Lilka bielski biography template

The Bielski partisans were a group of Jewish partisans (an irregular military group) who fought against the Nazis during World War II. They rescued Jews from extermination. They fought against the Nazis, who had taken overPoland. They also fought against people who cooperated with the Nazis. They lived and fought around Nowogródek (Navahrudak) and Lida in Poland (now western Belarus). They were named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who led the group.

Under the Bielski partisans' protection, 1,236 Jews survived the war. This was one of many remarkable rescue missions in the Holocaust. The group spent more than two years living in the forests and was initially organised by members of the Bielski family.

Background

The Bielski family were millers and grocers in Stankiewicze (Stankievichy) near Nowogródek. At the beginning of WWII, this area belonged to the Second Polish Republic. It was taken over by the Soviet Union in September 1939 (cf. Polish September Campaign and Soviet invasion of Poland) as part of an agreement between Nazi Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union that they would not fight each other.

The Bielski family served as low-level administrators in the new government set up by the Soviets. This made many local Poles unhappy, because they saw the Soviets as occupiers.

On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany began Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union. Nowogródek became a Jewish ghetto. The Nazis took over and began their genocidal policies in Poland and Belarus.

Partisans

Formation

The Bielski's parents and older family members were killed in the ghetto on 8 December 1941. The four Bielski brothers - Tuvia, Alexander (also known as "Zus"), Asael, and Aron Bielski - managed to escape to the nearby forest. Together with 13 neighbours from the ghetto, they formed their partisan combat group

“Becoming Bielski” is the inspiring true story of Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski, three Jewish brothers who refused to succumb to the hopeless circumstances of the Holocaust and took their fate into their own hands. They fled to the forests of Western Belarus to form an armed brigade, chose Tuvia as their commander, and could never have imagined the incredible feats of survival they were about to achieve.

The Bielskis welcomed all Jews to join them in the woods, especially those who were too weak to defend themselves. As more people arrived over a period of three years, the group grew into a small village that came to be known as Shtetl Bielski. Whatever needs they had for survival, they found ways to fulfill with tenacity and their bare hands. They built underground bunkers, a hospital, a school, a bakery, a bathhouse and even a theater.

They conducted sabotage missions against Nazi infrastructure and took revenge on neighboring peasants who were known to collaborate with the Germans. Their reputation as defiant Jews fighting from the woods caused Hitler to offer 10,000 reichsmarks as a reward for Tuvia Bielski’s head.

The Nazis knew that Jewish partisans were hiding in the forests, and they attempted several ambushes against them, but the partisans always managed to stay one step ahead.  In spite of the constant threat of danger, these Jews were determined to live their lives as normally as possible.  They laughed, sang, danced, prayed, gossiped, and fell in love, all under the protection of the trees. When the war ended, over 1200 Jewish partisans emerged from the woods. The descendants of these survivors now number in the tens of thousands living all over the world.

Filmmaker Sharon Rennert is the granddaughter of Tuvia Bielski and his wife, Lilka. She explores her family legacy with her video camera over the course of an eleven-year journey that takes her around the world from Brooklyn to Florida, Israel, Belarus and Lithuania.

Her family’s contemp

Before his death in 1987, Tuvia Bielski told his wife, Lilka, “I will be famous when I am dead.” Bielski and Lilka were living in Brooklyn, New York, where they seemed to be a typical immigrant family. Bielski, who spoke thickly accented English, worked as a truck driver delivering plastic materials to companies throughout the New York metropolitan area. Bielski was in reality the man who many consider among the greatest heroes of anti-German resistance in World War II—a man who master-minded and led one of the most significant Jewish rescue and resistance operations of the Holocaust.

It is a profound irony that he would be forced to wonder when he would get full credit for his achievements. In its outlines, Tuvia Bielski’s story sounds like the far fetched creation of a Hollywood scriptwriter. From a small village in the country now called Belarus, Tuvia and his brothers Asael, Zus, and Aron escaped from invading Germans into a nearby forest and then created a refuge for other local Jews there. But the Bielskis did more than hide and save lives: periodically a group of them emerged from the trees on horseback, sub-machine guns strapped to their shoulders, to ambush the enemy. In time, the forest settlement became like a small town, complete with shoemakers and tailors, carpenters, and hat makers, a central square for social gatherings, a tannery that doubled as a synagogue, and even a theater troupe. Ultimately, the Bielski brothers saved the lives of 1,200 Jews and killed more than 300 enemy soldiers.

The Bielski partisans’ achievement is on par with more famous acts of wartime courage such as those performed by Oskar Schindler and the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In fact, their resistance was more successful then both the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the work of Schindler in both numbers of lives saved and numbers of Germans killed.