Defiance

Defiance

DEFIANCE -Review -Gabriel Murray (Olympia Films) The Bielski family were farmers from Belarus. Following the German '' Operation Barbarossa " the invasion of the Soviet Union that began on June 22,1921, the town Nowogrodek where the Bielski family lived became a Jewish Ghetto. The three Bielski brothers, Tuvia , Alexander Zisel "Zus", and Asael , managed to flee to the nearby forest after their parents and other family members were killed in the ghetto in December 1941. Together with 13 neighbours from the ghetto, they formed the their partisan combat group. Some 4,000 Jewish inhabitants were ordered by the Nazis to dig 40 deep pits. In temperatures that had plunged below zero, they were forced to take off their clothes and stand, facing the graves. Then they were shot, their bodies whether killed outright or injured falling into the graves where they were buried. Tuvia's parents were among the dead. When he learned that his parents had been murdered, Bielski was tortured by remorse. Why hadn't he stayed with them? Why hadn't they all escaped together? Why hadn't he convinced them to go on the run with him? At that moment, he swore that he would not only try to rescue the rest of his family, but also as many Jews young, old, frail, or ill as he possibly could. 'I'd rather save one old Jewish woman than kill ten Nazi soldiers,' he declared. 'It was simple,' Tuvia later recalled. 'The Germans caught my father, mother and two of my brothers. They took them to the ghetto and from there they were taken to their deaths. The group's commander was the eldest brother, Tuvia Bielski (19061987), Hundreds of men, women, and children eventually found their way to the Bielski camp eventually numbered 1200 individuals. Refusing to live in the Novogrudek ghetto where they would be subject to Nazi tyranny, he and two of his brothers went on the run, travelling from town to town in the dead of night, often sleeping in pigsties, on farms or in the woods. To Tuvia's eternal regret, he was not in Novogrudek when, on December 7, 1941, the Germans launched a raid on the ghetto into which the rest of his family had been herded. The partisans lived in underground in bunkers. In addition, several utility structures were built: a kitchen, a mill, a bakery, a bathhouse, a medical clinic for sick and wounded, and a quarantine hut for those who suffered from infectious diseases such as typus. Herds of cows supplied milk. Artisans made goods and carried out repairs. More than a hundred workers toiled in the workshops, which became famous among partisans far beyond the Bielski base: tailors patched up old clothing and stitched together new garments; shoemakers fixed old and made new footwear; leather-workers worked on belts, bridles, and saddles. A metalworking shop, established there by Shmuel Oppenheim, repaired damaged weapons and constructed new ones from spare parts. A tannery, constructed to produce the hide for cobblers and leather workers, became a de-facto synagogue because several tanners were devout Hasidic Jews . Carpenters, hat-makers, barbers, watchmakers served their own community and guests. The camp's many children attended class in the dugout set up as a school. The camp even had its own jail and court of law. The Bielski group's partisan activity was aimed at the Nazi and their collaborators in the area, such as Belarussian volunteer policemen or local inhabitants who had betrayed or killed Jews. They also conducted sabotage missions against the occupying forces. The Nazi regime offered a reward of 100,000 Reichmarks for assistance in the capture of Tuvia Bielski, and in 1943 led major operations against all partisan groups in the area. Some of these groups suffered major casualties, but the Bielski partisans fled safely to a more remote part of the forest, and continued to offer protection to the noncombatants among their band. The Bielski partisans were affiliated with Soviet Partisans in the vicinity of the Naliboki Forest under General Platon (Vasily Yefimovich Chernyshev). Several attempts by Soviet partisan commanders to absorb Bielski fighters into their units were resisted, such that the Jewish partisan group retained its integrity and remained under Tuvia Bielski's command. This allowed him to continue in his dedication to protect Jewish lives along with engaging in combat activity. The Bielski partisan leaders split the group into two units, named Ordzhonikidze, led by Zus, and Kalinin, led by Tuvia. According to partisan documentation, Bielski fighters from both units killed a total of 381 enemy fighters, sometimes during joint actions with Soviet groups. In the summer of 1944, when the Soviet counter- offensive began in Belarus and the area was liberated, the "Kalinin" unit comprising the Bielski partisans, numbering 1,230 men, women and children, emerged from the forest and marched into Nowogrodek. The surviving Bielski brothers, Tuvia and Zus, eventually settled in the United States. Tuvia Bielski worked as a taxi driver in Manhattan until his death in 1987. His story was known only to a few, but it came to the attention of Jewish sociologist Nechama Tec who, after several years of research, published the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, incorporating many first-hand accounts. Her book was optioned by Ed Zwick, the Oscar-winning director of The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond. Indeed it has. Zwick was born and raised in Illinois, his grandfather moving to the US from Poland after the First World War, but some of his family members fought, and died, during the Second World War. "My grandfather had brothers who stayed behind in Eastern Europe, one of whom went into the Polish forest and never came out," says Zwick. "I think for many, defiance, and fighting persecution, was in the culture of that time. It is certainly evoked by the Bielski brothers."

Director Zwick has said. "You have these chapters of history that get lost," he says. "Sometimes that's down to political agendas or because mythologies are created. Ideas and events that are contradictory to those myths often disappear. "That's what's happened here. The image of European Jews going passively to their deaths is inaccurate. We hope this film corrects that view, while also exploring the specifics of the Bielski story. You have to consider how they felt. Where is God when they are hiding and scratching out this existence in the forests? Where is love in the forest? What is it like to be a child in the forest? All these things were important."
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