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This is a family portrait of Frank's family.

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Passing as a Pole, Frank bought honey, chickens, butter, grains, and meat from the farmers and sold these products in the cities, where he would buy tobacco, yarn, and saccharin to sell back to the farmers. The risks of traveling without papers or the required Star of David armband were enormous, but life for Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland was already precarious.

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Young Frank immediately began taking daring risks in an effort to help his parents and his six brothers and sisters survive after his town was invaded. The family needed some way to make money, so Blaichman took to the road illegally. Blaichman, who had learned Polish from customers at his grandmother’s store, rode his bicycle from neighboring farms and villages to Lubartow (six miles to the east) and Lublin (12 miles to the south) and began to buy and sell whatever goods he was able to obtain.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaLAZt1SmqQ

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When the Germans invaded his town Blaichman was at the age of 16.

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His squad joined a larger all-Jewish unit, with strong ties to the Polish underground and Soviet army. They were responsible for protecting 200 Jews living in a forest encampment. Only 21, he was the youngest platoon commander in the unit and escorted the future prime minister of Poland to a secret meeting with the Soviet high command.

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He refused to wear the Star of David View This Term in the Glossary armband and traveled without the required permits, but his courage and fluent Polish ensured his safety.  Later, Frank encouraged the men to organize a defense unit. He obtained firearms by posing as a Polish policeman, using an overcoat he had found.

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This is a photo of Frank Blaichman when he escorted the Prime Minister of Poland.

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This is another photo of him in his interview. 

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This is a picture of Frank in his only ever recorded interview.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL8TU4w2zZI

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“I’m very proud of what I did all those years....The reality was we had nothing to lose, and our way to survive was to fight,” - Frank Blaichmen.

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After a German attack on the partisans’ encampment killed eighty Jews, the survivors left the forest to hide with sympathetic farmers. Always on the move, they killed German collaborators, destroyed telephone lines, damaged dairy factories, and ambushed German patrols.

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Blaichmen took great risks to help his parents and family survive these hardships. With a bicycle, he rode from the neighboring farms to nearby cities, buying and selling goods at each destination.

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Born in Kamionka, Poland, on December 11th, of 1923.