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Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Partisans operating in the forest of Belarus

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Partisans operating in the forest of Belarus

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" 'I remember we were very happy that the Russians liberated us from the anti-Semitic government of Poland, and we were happy that the Germans didn't occupy our area of Belarus, but when the Russians came in, right away they took away my father's business. I was forced to go to  a Russian school, instead of the Tarbut. The Russians forced my father to work for them. He was sweeping the floors because he was a capitalist, a bourgeois. He worked in his own store as a laborer' " (www.HolocaustResearchProject.org)

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The Bielski Brothers resistance group started sometime in mid 1941. The group formed after they were forced to flee their home. The Bielski Brothers (the brothers, not the resistance group) were strong willed and personal strength who were born to lead the group. They wanted people who were very obedient when they joined. The Bielski Brothers insisted on protecting all Jews that came to them.

The younger men in the unit took incredible risks on food missions to assure that everyone in the unit would have food. They urged their friends, family, and strangers to escape the ghettos and come in the forest with them. The few people that left the ghetto were very lucky. The total amount of people that survived because of them was about 1,200, despite the harsh weather and the state of continual vigilance and warfare. The Bielski Brothers resistance group joined forces with the Soviets. The Soviets wanted to regain lost territory.

The Bielski Brothers had to constantly move locations so they wouldn't get detected but over the years it became more and more difficult due to the population increasing to about a thousand people. They had to be on constant alert for German officers/cops and for peasants. They made connections with Russian partisans whom to be Communist which they did not tell them of their Jewish religious tradition.

By the early spring of 1942, the brothers managed to form what was called an Otriad (which is a partisan detachment) , which at first consisted of their surviving relatives and close friends. Over the next three years, approximately 1200 Jews came into their Otriad. In contrast to many Russian partisan units and Jewish units that restricted the participation of young men, the Bielskis took in any Jew who wanted to their help and to actively helped liberate many Jews from near by ghettos to join the unit.

There were huge strains of life in the forest that the Otraid had to deal with on a day to day basis. Women needed to worry about their basic survival and unattached women had to face worse dangers than those with a partner. Many times women took lovers just for the safety that came with it. Their were not a lot of children in the community, many times women were often encouraged to get an abortion to prevent extra problems and the few resources the Otraid had.

At the height of the Otraid the Bielski Brothers made it consisted of long, camouflaged dugouts for sleeping, a large kitchen, a mill and much more. The community had many necessary skills, they had about sixty cows and thirty horses for food and transportation to travel to new locations.

At the end of it all the Bielski Brothers were accused of war crimes like the massacre of 128 people in the Polish village of Naliboki.