The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest

It is one of the most remarkable dramas of World War II -- untold until now.

In 1941, three young men -- brothers, sons of a miller -- witnessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their eventual murders. It was a grim scene that would, of course, be repeated endlessly throughout the war. What makes this particular story of interest is how the survivors responded. Instead of running or capitulating or giving in to despair, these brothers -- Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski -- did something else entirely. They fought back, waging a guerrilla war of wits and cunning against both the Nazis and the pro-Nazi sympathizers. Along the way they saved well over a thousand Jewish lives.

Using their intimate knowledge of the dense forests surrounding the Belorussian towns of Novogrudek and Lida, the Bielskis evaded the Nazis and established a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other Jews to join their ranks. When the Nazis began systematically eliminating the local Jewish populations -- more than ten thousand were killed in the first year of the Nazi occupation alone -- the Bielskis intensified their efforts, often sending fighting men into the ghettos to escort Jews to safety. As more and more Jews arrived each day, a robust community began to emerge, a "Jerusalem in the woods." They slept in camouflaged dugouts built into the ground. Lovers met, were married, and conceived children. The community boasted a synagogue, a bathhouse, a theater, and cobblers so skilled that Russian officers would wait in line to have their boots reshod.

But as its notoriety grew, so too did the Nazi efforts to capture the rugged brothers; and on several occasions they came so near to succeeding that the Bielskis had to abandon the camp and lead their massive entourage to newer, safer locations. And while some argued in favor of a smaller, more mobile unit, focused strictly on waging battle against the Germans, Tuvia Bielski was firm in his commitment to all Jews. "I'd rather save one old Jewish woman," he said, "than kill ten Nazis."

In July 1944, after two and a half years in the woods, the Bielskis learned that the Germans, overrun by the Red Army, were retreating back toward Berlin. More than one thousand Bielski Jews emerged -- alive -- on that final, triumphant exit from the woods.

The Bielski Brothers is a dramatic and heartfelt retelling of a story of the truest heroism, a historic testament to courage in the face of unspeakable adversity.

In establishing their forest community, open to all Jews, the Bielskis had to fight "wars" on four fronts: the immediate threat from the Germans and the local police; the danger from local peasants and collaborators; the suspicions of Soviet partisans who questioned whether the Bielskis were sufficiently dedicated to their cause; and most of all, internal dissension. This was no "utopian community of enlightened democratic and egalitarian governance," and many readers may cringe at the extremes to which the leadership occasionally resorted in order to eliminate dissension.

At its height, the forest village consisted of long, camouflaged dugouts for sleeping, a large kitchen, mill, bakery, bathhouse, tannery, school, jail, theater, and two medical facilities. Tailors, seamstresses, shoemakers, watchmakers, carpenters, mechanics, and experts in demolition provided the 1200-member community with necessary skills, and about sixty cows and thirty horses provided food and transportation. Many of the men served as part of the armed contingent which secured food and engaged in sabotage and the murder of Germans officials.

By concentrating on one family and its life during the war, Duffy creates a powerful documentary about Jewish life. Breaking the narrative into six-month installments, he details the progress of the war throughout the region, relentlessly revealing cold statistics--the thousands of people killed in a single ghetto in a single day. As the numbers mount, the reader?s horror at the immense scale of the genocide grows, the victims? utter helplessness becomes obvious, and the reader?s amazement at the Bielskis? achievement increases. None of the Bielski brothers ever received public recognition for these heroic efforts, and Duffy?s attempts to rectify this historical omission by telling their story will resonate with readers. Mary Whipple


To the anti-semitic Canadian Poles   September 12, 2003
19 out of 25 found this review helpful

I read the Bielski Brothers book written by Peter Duffy, I found it fascinating and truthful, I was there.

And how dare you to write a review like that.

The Bielski Brothers were great heroes, they protected us from people like you. I was there and I should know.

The Bielski?s detachment was near Huta in May 1943 therefore he was not in position to be in Naliboki. Sholem Zorin was near Koidenovo and not in Pobeda detachment.

As far as food missions was concerned, territory to take food from was allocated by the Russian headquarters. We were armed and had to get food to survive. I can understand your thoughts. How dare the Jews pick up arms and take food from the Polish farmers. We were over 1,000 in Naliboki forest, your type expected us to hide there and die from hunger, and freeze in the winter. Our camp was not a luxury camp. The danger was everywhere from people like you, anti-Semites that have tried to kill all the Jews. When the Germans occupied Novogrudok, the local police was formed by Poles. You robed the Jews in the small towns even before the Germans entered. Now with out evidence you are shouting that the Jews have made a pogrom against Poles. You don?t even want to wait for the inquiry to finish.

