Last revised august 30, 2004

, section 18 (Organizing the Underground 2).

350 Leon Kahn provides the following description of the Lenin Komsomol: “It wasn’t long before they established a reputation as thieves, drunks, and rapists in the farm country surrounding the forest. They were a thoroughly reprehensible group … They were led by a Russian Jew from Gorki whose name was Elia Grace. A soldier in the Russian army, he had been stationed in the Nacha [Nacza] forest when the Russians retreated. The men from Siberia, untrained but toughened by hardship, gathered about him. Grace named the group the Leninski Komsomol and taught them the skills of war.” Ibid., 88. The Davydov otriad also gained a reputation for drunkenness, excessive even by prevailing Soviet partisan standards, which was mentioned in a Soviet report from January 1944. See Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 87. According to Jewish sources, Davydov was himself Jewish and his company included Jews. See Kahn, No Time to Mourn, 127; L. Koniuchowsky, “The Liquidation of the Jews of Marcinkonis: A Collective Report,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Studies 8 (1953): 221–22.

351 Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej, 205.

352 Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 120–21, 133. The incident in question was part of a series of attacks and counterattacks in this area which are chronicled in Zygmunt Boradyn’s “Kalendarium walk i potyczek oddziałów partyzanckich AK z partyzantką sowiecką w okresie okupacji niemieckiej,” in Boradyn, ed., Armia Krajowa na Nowogródczyźnie i Wileńszczyźnie (1941–1945), 146; Boradyn, Niemen–reka niezgody, 249–50.

353 Kahn, No Time To Mourn, 158.

354 WETA documentary There Once Was a Town, 2000.

355 Abraham Zeleznikow, “Danke and Imke Lubotzki,” in Kowalski, Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 2 (1985), 416; Testimony of Abram Mieszczański, dated June 10, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2536; Testimony of Mania Glezer, dated June 19, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2517.

356 Aviel, A Village Named Dowgalishok, 126–286.

357 Ibid., 135.

358 Ibid., 148.

359 Ibid., 133.

360 Ibid., 156.

361 Ibid., 166.

362 Ibid., 163–65.

363 Ibid., 189.

364 Ibid., 197.

365 Ibid., 205.

366 Ibid., 202.

367 Ibid., 208.

368 Ibid., 233. The information Yaffa Eliach provides about the “Todras” partisan group, led by Elke Ariowitch from Raduń, is also interesting. Based in the Nacza forest, to the south of Ejszyszki, that group took in many Jewish escapees who had survived in the forest thanks to the assistance of many Polish farmers they knew in the vicinity. Ibid., 631, 636. Jewish women were especially vulnerable to being raped by Soviet partisans in the area. On the other hand, the farmers in nearby villages were “generally speaking … hospitable” to the Jewish group, while others, whose food was “confiscated by force,” were hostile. Executions of “hostile” farmers were not unheard of. See Eliach, There Once Was a World, 637. Ariowitch eventually fell afoul of a Soviet partisan group, the Lenin Komsomol Brigade. Lieutenant Anton Stankevich, the newly arrived leader of the brigade, succeeded in recruiting able-bodied Jewish men and some young women from the “Todras” group, including Leon Kahn (Leibke Kaganowicz). (According to Eliach, “Jews were eager to join … [as] it was an opportunity to fight the Germans and the AK, and to settle scores with local collaborators.” Ibid., 642.) Ariowitch reportedly had many enemies in the Lenin Komsomol Brigade, including “several hard-core Jewish Communist partisans who disapproved of Todras’s devoting so much energy to the welfare of his followers.” Ibid., 637. During Stankevich’s absence, Todras was arrested and found guilty by a military court of taking food by force from some nearby villages. He was demoted, removed from his camp, and his people were disarmed. A few days later Ariowitch was tortured and then executed by the Communist partisans. Ibid., 638. The Jewish partisans in Stankevich’s group continued to be “terrorized … sometimes with the help of the Jewish Communists.” They also executed Yitzhak Botwinik, a Jewish partisan caught sleeping while on guard duty, and raped and murdered Jewish women. Ibid., 645.

369 Aviel, A Village Named Dowgalishok, 205.

370 Ibid., 202.

371 Ibid., 213, 249. See also Eliach, There Once Was a World, 636, 638, who states that two of the partisans who murdered Ariovitz (Ariowitch) were Jews, thus undermining the charge that this was purely an anti-Semitic act. The first commander of the Lenin Komsomol Brigade, Anton Stankevich, was known for his friendly attitude toward Jews. Although a Pole by origin, he was not from the local population, but from the Minsk area of Soviet Belorussia. See Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 73.

372 Aviel, A Village Named Dowgalishok, 270–72.

373 Ibid., 243.

374 Ibid., 210–12.

375 Eliach, There Once Was a World, 638–39; Spector, Lost Jewish Worlds, 179.

376 Aviel, A Village Named Dowgalishok, 263–67. Abraham Asner gives a somewhat different and rather muddled account of the execution of an unnamed Pole who joined the Soviet partisans but was suspected of having contacts with the Home Army. See the testimony of Abraham Asner, October 10, 1982, Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, University of Michigan at Dearborn, Internet: