The Bielski Brothers

ÖZET

The Bielskis were the only Jewish family in their tiny village of Stankevich, and while Jews in Belorussia were persecuted under tsarist rule, the family managed to maintain a successful mill. In June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded its former ally the Soviet Union, conditions for Jews worsened immediately. Jewish ghettos were established in the nearby cities of Novogrudek and Lida, which early in the war were the sites of several mass killings of Jews. Nazis combed the countryside, and the Bielski parents and two siblings were taken to their deaths. As the gravity of the situation dawned on them, three Bielski brothers, Tuvia, Asael and Zus, who had been finding shelter with sympathetic gentiles, decided that their only hope for survival lay in the dense surrounding forests that they knew so well. Once theyd gathered their remaining relatives, the brothers, under Tuvias leadership, staged daring rescues in Novogrudek and Lida in an effort to bring as many Jews as possible to the forest with them. While they procured weapons and supplies to kill enemy soldiers and sabotage their operations, the Bielskis priority was the preservation of their people. Tuvia often declared that he would rather save one old Jewish woman than kill 10 Nazis.