Defiance: The Bielski Partisans

by Nechama Tec

Book Overview

The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust years is one of helpless victims under a death sentence, unable to fight consignment to the ghettos, to the camps, and to the gas chambers. In fact, many Jews struggled alone or with others against the terrors of the Third Reich, risking their lives against overwhelming odds for the slimmest chance of survival, or a mere glimpse of freedom. In Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195093909
• ISBN13: 9780195093902
• Release Date: December 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Amazing true story!

This was so inspiring and bless the brothers for what they went through and hard decisions they had to make to ensure their and many others survival

Brilliant scholarship; hard read

This is a brilliant social history of a Jewish resistance movement in Belarus and Eastern Poland. It focusses on the Bielski partisan group lead by the three Bielski brothers. What made this partisan unit different from the others active in the area was the fact A) they were Jewish and B) focused much more on saving lives than on attacking the Germans. Their efforts eventually resulted in the saving of more than 1,000 Jews. The book is a standard social history that tackles its subject in a thematic rather than a narrative style. This makes the book less accessible. This is not a piece of popular history but is intended to be read by scholars who have made a study of the Holocaust or the Jews. The result is that the book can be hard to follow at times as it does not strictly follow a chronological format. Additionally, the book seems repetitive as the author supported his assertions with a large number of examples many of which are very similar. This is a stunning piece of scholarship with the information presented logically and clearly in a remarkably evenhanded manner. This is done at the expense of readability and accessibility. Therefore, I would not recommend this book to the casual reader but to the serious student of the subject.

"Amazing" doesn't begin to describe what Tuvia Bielski accomplished

In January, a movie called "Defiance" opens. The director is Edward Zwick, who did Glory, Blood Diamond and The Last Samurai; back in the day, he was one of the creators of thirtysomething. Zwick likes big heroic themes, and he has one here, with two heroic actors --- Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber --- in the leading roles. I've read the book that best tells the story behind the film. I've watched the preview. And although this movie has been much postponed and is finally coming out in a season when studios dump their most troubled product, I fully expect to endure two hours of convulsive sobbing on opening day. Why the extreme emotion? This is a Holocaust story --- and what's more extreme than a madman killing six million Jews, gypsies, Catholics and homosexuals? But we've endured so many Holocaust stories, we're drained. What could possibly grab us by the lapels and wring out fresh tears? Jews saving themselves. Jews saving themselves? No way. Weren't the only significant efforts to save Jews led by one bad Christian --- the story told in Steven Spielberg's film, Schindler's List --- and by many better ones, like the French villagers in Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed? With the exception of rare individuals like Viktor Frankl --- who survived the concentration camps to write Man's Search for Meaning --- I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has long believed that almost all the Jews killed by Hitler went meekly to their deaths. And that's not to call them cowards. It was folly to resist, so very few did. Nobility lay in a scrap of bread saved for a child, a prayer on the way to the gas chamber. It did not consist of a martyrdom that inflamed the Germans and caused more Jews to die. Well, get this: Tuvia Bielski and his brothers saved 1,200 Jews by leading them into the Belorussian forest. When the war ended, only 49 had died. That's an attrition rate of less than 5%. In comparison, of the 4,000 Jews who escaped the Polish ghettos and tried to survive by themselves in the forest, only two hundred survived. That's an attrition rate of 95%. Defiance tells two linked and equally compelling stories: the superhuman leadership of young Tuvia Bielski and the survival strategies of the Jewish community he created in the forest. Tuvia Bielski was a nobody. Born in 1906, he came from a peasant family with no electricity or running water. Their large family lived in a two-room hut. But there was something special about Tuvia. In prewar Poland, most Jews lived in cities and did not work with their hands; in their little Belorussian village, the Bielskis, the only Jews, owned a mill. Tuvia grew up tall and strong --- and ready to fight: "Father used to say with fine people we have to be good and proper, but with bad people we have to be bad." Literally --- when a neighboring farmer abused and attacked him, the teenaged Tuvia beat him so badly the guy wasn't seen for weeks. Tuvia joined the Polish army, became a sharpshooter, got married. In July of 1

This Book is Absolutely Amazing

In her book, "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans", Nechama Tec depicts an amazing tale of Jewish resistance and rescue on the eastern front during World War II. At the pith of this movement was one Tuvia Bielski, the commander of the large Jewish partisan outfit that roamed the Belorussian woods, constantly trying to avoid contact with the Germans. Tuvia, along with his brothers Asael and Zus were responsible for the salvation of over 1200 Jews, many of whom were elderly, female, or juvenile. Taking in such refugees in an extremely volatile environment was a huge risk. Without Tuvia's willingness, or determination to take on such risks, many of these people would have otherwise perished to the Nazi barbarity that was ubiquitous in the region. As a professor of sociology, the author Nechama Tec offers a unique perspective on this historical phenomenon. Her expertise brings into focus the social dynamic of partisan camps in World War II. Rather than succumb to the popularly accepted view that Jews were passive victims who simply laid down and allowed the Nazi aggressors to do their bidding during the Holocaust, Tec attempts to elucidate the under-documented, untold side of the story. That is, despite the widespread annihilation and extermination that Jewish citizens faced in Europe, there were pockets of resistance to the Nazi menace that deserve laudatory recognition. Tec takes the sentiment that there is a necessity to educate people on the unmentioned and tries to fill in the gap she believes is left by mainstream historians. Her effort to do so indeed deserves the very same laudatory recognition that she sets out to bestow upon the Bielski partisans. Tec makes the interesting suggestion that, contrary to popular belief, the Eastern European Jewish population was chock-full of resilient human beings. Human beings who were not only perfectly capable of surviving harsh physical conditions of the Belorussian woods, but also endowed with enough self respect to openly defy and resist the malevolent psychological conditions brought about by the Nazi occupiers. The evidence that Tec employs is abundant. She relies heavily on personal interviews with people who lived in, and survived with Tuvia Bielski's partisan group. Obviously, such interviews can be considered primary text evidence, and are therefore integral to any comprehensive historical study. However, the question of the reliability of such sources needs to be raised. Having conducted the interviews nearly fifty years post hoc, Tec leaves the question of their accuracy wide open. Many times, in the years that pass after a traumatic event, people who have lived through that event have a tendency to romanticize it. This skepticism is in no way meant to take away from the tremendous effort and commendable activity of the Bielski partisan organization. It is merely a suggestion that the facts offered by the various interviewees need to be taken with a grain of salt. The accur

review from a Bielski

Being the son of Aron Bielski the youngest of the 12 Bielski children I must say Ms.Tec did a wonderful and accurate job.Since Defiance was published there has been a great amonut interset raised on the Bielski Brothers.The book is informative and suspensful, it tell stories previously only known to the family and members of The Bielski Brigrade.

Excellent

I am the the son of two of the members of the Bielski Partisans. For many years my parents would not talk about their role in the war. However, since getting this book, they have become more responsive to my questioning. Is there anyway that i can in touch with the author to find out more information? I guess, because of my background, I've always been interested in this period. I could not put this book down. As a result of reading this book, I've gotten a hold of the other books by Mrs Tec. They are just as riveting as Defiance.