This is a document sent by a Russian Commandeer to Moscow. Jewish Question.
To the Plenipotentiary of the Central Committee of the
All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) of Belorussia and to the representative of the General Staff of the Red Army Revolutionary
Committee, Comrade Platon.

Report 10.11.42

Jewish question.
There are many Jews in partisan detachments, not a few of them are excellent fighters trying to avenge brutal murdering of Jews by the fascists. According to the commanders of some of the brigades regarding this question, who are not right, separate Jewish detachments must not be set up. The population here doesn?t like Jews, they don?t call them otherwise than ?zhidy?. If a Jew calls at a house and ask for food, the peasant says that he has been robbed by Jews. When a Russian comes together with a Jew, everything goes smoothly. The Orlyanski detachment ?Struggle? from the Lenin Brigade consists of 80% Jews. There were cases that when a Jewish group went for food products to the other bank of the Neman, it was disarmed, the confiscated weapons were given to the peasants, and they all together gave them a terrible beating, shouting: ?Without Jews we will save Russia?. Many Jewish families hide in the forest, there are a few armed people among them. These Jews burst into villages and grab the first thing that comes to hand. There are detachments where Jews are not accepted.
This document was found in the Minsk National archive.
This should explain to you the situation.

About Naliboki you one report accuses the Stalin brigade, the Stalin brigade had 1404 partisans 554 Russian, 544 Byelorussian, 103 Ukrainians, 140 Jews, 19 Poles and 44 others. Yet the claim was that the Jews from the Stalin brigade were the killers.

In one of the writing you accused Bielski of robbing the Poles with 200 tons of potatoes, 3 tons of cabbages, 5 tons of sugar beets, 5 tons of various grains. That is also a lie. The Germans burned Naliboki some of the men were killed other were taken to Germany. After the German retreat in the ?Herman? operation., Bielski partisans took the harvest from the ground and put it away for the winter reserve.


Error in The Bielski Brothers   August 12, 2003
Charles Chotkowski (Fairfield, Conn.)
15 out of 22 found this review helpful

This book is written for a general, rather than a scholarly,
readership. The publisher's claim that the Bielski story was
"untold until now" is true only regarding a popular treatment.
There is a more scholarly book available: Nechama Tec, "Defiance:
The Bielski Partisans" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Unfortunately, Duffy repeats (at page 232) an erroneous and long
since discredited accusation against General Tadeusz Bor-
Komorowski, commander of the Polish underground Home Army (Armia
Krajowa or AK): "Indeed, General Bor-Komorowski, the AK's top
commander, issued an order on September 15, 1943, calling for the
extermination of Jewish partisan groups, which he regarded as bandits."

This allegation is false. General Bor-Komorowski did issue his
Order No. 116 of September 15, 1943, which ordered action against
bandits, but there was no mention whatsoever of Jews or Jewish
partisan groups.

The allegation has been ably refuted in the following two papers:

John Lowell Armstrong, "The Polish Underground and the Jews: A
Reassessment of Home Army Commander Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski's
Order 116 Against Banditry," Slavonic and East European Review,
Vol. 72, No. 2, (April 1994) pages 259-276.

Stanislaus A. Blejwas, "Polemic as History: Shmuel Krakowski,
'The War of the Doomed. Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942-
1944'," Polin, Vol. 4 (1989), pages 354-362.

Both Armstrong and Blejwas show that Bor-Komorowski's chief
accuser, Shmuel Krakowski, failed to quote the right document,
and badly misinterpreted the document he did quote.

Charles Chotkowski
Fairfield, Conn.


Very accurate depiction.   October 25, 2003
Ruth Levy (San Francisco)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

My mother and brother spent some time in the Bielski brothers camp after escaping a "selection" in the Lida Ghetto. My mother just finished reading this book and remarked that all of the details are amazingly accurate. Obviously Peter Duffy verified and cross-referenced all of the stories he heard from the various survivors, even after so many years have passed. Duffy glorifies no one, but depicts the situation, the conflicts, the characters just as they were.

This is really a more miraculous story than "Shindler's List".


Heroes Or Common Bandits?Duffy's humbug story of Bielski   September 6, 2003
8 out of 36 found this review helpful

What kind of morality is it? To commemorate murderers? See for yourself.

In small hours of May 8, 1943, the joint Soviet-Jewish assault on Naliboki occurred. One hundred and twenty eight (128) innocent civilians, including women and children, were butchered in a heinous pogrom that lasted almost three hours. Eyewitnesses confirmed later that the majority of the 128 people killed died at the hands of Jewish the Bielski's "Jeruzalem" and Zorin's "Pobeda" units.

The Polish Institute of National Memory [IPN], (its Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation in Lodz) is currently conducting an investigation into barbaric act commited by Tuvia Bielski, Sholem Zorin and their partisans in Naliboki. This investigation was opened on March 20, 2001 in response to the request of the Polish Canadian Congress. According to the Institute report, issued on March 1, 2002, 24 witnesses have been questioned so far, most of them former inhabitants of Naliboki or nearby settlements who had been present there during the attack. Their detailed testimonies about the course of events under investigation mention the names of some of the perpetrators, several of whom have been identified as former Jewish residents of Naliboki. The witnesses also mentioned the names of Soviet partisans.

Naliboki, county of Stolpce, Nowogr?dek province, a village located in the middle of Naliboki Forest, is currently part of Belorussia. The Polish and Belorussian villagers had formed a self-defence group to fend off Soviet and Jewish marauders that robbed them of the food and other possessions. The Holocaust memoirs branded those who attempted to protect their property as anti-Semites and Nazi collaborators. Initially, the local peasants, who were not overly rich themselves, were fairly generous in providing food, even though they didn't have much left after they met the burdensome quotas imposed by the Germans. However, as the numbers of Jews in the forest grew, and demands for forced contributions by the Germans and the Soviet partisans were ever escalating, the attitude of the impoverished villagers, who were subjected to these onerous burdens, started to change. Their first concern was to feed their own families. This had to take precedence before looking after the bands of Jewish escapees. It was also more important to meet quotas levied by the Germans on each Polish village. This was literally a matter of life and death for them and their families. Germans proved to treat such contingents most seriously, as they were quite capable of annihilating whole villages as a punishment for not fulfilling them. Little known in the western literature is the fact that the Germans razed from the face of Earth more than 400 Polish villages and towns. What the villagers didn't know was that hiding in Naliboki Forest the "heroes" of Tuvia Bielski supported by other Soviet partisans were also capable of such acts. The virtually exclusive preoccupation of the Jews hiding in forests was not partisan warfare, but scavenging for provisions. They dispatched an endless flow of armed groups into villages to rob the peasants of their food and meager belongings. In Soviet eyes, the main "crime" of the Naliboki villagers was that when in the spring of 1943 the commanders of the Soviet partisans stationed in Naliboki Forest tried to subordinate the village self-defence unit, the Poles refused.

The dire conditions in the camp were of no concern to Bielskis. J?zef Marchwi?ski, a Polish communist, married to a Jewish woman, for a while acted as Bielski's deputy, described the life of plenty and leisure led by Bielski's entourage and his "harem" of well dressed women, all whom the poor Jews branded as the "tsar's palace". Another communist wrote that Bielski had been eager to accept into the camp people who had had gold and other valuables, but less likely to take in the poor. In his memoir, a leading member of the Zorin?s group presented a similar picture. Once a week, they even sent food surplus to Moscow by a plane, which landed in a field inside the forest. (Wertheim, Jewish partisans in Belorussia, Zeszyty Historyczne no. 86, 1988).

The Naliboki atrocity was not an out of character event marking the Soviet-Jewish units. Similar atrocity, being also investigated by Institute of National Memory, was committed in the village of Koniuchy, county of Lida, Nowogrodek province, at the edge of Rudniki Forest, where numerous Soviet partisan groups had their bases. Members of these groups frequently carried out raids against the nearby villages and settlements including Koniuchy. In "Destruction and Resistance", Chaim Lazaar wrote: ?The Brigade Headquarters decided to raze Koniuchy to the ground to set an example to others. One evening a hundred and twenty of the best partisans from all the camps, armed with the best weapons they had, set out in the direction of the village. There were about 50 Jews among them, headed by Yaakov Prenner. At midnight they came to the vicinity of the village and assumed their proper positions. The order was not to leave anyone alive. Even livestock was to be killed and all property was to be destroyed?. Rich Cohen (The Avengers", New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 145) writes: ?The peasants ducked into houses. Partisans threw grenades onto roofs and the houses exploded into flame. Other houses were torched. Peasants ran from their front doors and raced down the streets. The partisans chased them, shooting men, women and children. .../... Caught in a cross fire, hundreds of peasants were killed?.
Bielski claimed 381 Nazi and Nazi allied fighters killed at the end of war. 128 defenseless inhabitants of Naliboki ended up being branded as Nazi allied fighters. Does Duffy elaborate on the killings in Naliboki?