Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans
Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans

Author: Jack Kagan

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780853034162

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Two cousins relate their experiences with Bielski's partisan brigade in war-torn Russia during the Second World War. Natives of Novogrodek, part of present-day Belarus, they describe Jewish life before the Holocaust and furnish a most moving account of how a thriving and prosperous Jewish center was decimated by the Nazis and local collaborators. Initial joy when their hometown was taken over by the Soviet Union disappeared when the Germans ran the Russians out of town and started implementing policies to eradicate all Jews and anything Jewish. Dov (Berl), the elder of the cousins, whose account comprises the first section of the book, lost his immediate family in the early days of German occupation and escaped from ghetto life in November 1942 to join the partisans in the dense forests of the area. He joined the Kalinin brigade and spent the rest of the war fighting the Germans and Russian sympathisers. Jack (Idel), seven years his junior, remained in the ghetto with the remnants of their once-large family. After a failed attempt in December 1942 to escape to reach the partisans - in an episode which nearly cost him his life - Jack joined an escape effort from the ghetto in September 1943, successfully reached the partisans as a member of Bielski's partisan brigade and was reunited with his cousin. This second section features many original documents from Russian archives and elsewhere, about the partisan bands' structure and their activities. The authors provide a unique view, not only of actual incidents, but of how two different people react to events and experiences. Updated in this second edition by a new preface and appendix, this is their story: a tale of tragedy, courage and triumph.

The Book Smugglers
The Book Smugglers

Author: David E. Fishman

Publisher: University Press of New England

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1512601268

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The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts-first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets-by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion-including the readiness to risk one's life-to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, "The Jerusalem of Lithuania." The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi "expert" on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city's great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. This group, nicknamed "the Paper Brigade," and informally led by poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, a garrulous, street-smart adventurer and master of deception, smuggled thousands of books and manuscripts past German guards. If caught, the men would have faced death by firing squad at Ponar, the mass-murder site outside of Vilna. To store the rescued manuscripts, poet Abraham Sutzkever helped build an underground book-bunker sixty feet beneath the Vilna ghetto. Kaczerginski smuggled weapons as well, using the group's worksite, the former building of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, to purchase arms for the ghetto's secret partisan organization. All the while, both men wrote poetry that was recited and sung by the fast-dwindling population of ghetto inhabitants. With the Soviet "liberation" of Vilna (now known as Vilnius), the Paper Brigade thought themselves and their precious cultural treasures saved-only to learn that their new masters were no more welcoming toward Jewish culture than the old, and the books must now be smuggled out of the USSR. Thoroughly researched by the foremost scholar of the Vilna Ghetto-a writer of exceptional daring, style, and reach-The Book Smugglers is an epic story of human heroism, a little-known tale from the blackest days of the war.

Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis
Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis

Author: Patrick Henry

Publisher: CUA Press

Published: 2014-04-20

Total Pages: 670

ISBN-13: 0813225892

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This volume puts to rest the myth that the Jews went passively to the slaughter like sheep. Indeed Jews resisted in every Nazi-occupied country - in the forests, the ghettos, and the concentration camps.The essays presented here consider Jewish resistance to be resistance by Jewish persons in specifically Jewish groups, or by Jewish persons working within non-Jewish organizations. Resistance could be armed revolt; flight; the rescue of targeted individuals by concealment in non-Jewish homes, farms, and institutions; or by the smuggling of Jews into countries where Jews were not objects of Nazi persecution. Other forms of resistance include every act that Jewish people carried out to fight against the dehumanizing agenda of the Nazis - acts such as smuggling food, clothing, and medicine into the ghettos, putting on plays, reading poetry, organizing orchestras and art exhibits, forming schools, leaving diaries, and praying. These attempts to remain physically, intellectually, culturally, morally, and theologically alive constituted resistance to Nazi oppression, which was designed to demolish individuals, destroy their soul, and obliterate their desire to live.

Defiance
Defiance

Author: Nechama Tec

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-12-26

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0199744025

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The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims, but in fact many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. In Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Tec reveals that this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons, but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis. Herself a Holocaust survivor, Nechama Tec here draws on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself--to reconstruct here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight.

FDR's Quiet Confidant
FDR's Quiet Confidant

Author: Frank C. Walker

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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Walker (1886-1959) was one of Franklin Roosevelt's most trusted advisors from his election as US president in 1933 until his death in 1945. Originally from Butte, Montana, he was coordinating secretary for the New Deal agencies, Postmaster General during World War II, and national chairman of the Democratic Party. He dictated or wrote his autobiography between 1949 and 1956 but never edited it into finished form, and after his death the manuscript lay in archives at Notre Dame until now. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Beyond Courage
Beyond Courage

Author: Doreen Rappaport

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Published: 2012-09-11

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0763629766

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Recounts the efforts of Jews who organized others and sabotaged the Nazis during the Holocaust, including Georges Loinger who smuggled children from occupied France into Switzerland and four brothers who led refugees into the forest to build a village and an army.

The Light of Days
The Light of Days

Author: Judy Batalion

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 683

ISBN-13: 0062874233

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THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Also on the USA Today, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Globe and Mail, Publishers Weekly, and Indie bestseller lists. One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now. Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick, taught children, and hid families. Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown. As propulsive and thrilling as Hidden Figures, In the Garden of Beasts, and Band of Brothers, The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion—the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors—takes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions. Batalion follows these women through the savage destruction of the ghettos, arrest and internment in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, and for a lucky few—like Renia, who orchestrated her own audacious escape from a brutal Nazi jail—into the late 20th century and beyond. Powerful and inspiring, featuring twenty black-and-white photographs, The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds. NPR's Best Books of 2021 National Jewish Book Award, 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award, 2021

The Youngest Partisan
The Youngest Partisan

Author: A. Romi Cohn

Publisher: Mesorah Publications, Limited

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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This is a Holocaust story like very few others. It's about a youngster who turned on his persecutors and showed them that Jewish blood is not cheap. And he lived to tell his story! A. Romi Cohn -- today a well-known mohel, businessman and philanthropist -- was a precocious, active 10-year-old yeshivah student when the Nazis invaded Poland. Soon afterward, they and their puppet regime took over his native Czechoslovakia. The Nazis did not have to round up Czech Jews, the Czechs did it for them, and even paid the conqueror to take the Jews off their hands.