Last revised august 30, 2004

, section 56 (Spies).

451 Kenneth Slepyan, “The Soviet Partisan Movement and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 7. See also Slepyan, Stalin’s Guerrillas, 209.

452 (Rabbi) Grainom Lazewnik, Persumei Nesei/Personal Miracles: The Guiding Hand of Providence (Brooklyn, New York: Tova Press, 1993), 42–44. A fugitive from Janów Poleski, states that in 1942 Soviet partisans in that area robbed and killed every Jews they came across, and that Jewish fugitives hid from Soviet partisans as much as from Germans. The few Jews the Soviet partisans accepted into their ranks were treated badly. See the testimony of Jankiel Reznik, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/156.

453 Yehuda Bauer, “Jewish Baranowicze in the Holocaust,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 31 (2003): 122, 128, n.87, 131 n.96. Salomon Wahrhaftig also accuses Ukrainian and Belotussian gangs of killing many Jews who escaped from the ghettos and tried to join Jewish forest groups in the vicinity of Baranowicze. See Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 293.

454 Bauer, “Nowogródek—The Story of a Shtetl,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 35, no. 2 (2007): 53–54.

455 Faye Schulman, A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1995), 104, 186.

456 “What happened in Liskowo,” in Moses Einhorn, ed., Wolkovisker Yizkor Book (New York, 1949), 295, Part I of The Volkovysk Memorial Book (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 2002).

457 Account of Fani Solomian Lotz in Boneh, History of the Jews of Pinsk, Part Two, Chapter 5.

458 Yechiel Silber, “The Partisans of Sochaczew,” in Sztejn (Shtayn, Stein) and Wejszman (Vaysman, Weissman), Pinkas Sokhatshev, 514ff. Some armed Jews captured Minin and wanted to kill him, but were persuaded to turn Minin over to the supreme command or face annihilation by the Soviet partisans. Afterwards, these Jews encountered a group of Soviet partisans bent on revenge. Minin was eventually sentenced to death by execution. Silber writes: “The partisans were weak until 1943 … Later the partisans strengthened, and began to take over small settlements. They participated in regional activities and imposed taxes. Thus did they succeed in instilling a bit of fear in the peasant population.”

459 Tec, In the Lion’s Den, 184.

460 Liza Ettinger, From the Lida Ghetto to the Bielski Partisans, typescript, December 1984, 45–46, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, D.C.

461 Testimony of Ester Marchwińska (née Swierżeńska), November 1970, Yad Vashem Archives, file 03/3567. In an earlier testimony, Elżbieta Marchwińska (née Estera Świerzewska), the wife of Józef Marchwiński (Bielski’s second in command for a time), attributes the death of Dr. Botwiński of Mir to Soviet partisans See Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 255.

462 Testimony of Estera Gorodejska, dated August 9, 1945, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/568. Gorodejska does not report any problems with Polish partisans.

463 Jacob Shepetinski, Jacob’s Ladder (London: Minerva Press, 1996), 61. As for the fate of the others, the author continues: “My mother and her three children, Uri, who was six, Yechiel, who was twelve, and Reuben, who was eighteen, together with my aunt, built a shelter in the forest and lived for a while like wolves. On the 24^th of March, 1943, there was a pursuit hunt. The Germans threw hand grenades into the shelter my mother had built, and killed my mother and her two children. How Reuben died, I do not know to this day.”

464 Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto, 128.

465 Berk, Destined to Live, 162–63, 166. After the author (Leon Berkowicz) made his way to the Soviet partisans with his Polish benefactor Pashka, the Soviets robbed Pashka of his pistol and the watch Berkowicz had given him, and placed Berkowicz under 24-hour guard until he proved himself, because he was a Jew. Even though the partisans had agreed to accept Berkowicz since thet needed a doctor, the commissar later admitted that he nearly had him shot the day he arrived at their camp. Ibid., 118, 122, 218. We learn that the commanders of this Soviet partisan unit “could not stand Jews and were furious when a strict order from Moscow ordained that anyone, without distinction as to nationality or creed, willing to fight against the Germans, must be enrolled in partisan units. Powerless to defy the order but unable to repress his true feelings, Bobkov gave the Jews he was forced to take in all the rotten jobs.” Ibid., 142. Although Berkowicz served with the Soviet partisans in the area south of Baranowicze for about a year and a half, his memoirs provide no information about attacks by the Home Army. On the other hand, fierce and bloody clashes with such small groups as Chechenians are noted. In one case, the Soviet partisans even forced a detonator into the vagina of badly beaten young girl who was taken prisoner. Ibid., 197–200.

466 Arad, The Partisan, 116.

467 Account of Miriam Swirnowski-Lieder in N. Blumenthal, ed., Sefer Mir (Jerusalem: The Encyclopaedia of the Diaspora, 1962), column 52.

468 Dov Katzovitch (Petach Tikva), “With the Partisans and in the Red Army,” in David Shtokfish, ed., Book in Memory of Dokshitz-Parafianow [Dokszyce-Parafianowo Memorial Book], (Israel: Organization of Dokshitz-Parafianow Veterans in Israel and the Diaspora, 1990), Chapter 4, Internet: .

469 Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry, 346–49.

470 Bar Oni, The Vapor, 73–79. The “Wolf Caves” were located 30–40 kilometres southwest of Słonim, in the vicinity of Rafałówka.

471 Pnina Hayat (née Potashnik), “What My Eyes Have Seen,” in E. Leoni, ed., Wolozin: The Book of the City and of the Etz Hayyim Yeshiva. Posted on the internet at: www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/volozhin/volozhin.html; translation of Wolozyn: Sefer shel ha-ir ve-shel yeshivat “Ets Hayim” (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Wolozin in Israel and the USA, 1970), 550ff.

472 Jack Sutin and Rochelle Sutin, Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 1995), 76, 79–80, 82–83, 88, 117.

473 Alice Singer-Genis with Emunah Herzog, I Won’t Die Hungry: A Holocaust Survivor’s Memoir (Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2011), 37–38. When the Jews reached the forest and found Jews hiding there in bunkers, most of the bunkers refused to accept the new arrivals. They survived by begging for food from villagers. Ibid., 39–40.

474 Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl, 142.

475 Dean, Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. 2, Part A, 937.

476 Testimony of Cila Kapelowicz, wjo ended up in the Bielski group. See Tec, Defiance, 229.

477 Wertheim, “Żydowska partyzantka na Białorusi,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 86 (1988): 136.

478 Account of Yaakov Mazovetsky in L. Losh, ed., Sefer zikaron le-kehilot Shtutshin Vasilishki Ostrina Novi Dvor Rozhanka (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Szczuczyn, Wasiliszki, Ostryna, Nowy-Dwor, Rozanka, 1966), 92.

479 David Meltser, “Belorussia,” in Laqueur, The Holocaust Encyclopedia, 64–65.

480 Kahn, No Time To Mourn, 88–89.

481 Yoran, The Defiant, 172. For additional references to anti-Semitism in the Soviet partisan movement see pp. 146, 175, 208–209.

482 Testimony of Chaya Porus Palevsky in Yitzchak Mais, ed., Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust (New York: Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2007), 123.

483 Berestitzki, Run For Your Life, My Child!, 96–97, 99. The following Jewish partisans were executed by the Soviets: Avraham Robintzik and his brothers, Hershel Hoynovsky, Yerachmiel Rabinowitz, Berel Segal and his brother Lulik, Yosef Untershul, Meychik from Białystok, Yaakov Lerner, and Boris Feldsher.

484 Shmuel Spector, “Jewish Resistance in Small Towns of Eastern Poland,” in Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky, eds., Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939–46 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1991), 143. Hundreds of Jews were also killed by Soviet partisans in Volhynia. According to one Jewish testimomy, 60 Jews were disarmed and killed in Kamień Koszyrski. See the testimony of Samuel Reznik in Roskowski, .Zydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 230.

485 Smilovitskii, Katastrofa evreev v Belorussii 1941–1944 gg., 149–59.

486 Leonid Smilovitsky, “Minsk Ghetto: An Issue of Jewish Resistance,” Shvut (Studies in Russian and East European Jewish History and Culture, Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), no. 1–2 (17–18), 1995: 161–82; an English translation was published in Belarus SIG Online Newsletter, no. 8 (August 1, 2001), posted online at: