Faye Schulman

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Faye Schulman , actually Faigel Lazebnik , later Faina Lazebnik , (born November 28, 1919 in Lenin , Belarus , now Poland ; died 2015 in Toronto ) was a Belarusian - Canadian photographer . She is known as the only photographer who took pictures among the partisans who fought the German Wehrmacht .

biography

Faigel Lazebnik came from a large Jewish family; she had six siblings. The father Yakov Lazebnik owned a drapery, but was not very capable of business, so that the mother Rayzel Migdalovich Lazebnik soon had to provide for the family income with a restaurant where the children helped out. When she was 13 years old, her eldest brother Moishe gave her a camera and taught her photography. She worked in his photo shop and ended up making such good money that she was able to pay off part of her father's debt. After the invasion of the Red Army in September 1939 in Lenin her name was Faina Russified .

In June 1941 the German-Soviet War broke out and the German Wehrmacht conquered the region in which the Lazebnik family lived. On August 14, 1942, members of the Wehrmacht murdered around 1,850 Jews in the Lenin ghetto , including the parents of Faina Lazebnik, her sisters, her younger brother, her nephew (five years old) and her niece (two years old). They only spared 27 people, including Lazebnik for her skills as a photographer. She tried to commit suicide after the massacre , but her fellow inmates stopped her. The Germans ordered her to develop photos made of them in Lenin. One day she developed photos of a mass grave and was able to identify members of her own family on them. She secretly made prints of the photos for herself.

During a partisan attack on Lenin, Faina Lazebnik fled into the woods and joined the Molotava Brigade , a partisan group made up mostly of deserters from the Red Army . She was accepted by the partisans because her brother-in-law was a doctor. Therefore, they mistakenly believed that Faina also had medical knowledge. From September 1942 to July 1944 she served the brigade as a nurse, but kept silent about the fact that she was Jewish as many of the men were anti-Semites . She also learned to shoot. The group's doctor was a veterinarian who repeatedly defended Faina Lazebnik against attacks and suspicions by the Soviet men and thus saved her life.

When the partisans attacked Lenin again, Faina Lazebnik managed to save her photographic equipment. She took numerous photos over the next two years. These offer unusual insights into the life of the resistanceists: One photo, for example, shows a funeral scene in which Jewish fighters were buried side by side with Soviet fighters, despite violent anti-Semitism in the group. She later said: “I want people to know that there was resistance. Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof. ”(“ I want to let people know that there was resistance. Jews didn't go to the slaughter like lambs. I'm a photographer. I have pictures. I have the proof. ”) She was the only known photographer among them Partisans.

On December 12, 1944, after the liberation from the Germans, Faina Lazebnik married Morris Schulman in Pinsk . Like her, he came from Lenin and had fought as a partisan. Around 200 people from his extended family were murdered in the Shoah . The couple were awarded several medals and lived comfortably in Pinsk, Poland , which they wanted to leave because the city reminded them of a cemetery. A planned departure to Israel failed because the British mandate did not want to allow any further Jewish refugees into the country.

The couple spent the following three years in a DP camp in Landsberg am Lech , Germany, which Schulman described in her autobiography as an "irony of history". Daughter Susanna was born there on January 27, 1946. The rabbis there insisted on the two being married again; They did not want to accept the first one because there were fewer than ten Jewish community members in Pinsk. Schulman: “We married knowing each other's stories, two partisans, and we tried to live as if nothing had happened, building new and normal lives.” (“When we married two partisans, we knew each other's stories, and we tried that way to live as if nothing had happened by building new and normal lives. ”) Her two brothers Kopel and Moishe also survived the end of the war.

In 1948 the family emigrated to Canada, where their son Sydney was born. There Faina Schulman changed her name to Faye Schulman . At the beginning of their time there, the couple worked as workers in various factories. Due to a lack of certificates and poor language skills, Moshe Schulman was unable to work as an auditor in his trained profession . They later opened their own hardware store , which they operated for 15 years until Moshe Schulman became a management consultant. As a contemporary witness, Faye Schulman reported on her time as a partisan, and her photos have been exhibited many times. She outlived her husband by 23 years and died in Toronto in 2015. Some of your photos are in the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation in San Francisco .

publication

  • The screams of my people inside me. How I survived the Holocaust as a Jewish partisan . Lichtenberg, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-7852-8424-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Anna Rothenfluh: How Faye Schulman survived the Holocaust as a Jewish partisan. In: watson.ch. September 1, 1939, accessed February 5, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b The Destruction of the German Garrison in Lenin. In: encyclopedia.ushmm.org. May 10, 1942, accessed February 5, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c Pictures of Resistance. In: jewishpartisans.org. September 13, 2017, accessed February 5, 2020 .
  4. ^ Faye Schulman, Sarah Silberstein Swartz: A Partisan's Memoir. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ^ The Bielski Partisans - Stories. In: fold3.com. Retrieved February 5, 2020 .
  6. ^ Faye Schulman, Sarah Silberstein Swartz: A Partisan's Memoir. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
personal data
SURNAME Schulman, Faye
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lazebnik, Faigel (real name); Lazebnik, Faina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belarusian-Canadian photographer
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Lenin , Belarus
DATE OF DEATH 2015
Place of death Toronto