Last revised august 30, 2004

, chapter 6. Translated from the Hebrew, Ha-Milhamah ʻal ha-hayim: Zikhronot mi-shoʾah umi-tekumah (Tel Aviv: n.p., 2005). The author states that he was in Kaunas in May 1940, when the Soviets occupied Lithuania (acutaully it was in June), where he “witnessed the welcoming of the Red Army. Kovna Jews joyfully welcomed the Red Army with flower bouquets.” Ibid.

94 Teresa Prekerowa, “The Jewish Underground and the Polish Underground,” Polin, vol. 9 (1996): 154–57. There were strong pro-Soviet sentiments among certain Zionist factions and Leftist Zionists saw their future linked with the Communists, whom most Poles considered to be an enemy on par with the Nazis. The Hashomer Hatza’ir faction regarded the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, which partitioned Poland between those two invaders, to be a “wise and justified move.” This pro-Soviet stance clearly undermined the territorial integrity and independence of the Polish state. See also Teresa Prekerowa, “Prasa getta warszawskiego jako źródło do badań stosunków polsko-żydowskich,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 3 (2009): 347–55.

95 Teresa Prekerowa, “The Jewish Underground and the Polish Underground,” Polin, vol. 9 (1996): 154–57.

96 One of the members of the Wilno-based “Baza” unit was Eliasz Baran (nom de guerre “Edyp”), who fought under the command of Bronisław Krzyżanowski and perished during a mission in 1943. See the account of Bronisław Krzyżanowski in Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 228–32; Krzyżanowski, Wileński matecznik 1939–1944, 137–53; Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński Związku Walki Zbrojnej Armii Krajowej w latach 1939–1945, 109. Bronisław Krzyżanowski sheltered the family of Eliasz Baran, as well as other Jews, and was recognized as a “Righteous Gentile.” See Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, vol. 4: Poland, Part 1, 411–12. A number of Jews served in the medical corps of the Home Army, such as Professor Michał Reicher of the University of Wilno and Dr. Aleksander Lewin (later Lewiński, nom de guerre “Wrzos”). See Aleksander Dawidowicz, “Shoah Żydów wileńskich,” in Elżbieta Feliksiak, et al., eds., Wilno–Wileńszczyzna jako krajobraz i środowisko wielu kultur: Materiały I Międzynarodowej Konferencji, Białystok 21–24 IX 1989 (Białystok: Towarzystwo Literackie im. Adama Mickiewicza, Oddział Białostocki, 1992), vol. 1, 269; Wiktor Noskowski, “Czy Yaffa Eliach przeprosi Polaków?” Myśl Polska (Warsaw), July 20–27, 1997. Jan Neugebauer (“Zielonka”), a Wilno journalist, served under Antoni Burzyński (“Kmicic”). He was one of the partisans disarmed by the Soviets in August 1943 and later executed. See Jarosław Wołkonowski, Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w Wilnie i na Wileńszczyźnie 1919–1939 (Białystok: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2004), 331, n.51; Zbigniew S. Siemaszko, “Komentarze,” Zeszyty Historyczne (Paris), no. 86 (1988): 164. Additional examples of Jews who fought in the Home Army in the Wilno area can be found in Dov Levin, Fighting Back: Lithuanian Jewry’s Armed Resistance to the Nazis, 1941–1945 (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 106; Wiktor Noskowski, “Czy Yaffa Eliach przeprosi Polaków?” Myśl Polska (Warsaw), July 20–27, 1997; Tadeusz Gasztold, Nad Niemnem i Oszmianką: Z dziejów Armii Krajowej na Wileńszczyźnie i Nowogródczyźnie (Koszalin: Głos Pomorza, 1991), 16; Halperin, Ludzie są wszędzie, 157. Another example is that of Dora Perewoski (Parovsky), who joined the Polish partisans, helping out with different jobs, after her husband Shmuel was brutally murdered by Communist partisans. See . Nechama Tec cites the case of Leon Berk (Berkowicz), a doctor from Baranowicze, as someone who “was refused entry into a Polish detachment.” See Tec, “Reflections on Resistance and Gender,” in Remembering for the Future, 569, n.59. However, that example is somewhat dubious. Berk’s memoir merely states that a Belorussian peasant who made inquiries on his behalf with some unidentified Polish “partisans,” at a time when there were still few regular Polish partisans in the forests, reported back that he would not be accepted, and would allegedly be finished off. See Berk, Destined to Live, 97. Gaining entry into partisan units was usually through trusted contacts and not casual inquiries.

97 Dr. Maks Hirsch, as well as his wife and three children, Dr. Jakub Belkin (who was killed by the Germans during Operation Hermann), and his wife Rachela (Helena) Grossbach were welcomed into Miłaszewski’s detachment after the Home Army facilitated their escape from Iwieniec in June 1943. Dr. Antoni Banis (“Kleszczyk”), who was in hiding in Raków, joined the expanded Stołpce battalion later on. See Józef Jan Kuźmiński, Z Iwieńca i Stołpców do Białegostoku (Białystok: n.p., 1993); Pilch, Partyzanci trzech puszcz, 289; Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej, 536. Hirsch later joined the Bielski family camp where he served as its chief physician. After the war the Soviet authorities accused him of poisoning two Soviet pilots while working at the hospital in Iwieniec. Hirsch claimed that he was forced to do so but was nonetheless found guilty and sentenced to twelve years in a Siberian prison. After that Dr. Hirsch lived in Novosibirsk. See Tec, Defiance, 358.

98 Siemaszko, “Komentarze,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 86 (1988): 164; Pilch, Partyzanci trzech puszcz, 289.

99 Wertheim, “Żydowska partyzantka na Białorusi,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 86 (1988): 139. Anatol Wertheim, who hailed from Warsaw and joined up with two other Jews in Naliboki forest, describes a meeting with Lieutenant Miłaszewski at the Polish Legion’s base in Derewno (Derewna). They were received warmly and hospitably by everyone at the base, fed, and accommodated overnight, before leaving with a pass guaranteeing them safe passage. It was during this encounter that Miłaszewski informed Wertheim that he was quite willing to accept into his ranks Wertheim and other patriotically-mined Jews from central and western Poland, but not local Jews, whom they did not trust because of their support for the Soviets. Since some members of Wertheim’s forest group were local Jews, Wertheim did not accept Miłaszewski’s offer.

100 Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 59. As Yitzhak Arad points out, the same practice was followed by Soviet partisans. In Rudniki forest, the “Yechiel’s Struggle Group” from the Wilno ghetto wanted to join Captain “Alko’s” Soviet partisan group, but the latter refused to accept them on the grounds that he was unable to accept unarmed men and women who lacked military experience and training. He was willing to enlist 20 armed men and suggested that the others establish a separate family camp. See Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 455. The Shchors detachment operatimg near Słonim refused to accept unarmed Jews. See Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 233. The same situation prevailed in other parts of occupied Poland. See, for example, Christopher R. Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (New York and London: Norton, 2010), 252–53, on the fate of Jewish escapees from a labour camp in Starachowice, northeast of Kielce. A Jewish partisan group near Zdzięcioł, known as the “Zheteler detachment,” also required those who wanted to join to first obtain a weapon. See Dean, Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol, 2, Part B, 1308. Moshe Lichtenberg, who oversaw a partisan group near Włodawa, required that recruits be in good physical condition and bring their own firearms. See Marek Bem, Sobibór: Niemiecki ośrodek zagłady 1942–1943 (Włodawa-Sobibór: Muzeum Pojezierza Łęczyńsko-Włodawskiego and Muzeum Byłego Hitlerowskiego Obozu Zagłady w Sobiborze, 2011), 318.

101 This issue is discussed in Chodakiewicz, Tajne oblicze GL-AL i PPR, vol. 2, 36–37; Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Narodowe Siły Zbrojne: “Ząb” przeciw dwu wrogom, Second revised and expanded edition (Warsaw: Fronda, 1999), 319–20 n.204.

102 Yitzhak Arad describes the situation thus: “Difficult food problems arose with the swelling of the ranks, necessitating the assignment of large forces to ‘economic operations,’ in the course of which casualties were sustained. … When partisan activity mounted, several villages organized self-defence groups, which were armed by the Germans. The Jewish partisans in Rudniki often encountered resistance from the farmers during their ‘economic’ raids.” See Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 457. Lieutenant Adolf Pilch (“Góra”) provides the following description of the activities of the Soviet (and Jewish) partisans in Naliboki forest:
As a rule the Soviet Partisans were well supplied. The large numbers of troops were kept in the region mainly for political reasons. Their tasks were as follows: first, political infiltration of towns and villages and the finding and liquidation of “enemies of the people”; second, the stripping of this “bourgeois country” of everything not possessed by Soviet citizens, and third and last, actions against the enemy.

The operations covered by the first two points were carried out very efficiently. … The country was stripped of everything …

But as to the third point of their programme, the Soviet Partisans showed a zeal of greatly diminished intensity. Their operations against the Germans did not go beyond trifles like tearing up the rails, a matter requiring no more than two hours to put right.
See Poland, Home Army, The Unseen and Silent, 151–52.

103 Account of Y.G. in Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution, 209–10.

104 Account of Aida Brydbord (Chaja Czerczewska), as cited in “Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters,” Internet: