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Jewish partisans

Four Winters Shines a Light on the Bravery of World War II Survivors Among the 25,000 Jewish Partisans

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Can you imagine climbing through an unlikely opening and hurling yourself off a speeding train (while your beloved family members huddle together, terrified and exhausted) to take your chances at surviving so that you can escape arrival of almost certain murder at the death factory, Treblinka?

Or of attempting to convince others to take that chance with you? So that you can both LIVE and one day tell the story? To tell what happened–a reason to live that Holocaust survivors collectively have shared in many documentaries.

To jumping anyway when others would not or could not?

In Julie Mintz’s riveting and inspiring documentary Four Winters, we learn of such unimaginable circumstances and also mind bogglingly courageous acts of Jewish resistance through the testimony of eight  survivors who were members of the estimated 25,000 Jewish Partisans in the forests of World War II Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine. In Mintz’s discussion following the movie with Bruni Burres, the curator of the Jacob Burns Film Center Jewish Film Festival, we learn that only one of the survivors Mintz worked with to tell their stories and produce this film as authentically as possible, is still with us today for the film’s release. A takeaway reminder to me that the survivors are leaving us. A reminder that so are their stories. So we must honor them. And this film, honors them immensely.

Documentarian Julie Mintz discussing Four Winters with Bruni Burres, curator for the Burns Center Jewish Film Festival.

If I may go on. I also don’t consider these spoilers as you MUST see this wonderful documentary to understand its edge of your seat quality, and my own words aside, you MUST hear the stories from the survivors themselves to truly digest the Jewish Partisans story and the Four Winters theme of perseverance.

Can you imagine walking for miles in a weakened state in an expansive, eerie forest in the cold and the snow, with only the glowing eyes of wolves in the distance to guide you, without survival gear or survival skills per se, at different junctures being hunted down like animals for slaughter by the sick Nazi regime and its unholy web of spies and collaborators?

It was a story I was startled and almost embarrassed to have never heard before, or have heard about in snips and pieces, as more folklore. The survivor witnesses in Four Winters weave a tapestry of this most remarkable aspect of Holocaust survival, of Jewish survival. Julie Mintz has lovingly, painstakingly helped each of these dear souls revisit and recall details of those horrific times, so that the story, each story, the collective story, can be released into the world, and so that these survivors can be celebrated and embraced not for what they survived, but for their courage, for the lives they helped save, for whatever evil they conquered or thwarted too against all odds.

None of us really could imagine, and no doubt the survivors who describe their experiences never could have either preceding the horrific genocide that ensued. Or how they eventually banded together in groups and underground, camouflaged bunkers to form true fighting units sabotaging and killing Nazis at assorted opportunities, and surviving against all odds over four endless, brutal winters, often starving, often not knowing what day it was, or what the future held. Early in the film: footage of their happy and productive lives, vacationing in pre-Nazi invasion Poland.

As we approach International Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow, I am grateful I had the opportunity to watch the pre-screening of Four Winters yesterday. As the subject matter never stops hitting too close to home (I am a child of Holocaust survivors; most of my family perished), the usual trepidation I feel watching the footage of crimes perpetrated against humanity by the Nazis never goes away. But this story was incredibly uplifting in that we much more rarely hear about the resistance efforts to the Nazi evil. The Jewish partisans collaborated with Polish and Russian partisan units in the forests too. I am eternally grateful to every astoundingly brave and moral person of every religion and race who courageously resisted and fought the seemingly endless atrocities to save innocent lives at grave risk to their own. I’m in awe of the courage it took to save themselves. I’m eternally heartened to learn and proud to know that included a sizeable number of Jewish persons, too.

 

Remember the Partisans

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Chappaqua Resident Meryl Lefkowitz with her great uncle Michael Stoll, a Bielski partisan
Chappaqua Resident Meryl Lefkowitz with her great uncle Michael Stoll, a Bielski partisan

A packed audience recently gathered at the Dewitt Wallace auditorium at Chappaqua Crossing to watch The Bielski Brothers: Jerusalem in the Woods, a documentary film based on the lives of the Bielski partisans during the Holocaust. The event was sponsored by UJA-Federation of New York’s Westchester Women chapter in an effort to raise awareness about the remarkable story of the Bielski brothers who were Jewish partisans that survived in the Belorussian forest during World War II. The four Bielski brothers managed to rescue 1,200 Jews in the neighboring Jewish ghettos of Lida and Nowogrodek, the largest rescue effort by Jews for Jews in World War II.

