
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It’s the booklet, Finding Courage to Meet Life’s Challenges. I’m sure you’ll want to read this small booklet that explores the big theme of good versus evil in our world today. This booklet is our gift to you and is absolutely free. I guarantee there are no costs or obligations whatsoever. So, make the most of this wonderful opportunity to receive the gift we have for you today.
Be sure to join us again next week, when we will share another of life’s journeys together. Until then, I invite you to join me as we pray.
Dear Heavenly Father. Thank you for the hope and assurance that you give us. Thank you for being right there with us as we face our struggles and challenges every day. We reach out to you today and ask you to guide us on life’s pathway. Give us the strength to follow your leading. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
