Bielski partisans

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The Bielski partisans were a group of Jewish refugees who, led by the brothers Tuvia , Zusja, Asael and Aron Bielski, tried to survive as partisans in the eastern part of Poland (today: Belarus ) and fought against the occupying power and its helpers during the Second World War .

Emergence

The Bielski family were farmers and owners of a flour mill in the village of Stankiewicze , today Vuhli 53 ° 40'5 "N 25 ° 38'43" E northwest of the town of Nowogródek . It was a former Polish area that came under Soviet occupation at the beginning of the Second World War . After the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union with the code name " Operation Barbarossa " on June 22, 1941, a Jewish ghetto was set up in Nowogródek , in which the Bielski family was also imprisoned. On December 8, 1941, members of German units, Belarusian auxiliary police and so-called Lithuanian protection teams shot between three and four thousand Jews in the Nowogródek ghetto. Bielski's parents and other relatives were among the victims. Tuvia, Zusia, Asael and Aharon Bielski fled to the nearby Naliboki Forest , where they formed the core of a partisan group together with thirteen neighbors from the ghetto.

Partisan camp in the forest

Belarusian Jewish partisan group

The group leader was Tuvia Bielski (1906–1987), who had previously served in the Polish army and belonged to the Zionist youth movement. He and his group liberated Jews in the surrounding ghettos, who thus became new members of the group in the Naliboki Forest. Hundreds of men, women and children found their way to the partisan camp. In this way, the Bielskis group grew to a size of around 1,200 people by 1944, who were saved from death. In the inaccessible, primeval forest- like Naliboki forest area , a community was set up during this time that was able to provide the refugees' daily needs almost completely self-sufficiently. Craftsmen made things for everyday use and repaired all the equipment they had. There was a school for 60 children, a synagogue , a hospital and a court . The community served both as a refuge and as a base camp for the largest partisan unit determined by Jews during the Second World War. This secret forest village was called "Jerusalem in the Forest" or "Bielsk-Shtetl".

Fighting

The Bielski partisans mainly fought collaborators , e.g. B. Belarusians who reported to the Belarusian auxiliary police , or locals who betrayed or murdered Jews. They also committed acts of sabotage against the occupation forces, which in turn used every attack as an opportunity to kill thousands of civilians, some of whom were not involved, in so-called "partisan actions" and thus terrorize the population. The occupation administration offered a reward of 100,000 Reichsmarks for helping to capture Tuvia Bielski. In July and August 1943, on the orders of SS and Police Leader Curt von Gottberg , German units took action against the camps and bases of the partisan groups in the Naliboki forests. (→ Kampfgruppe von Gottberg ) The group around the Bielski brothers, civilians and partisans, fled to more remote areas of the forest.

The Bielski partisans were in contact with Soviet partisans in the Naliboki forest under General Plato (real name: Wassili Jehimowitsch Tschernyshev) and were loosely counted as part of the so-called "Kalinin unit". However, the Jewish resistance fighters remained an independent unit under Tuvia Bielski's command. Since they did not submit to the Red Army , they were able to continue protecting the many Jewish refugees who had joined them. In summer 1944 the Red Army smashed the Operation Bagration the Army Group Center and drove the German occupation forces. Now the Bielski partisans - a total of 1,230 men, women and children - were able to leave the forest and return to Nowogródek . The entire area was annexed by the Soviet Union .

Asael Bielski then served in the Soviet Army and died in the Battle of East Prussia in 1945 . After the war Tuvia Bielski returned to Poland, then emigrated to Palestine in 1945 and then emigrated to the United States with his brothers Zusya and Aharon .

literature

  • Peter Duffy: The Bielski Brothers . 1st edition. Scherz Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-502-18160-8 .
  • Rainer Jahnke: Let's not go to the slaughter like sheep. Jewish resistance using the example of the Bielski partisans . In: Learning History . 12, 69, 1999, pp. 35-41.
  • Nechama Tec : I wanted to save. The incredible story of the Bielski partisans . 1st edition. Aufbau-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-7466-8085-9 .
  • Nechama Tec: Armed Resistance. Jewish partisans in World War II . 2nd Edition. Haland & Wirth im Psychosozial-Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8379-2052-9 (Original: Defiance, the Bielski Partisans, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993).

Film adaptations

In 2008, the story of the partisan troops by Edward Zwick in Defiance - For my brothers who never gave up (with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber ) was filmed.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Gerlach : Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus from 1941 to 1944 . Hamburg 1999, p. 624.
  2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschichteinchronologie.ch
  3. ↑ Christoph Gunkel: Three brothers against Hitler . In: Der Spiegel . April 22, 2009.
  4. ↑ Bogdan Musial and Tatjana Wanjat: Soviet partisans in Belorussia. Interior views from the Baranowici area 1941–1944. A documentation . Munich 2004, p. 107.