Aron (Bielski) Bell, the last remaining survivor of the Bielski brothers, was in attendance at the event along with several other Bielski partisans.

Chappaqua resident and one of the event chair’s Meryl Lefkowitz has many relatives who were saved by the Bielski brothers. “My father’s family including my grandmother, her parents, brother, sister and cousin were all Holocaust survivors and Bielski partisans. “The Bielskis were close to my family and saved them as well as countless others by creating their community in the woods,” said Lefkowitz. “My grandmother and her brother and sister and cousin are all still alive and to this day they keep the memories and stories alive. We are here (a family of more than 50 of their descendants) because of their determination to survive.” The number of Bielski descendants is approximately 20,000, according to historians.

Laura Kleinhandler of Rye Brook, UJA-Federation’s Westchester Women Chair; Aron Bell; Michele Gregson of Chappaqua, UJA-Federation’s Westchester Women Vice Chair; and Alan Bell Photo courtesy of UJA-Federation of NY
Laura Kleinhandler of Rye Brook, UJA-Federation’s Westchester Women Chair; Aron Bell; Michele Gregson of Chappaqua, UJA-Federation’s Westchester Women Vice Chair; and Alan Bell Photo courtesy of UJA-Federation of NY

Lefkowitz’s great uncle Michael Stoll attended the event. His story is featured in the documentary. He was on a cattle car about to be transported to the Majdanek concentration camp from the Lida ghetto and jumped from the train along with his sister, Lefkowitz’s paternal grandmother and her paternal great grandfather. Remarkably they reunited with their mother and other sister in the woods who had already joined the Bielski brigade. “I am proud of who I am and where I have come from. These are amazing people with an unwavering will to live and prosper and an unbelievable story to tell,” commented Lefkowitz.

The story of the Bielski partisans was popularized in the 2008 Hollywood film Defiance starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber. The documentary film featured at the event follows the story of the Bielski brothers a Jewish farming family in the town of Stankiewicze. After the Nazis invaded their town and forced all Jews into the ghettos of Lida and Nowogrodek, three of the Bielski brothers escaped to the nearby forest. At first the brothers focused on just saving their immediate family members but eventually took it as their mission to save as many Jews as they could. With the brother’s farming background and intimate knowledge of the forest, they were able to ultimately evade the Germans and Belorussian collaborators.

Aron (Bielski) Bell, the last remaining Bielski Brother with his wife Henryka Bell
Aron (Bielski) Bell, the last remaining Bielski Brother with his wife Henryka Bell

Eventually with the help of some non-Jewish Belorusian friends they acquired guns and were soon able to obtain captured German and Soviet weapons and equipment supplied by Soviet partisans. The Bielski partisans actively scouted the Jewish ghettoes and helped several Jews escape. They constantly moved throughout the forest to avoid detection by the Nazis.

By 1943, the number of partisans in the Bielski brigade had increased to 700 Jews, and the Bielski brothers were fearful of the Nazis discovering their base so they relocated to a more remote part of the Naliboki Forest where they remained until their liberation. The partisans formed a Jewish community in this location dubbed “Jerusalem in the woods.” The refugees were organized by skill and they had cobblers, tailors, carpenters, leather workers, and blacksmiths all contributing to the overall well-being of the community. In addition, they even had a laundry, synagogue, infirmary and schoolhouse.

“This story is extraordinary in that the best of human qualities emerged in the darkest moments of history. The unanswered question surrounding the story of the four Bielski brothers whose efforts saved more than 1,200 Jews is how did they create a caring community in the midst of the Holocaust? Millie Jasper, Executive Director of the White Plains-based Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center, said: “It’s remarkable that the Bielski brothers created an environment where each member of the group chose not their personal survival, but the survival of the group.”

Stacey Pfeffer lives with her husband and three young children in Chappaqua. She has written for New York Family Magazine, Kveller.com, Westchester Parents and Inside Armonk. Both of her maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors.