Last revised august 30, 2004

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134 This excerpt from a “top secret” memorandum from Ponomarenko to Stalin, Molotov, Beria and others, dated January 20, 1943, is found in Ivan Bilas, Represyvno-karal’na systema v Ukraini 1917–1953: Suspil’no-politychnyi ta istoryko-pravovyi analiz (Kiev: Libid–Viisko Ukrainy, 1994), vol. 2, 361. The full memorandum can be found in Bogdan Musiał, “Memorandum Pantelejmona Ponomarienki z 20 stycznia 1943 r.: ‘O zachowaniu się Polaków i niektórych naszych zadaniach,’” Pamięci Sprawiedliwość, vol. 8 (2006, no. 1): 379–85. See also Piotr Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza: Droga do władzy 1941–1944 (Warsaw: Fronda, 2003), 207–208. Concurrently, Ponomarenko issued instructions to send trained “agents” into the field to agitate among the Polish population.

135 This document is reproduced in its entirety in Gnatowski, “Dokumenty o stosunku radzieckiego kierownictwa do polskiej konspiracji niepodległościowej na północno-wschodnich Kresach Rzeczypospolitej w latach 1943–1944,” Studia Podlaskie, no. 5 (1995): 233–45 (in Russian), here at 243, and also in part (in Polish) in Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 244–45, and Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza, 208–209.

136 “Revolutionary banditry” entails a two-pronged phenomenon which historian Marek Jan Chodakiewicz identified and defined in the following terms: (1) robbing the civilian population of their food and possessions with the aim of depriving them of a normal livelihood and causing them to flee their stripped villages to join the Communist partisans in the forests; and (2) radicalizing the civilian population by provoking the Germans to employ terror toward it in retaliation for low level assaults carried out by the Communists against German personnel and interests for this very purpose. For a discussion of this topic see Chodakiewicz, Tajne oblicze GL-AL i PPR, vol. 1 (1997), 13–36; Chodakiewicz, Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, 69–88; and Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955, 111–18, 327–34. Other historians have drawn the distinction between the goals of Soviet and non-Soviet resistance movements in somewhat different terms, which are not incomapatible with the foregoing.
Consequently, some resistance movements sought to encourage the population into supporting them, rather than coerce it. This was a common characteristic among resistance movements in Western Europe, in the Czech lands and in Poland. A covert ‘secret army’ approach to resistance employed the kinds of actions that were less likely to provoke fearsome Axis retaliation. Such resistance movements favoured this approach partly because they feared that particularly ferocious retaliation from the occupiers might seriously disrupt the sabotage, intelligence-gathering and other important activities in which they were engaged. Yet it was also because they feared what such ferocity might do to the population in whose name they were ostensibly resisting. …

Soviet partisans, in particular, very often presented a considerably different picture. As the instruments of a ruthless regime, they were far from averse to brutally coercing the population into aiding them. They operated in large areas often very far from their own regions of origin, amid communities with whom they felt no particular affinity. Their callous, sometimes murderous treatment of civilians also reflected the often chronic state of discipline within their own units.

See Philip Cooke and Ben H. Shepherd, eds., European Resistance in the Second World War (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Praetorian Press/Pen & Sword, 2013), 9–10. Recent research in the Soviet archives has corroborated this stark portrayal of the Soviet partisans. In his book Stalin’s Commandos: Ukrainian Partisans on the Eastern Front (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016), Alexander Gogun presents copious evidence that the Nazi atrocities in Ukraine were often matched by partisan brutality such as the indiscriminate use of scorched-earth tactics, the destruction of their own villages, partisan-generated Nazi reprisals against civilians, and the daily incidents of robbery, drunkenness, rape and bloody internal conflicts that were reported to be widespread among the partisans. He shows that all these practices were not a product of the culture of warfare nor a spontaneous “people’s response” to the unremitting brutality of Nazi rule but a specific feature of Stalin’s total war strategy.

137 Romuald Skorowski, “Polacy, Kaszubi, Niemcy i komuniści,” Głos (Warsaw), October 22, 29 and November 5, 2005.

138 Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust, 103–104; Pełczyński et al., Armia Krajowa w dokumentach 1939–1945, vol. 3: 261–62; Chodakiewicz, Tajne oblicze GL-AL i PPR, vol. 3 (1999), 105 (Lubartów); Leszek Żebrowski, “Gwardia Ludowa,” in Encyklopedia “Białych Plam” (Radom: Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, 2002), vol. 7, 190; Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza, 206–207, 209–214, 343, 377–80; “Spod czerwonej gwiazdy: O podziemiu komunistycznym. Z Piotrem Gontarczykiem, Mariuszem Krzystofińskim i Januszem Marszalcem rozmawia Barbara Polak,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, nos. 3–4 (March–April 2006): 19–21. See also Kazimierz Krajewski and Tomasz Łabuszewski, “Zwyczajny” resort: Studia o aparacie bezpieczeństwa 1944–1956 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2005). These activities were so blatant that, during his trial in June 1954, a Communist partisan declared: “We thought about the fact that ours was an organization that was supposed to be fighting the Germans, but we were murdering Poles and Jews. But we were told that the battle with the reactionary forces [Home Army] and National Armed Forces [NSZ] was more important than the battle with the Germans—that was the surreptitious view of the [Communist] Polish Workers’ Party.” See Chodakiewicz, Tajne oblicze GL-AL i PPR, vol. 3: 56.

139 Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza, 378–83. The Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance is currently investigating this matter (Warsaw sygnatura akt S 48/01/Zn).

140 Leszek Żebrowski, “Szczerzy komuniści lubili donosić: z dziejów konspiracyjnej PPR 1942–1944,” Gazeta Polska (Warsaw), February 2, 1995; Chodakiewicz, Tajne oblicze GL-AL i PPR, vol. 2, 197 (the Soviet-Gestapo connection is documented at pp. 195–222); Leszek Żebrowski, “Działalność tzw. band pozorowanych jako metoda zwalczania podziemia niepodległościowego w latach 1944–1947,” in Roman Bäcker, et al., Skryte oblicze systemu komunistycznego: U źródeł zła… (Warsaw: Towarzystwo im. Stanisława ze Skarbimierza, and DiG, 1997), 76; Gontarczyk, Polska Partia Robotnicza, 205–6. See also Janusz Marszalec, “Pomyłka, której nie było: Sprawa rzekomego zadenuncjowania przez wywiad Armii Ludowej własnej drukarni przy ul. Grzybowskiej w Warszawie w lutym 1944 r.,” in Błażej Brzostek, Jerzy Eisler, Dariusz Jarosz, Krzysztof Kosiński, and Tadeusz Wolsza, eds., Niepiękny wiek XX (Warsawa: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk and Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2010), 181–94, and Piotr Gontarczyk, “Pomyłka, która raczej była: Jeszcze raz o wpadce komunistycznej drukarni przy ulicy Grzybowskiej,” Zeszyty Historyczne WiN-u, forthcoming.

141 Davies, Rising ’44, 318–19; Chodakiewicz, Tajne oblicze GL–Al i PPR, vol. 2, 244–51.

142 This is the assessment of Insa Eschebach, museum director at the former Ravensbrück camp for womem. German Communists were the most frequent users of the camp’s brothels, which were staffed with female prisoners lured with false promises of freedom. See Piotr Zychowicz, “Piętnaście minut w bloku 24: Domy publiczne w obozach śmierci,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), July 21, 2007.

143 Szczepan Surdy, “Prosto w oczy: Porucznik Dambek i inni,” Nasz Dziennik, March 17, 2004; Romuald Skorowski, “Polacy, Kaszubi, Niemcy i komuniści,” Głos (Warsaw), October 22, 29 and November 5, 2005. These articles are based on Agnieszka Pryczkowska and Alfons Pryczkowski’s monograph Tajna Organizacja Wojskowa “Gryf Kaszubski–Gryf Pomorski”: Geneza. Obsada personalna w kierownictwie. Prześladowania powojenne.

144 Zbigniew Błażyński, Mówi Józef Światło: Za kulisami bezpieki i partii 1940–1955, Third revised edition (London: Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1986), 138, 228; Słownik biograficzny działaczy polskiego ruchu robotniczego, Second revised and expanded edition (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1993), vol. 3 (entry for Sawicki, Jerzy).

145 Stanisław Taubenschlag (Stanley Townsend), To Be a Jew in Occupied Poland: Cracow, Auschwitz, Buchenwald (Oświęcim: Frap Books, 1998), 49–57.

146 Zygmunt Boradyn, “Antyakowskie specjalne wydziały i wywiad baranowickiego zgrupowania partyzantki sowieckiej,” in Bogusław Polak, ed., Zbrodnie NKWD na obszarze województw wschodnich Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (Koszalin: Wyższa Szkoła Inżynierska w Koszalinie, Instytut Zarządzenia i Marketingu, Katedra Nauk Humanistycznych, 1995), 268; Boradyn, “Stosunki Armii Krajowej z partyzantką sowiecką na Nowogródczyźnie,” in Boradyn, ed., Armia Krajowa na Nowogródczyźnie i Wileńszczyźnie (1941–1945), 115. See also Erdman, Droga do Ostrej Bramy, 241–42; and Prawdzic-Szlaski, Nowogródczyzna w walce 1940–1945, 193, who describes, on pp. 92–93, Polish retaliations directed at a Communist organization working closely with the Gestapo; Adam Walczak, 13. Brygada Armii Krajowej Okręgu Wileńskiego (Bydgoszcz: Towarzystwo Miłośników Wilna i Ziemi Wileńskiej, 2002), 55.

147 Gasztold, “Sowietyzacja i rusyfikacja Wileńszczyzny i Nowogródczyzny w działalności partyzantki sowieckiej w latach 1941–1944,” in Sudoł, Sowietyzacja Kresów Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej po 17 września 1939, 279.

148 Nirenstein, A Tower from the Enemy, 353. Another effusive outpouring by Bielski recorded shortly after the war went: “You are not a true Bolshevik if you think of me as a Jew. We both come from Russia. Let us work together and fight together.” See Marie Syrkin, Blessed is the Match: The Story of Jewish Resistance (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1947), 258.

149 Examples can be found in Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 98–100, 115.

150 Allen S. (Allen Small, formerly Abraham Meyer Shmulivitz) Holocaust Testimony (HVT–833), interviewed December 14, 1986 and March 1, 1987, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

151 Interview with Rubin Segal, 1996, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives. Segalowicz’s wife states that after the liberation they resided in Iwie (Iwje), where Rubin joined a special brigade that helped fight Poles who were against the Soviet regime. Interview with Chaya Segal, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives.

152 Morris Sorid, One More Miracle: The Memoirs of Morris Sorid ([United States]: Jonathan Sorid, 2007), 80.

153 Harold Zissman, The Warriors: My Life As a Jewish Soviet Partisan (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 145, 149.

154 Musial, Sowjetische Partisanen 1941–1941, 207–8; Wacław Nowicki, Żywe echa (Komorów: Antyk, 1993), 80–87; Mieczyslaw Klimowicz, The Last Day of Naliboki: The Untold Story Behind the Massacre (Baltimore: American Literary Press, 2009), 183–97.

155 Cholawsky, The Jews of Bielorussia during World War II, 108. See also ibid., 139. The Jewish fugitives from the Nowogródek ghetto headed by the Judenrat chairman Daniel Ostaszyński (Ostashynsky) did not join the Home Army, as alleged by Cholawsky, but the Bielski group. See Tec, Defiance, 177, 263. If they participated in the attack on Naliboki, it was as part of the latter group. Another survivor claims that a group of Jews left Nowogródek after the first massacre in December 1941 to join a Polish underground group, supposedly of the Home Army, in Naliboki forest but were disarmed and sent back to the ghetto. See Lubow, Escape, 29. However, there was no such Polish underground group in Naliboki forest at that time, and the Home Army did not yet field permanent partisan units. This unsubstantiated account is repeated as fact by Jewish historians such as Bauer, “Nowogródek—The Story of a Shtetl,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 35, no 2 (2007): 52–53.

156 According to Yehoshua Yofe, “Jewish Bravery,” in Eliezer Yerushalmi, ed., Navaredok Memorial Book, Internet: , 354ff.; translation of Pinkas Navaredok (Tel Aviv: Navaredker Relief Committee in the USA and Israel, 1963),
Isrolik from Iveniec [Iwieniec] was 18 years old. … his township was surrounded by forests. The village houses stood in the forests. The Germans never came there. There were no made roads in the vicinity. The peasants were friendly toward the Jews and were hostile to the Germans, who were aiming to conquer the world. In the forests there were already Russian partisans. … [Isrolik convinced about twenty young Jews to escape from the ghetto in Nowgródek to the forest where they met up with the Soviet partisans.]

They were planning, together with the Russian partisans, to attack the German police post in Naliboki. The murderers of the Jews from the townships were stationed there and the partisans were eager to revenge their deaths. The policemen were barricaded in the local church. The township was occupied by the partisans, but they could not get into the church. The partisans attacked from two sides—the Russians from one side and the Jews from the other. They were shooting at the policemen from the trenches. Suddenly the policemen stopped shooting, as if they had run out of bullets. The partisans were told to attack and get into the church. The Jewish boys were waiting for this. They aimed to capture the policemen alive, capture them and ask them why they were killing local Jews, who were in the past their neighbours and friends. Suddenly they heard the sound of approaching trucks, which were driven at great speed. The trucks arrived in Naliboki and the Germans started shooting. The bullets rained down on the partisans, who left the trenches and were about to enter the church. They did not realise that the Russian partisans escaped from the township and had left them behind. The policemen in the church suddenly started firing. And then the shooting stopped. The Germans announced through a megaphone: ‘lay down your arms and we will not kill you, we will take you back to the Novogrudok [Nowogródek] Ghetto’. The Germans were certain that the Jews would surrender. They did not believe that Ghetto Jews were able to fight. They must be frightened and would give up the fight. But the Jews had other ideas, though they saw death approaching. They escaped from the Ghetto to avoid death. To go back to the Ghetto to be killed there did not make sense. It was better to die fighting. It was better to see some Germans die. They started to shoot at the enemy. Some German trucks were destroyed. The Jews continued shooting. They were shooting, were silenced and silently they died. Their enemy was manifold [sic]. The partisans ran out of ammunition and died knowing that they did not surrender. The story of the fight had become known among the partisans: some twenty Jews have opposed hundreds of Germans and they did not surrender. They fought to the last—the fight for freedom and justice.

The Nowogródek memorial book also lists Mordechi (Meme) Cherny as having fallen at the beginning of 1942 while fighting German guards in the town of Naliboki. Ibid., 357ff.

Another source—Ben-Ir, “The First Partisan from Karelitz,” based on the Korelitz (or Korelicze) Memorial Book and reproduced in Kowalski, Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 2 (1985), 588—states:

A group of partisan Jews and non-Jews, among them David Lipshitz [from Korelicze], and his friend Moyshke Funt from Ivenitz [Iwieniec] took over the town of Nalibocki [Naliboki]. Their goal was to take over the police station. The Germans from Ivenitz were tipped off and surrounded Nalibocki. The partisans fortified themselves in the church. They fought heroically to the last bullet, and did not surrender to the Germans. David Lipshitz and Moyshke Funt fell in battle.
Entries for Dawid Lipszyc (David Lipshitz) of the Stalin battalion and Mosze Funt (Moyshke Funt) of the Chapaev batttalion are found in the website of the Partisans, Ghetto Fighters and Jewish Undergrounds in Israel, Internet: