Last revised august 30, 2004

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513 Marek J. Chodakiewicz’s review in Sarmatian Review, no. 2 (April) 2006: 1217–20 of Musial, Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrußland, 190, 192.

514 Testimony of Jasza Klin, November 17, 1946 (Jewish Historical Commission, Białystok), Yad Vashem Archives, file M-49E/2002, as cited in Musial, Sowjetische Partisanen 1941–1944, 392. See also Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry, 342–57.

515 Faitelson, Heroism & Bravery in Lithuania, 1941–1945, 235.

516 Testimony of Mina Volkowiski in Tec, Resilience and Courage, 310.

517 Testimony of Mina Volkowiski in ibid., 296.

518 Sorid, One More Miracle, 67–68.

519 Sorid, One More Miracle, 90.

520 Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Destruction and Resistance: The Jewish Shtetl of Slonim, 1941–44,” in Thurston and Bonwetsch, The People’s War, 43.

521 Gerlach, The Extermination of the European Jews, 364, 307.

522 Tec, Defiance, 67; Tec, In the Lion’s Den, 184.

523 Tec, Defiance, 156.

524 Fanny Sołomian-Łoc, Getto i gwiazdy (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1993), 113–14. This memoir was published in English as Woman Facing the Gallows (Amherst, Massachusetts: Wordpro, 1981). The author is also cited below as Fani Solomian Lotz.

525 Miriam Brysk, Amidst the Shadows of Trees (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Yellow Star Press, 2007), 81. The author was born Miriam Miasnik in Warsaw in 1935 to a doctor. The family fled to Soviet-occupied Lida at the start of the war. They escaped from the ghetto and joined the Soviet partisans in December 1942. Her father ran a forest hospital staffed by Jewish doctors and nurses.

526 Ibid., 88–89. Regarding anti-Semitism among Soviet partisans in Lipiczany forest, see also the testimony of Ludwik Ferstenberg, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/3982, as cited in Michał Czajka, Marta Janczewska, and Apolonia Umińska-Keff, eds., Relacje z czasów Zagłady Inwentarz: Archiwum ŻIH IN-B, zespół 301, Nr. 3001–4000 / Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Catalogue: Jewish Historical Institute Archives, Record Group 301, No. 3001–4000 (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny Instytut Naukowo-Badawczy, 2005), vol. 4, 367.

527 Lazar, Destruction and Resistance, 120–21, 122, 123–24, 143, 144, 158–59, 161, 175–76.

528 Margolis, A Partisan from Vilna, 387, 389.

529 Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto, 134–35.

530 Tec, Defiance, 207.

531 Yoran, The Defiant, 146.

532 Paper, Voices from the Forest, 180–81.

533 Podberesky, Never the Last Road, 81.

534 Among those who have levelled this charge is Mania Glezer, who escaped from the Wilno ghetto and joined a partisan unit in Rudniki forest commanded by Kovner. See her testimony in Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 97, from the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2517. Baruch Shub (Shuv) also maintains that the FPO was a closed and elitist organization that shunned non-Zionists. See the testimony of Baruch Borka Szub, Internet: .

535 Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, Part 1 (Brooklyn, New York: Neturei Karta of U.S.A., 1977), 33–34. Similar charges have also been levelled against Tuvia Bielski, who some say refused to accept a group of refugees with pregnant women, children, and old people from the Nowogródek ghetto in November 1942, and dispatched them to Lipiczany forest where most of the soon perished in a German raid. See Tec, Defiance, 89–90.

536 Testimony of Beniamin (Benjamin) Brest, dated July 8, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2531, reproduced in Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 4, 229–32, here at 231.

537 Testimony of Abram Mieszczański, dated June 10, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2536.

538 Tec, Defiance, 89–90. In some cases, Tuvia Bielski was known to have overruled the opposition of Jewish partisans who did not want to accept non-fighters with families, especially children. See Shor and Zakin, Essie, 50.

539 Brysk, Amidst the Shadows of Trees, 64.

540 Levine, Fugitives of the Forest, 116.

541 Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry, 288–91.

542 Benjamin Bender, Glimpses Through Holocaust and Liberation (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 96–97.

543 Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto, 129.

544 Piotr Głuchowski and Marcin Kowalski, “Wymazany Aron Bell,” Gazeta Wyborcza, Duży Format, June 16, 2008.

545 Nirenstein, A Tower from the Enemy, 352–54.

546 Kagan, comp., Novogrudok, 204.

547 Józef Marchwiński, W puszczy nad Niemnem: Wspomnienia z walk partyzanckich na Białorusi w latach 1942–1944, typescript, Archives of the Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny in Warsaw, sygnatura III/63/91, 153; Testimony of Elżbieta Marchwińska (Estera Świerzewska) in Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 260. See also Leon Kalewski, “Kresowe (po)rachunki.” Nasza Polska (Warsaw), March 15, 2000. For a hagiographic account of Józef Marchwiński’s activities see Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, vol. 4, Poland, Part 1, 489–90. For further confirmation of some elements of these accounts see Tec, Defiance, 93, 111, 137, 139–41, 163; Tec, “Reflections on Resistance and Gender,” in Roth and Maxwell, Remembering for the Future, vol. 1, 564; Tec, Resilience and Courage, 300, 319. Lola Hudes Bell (Bielski), who married Tuvia Bielski’s first cousin, Yehuda Bielski, recalled: “I had to endure the indignity of having to hand over my underwear—a very scare and needed article of clothing—to the Bielski leaders before they allowed me into their camp. It was a very large and well organized camp with a powerful hierarchy. … Everyone knew their place.” See Y.E. Bell, “They Went To ‘Build a Jewish Country’,” based on the memoir One Came Back, in the words of Lola Hudes Bell as told to Y.E. Bell and L.N. Bell, The Jewish Press, May 13, 2008. Lola’s husband Yehuda lamented, “They gave the women’s underwear they collected to their wives and girlfriends. This was so ugly and low.” See Leslie Bell, “The Cousins Bielski,” The Jewish Press, November 19, 2008. According to that article, before the war Tuvia Bielski was allegedly involved in Yehuda Bielski’s sister’s death—her head was bashed in with a rock, but this incident was hushed up. Bielski’s propensity for violence has been noted by his biographers. In a dispute with a Belorussian neighbour over some land while still a teenager, Bielski recalled: “When he came closer I reached for my scythe and with it hit his. He lost his balance, landing on his back. When he was on the ground, I began to hit him with my hands. Four farmhands came to look. They stood there amused, laughing at the man’s misfortune. That day I gave him such a beating that we did not see him for two weeks.” See Tec, Defiance, 8. When serving in the Polish army, Bielski “asked a cook if he could have a schmeer of chicken fat for his bread, the man responded: ‘Get out of here, you scabby Jew.’ Without a moment’s thought, Tuvia grabbed the man with his right hand and pummeled him with his left. He shoved him against a table and grabbed a large knife—which, despite his anger, he refrained from using. Instead, he picked up a chair and smashed it across the cook’s face.” See Duffy, The Bielski Brothers, 15–16.

548 Kagan, comp., Novogrudok, 209, 211.

549 Benedykt Szymański, Oddział ten nie miał dobrego konta…, typescript, Archives of the Wojskowy Instytut Wojskowy in Warsaw, sygnatura III/63/45, 59. See also Kalewski, “Kresowe (po)rachunki,” Nasza Polska (Warsaw), March 15, 2000. (Szymański was an assumed name; his actual surname was Scherman. See Lewandowska, Życie codzienne Wilna w latach II wojny światowej, 339–40.) Elżbieta Marchwińska (Estera Świerzewska), who joined the Bielski group with her Polish husband, voiced a similar opinion. See Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 260.

550 Lyn Smith, ed., Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust (London: Ebury Press/Random House, 2005), 205.

551 Roszkowski, Żydzi w walce 1939–1945, vol. 3, 261. This appears to refer to the murder of Faivl Połoniecki, which is also mentioned in Part 3 of this study.

552 The following examples refer to the Bielski group: Sutin, Jack and Rochelle, 89 (hostility toward a female newcomer), 111–12 (a 17-year-old girl persuaded her 40-year-old mother, whom she considered to be a burden, to drink poison), 116 (theft of hidden jewelry), 166 (theft of gold coins); Frances Dworecki, Autobiography (Internet: http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Lida-District/fd-toc.htm, 2002), chapter 2 (Bella Golombiewski was killed by a fellow member of the Bielski partisans who wanted her leather coat). See also Sołomian-Łoc, Getto i gwiazdy, 107 (hostility toward a female newcomer), 110–11 (theft of food and clothing among different forest groups). Fani Sołomian-Łoc (Solomian Lotz) eventually joined up with a Soviet partisan group in Polesie with a very unfavourable attitude toward Jews, whom they robbed (ibid., 103–104) and murdered (ibid., 106), and toward women, whom they called “bed fixtures” (ibid., 113–14). She was subsequently transferred to a Polish Communist unit where she worked as a nurse and was treated with respect, albeit with suspicion because she had come from a Soviet unit (ibid., 119). Another memoir, by a Jew who joined a partisan unit in Volhynia commanded by Polish Communist Józef Sobiesiak (“Maks”), who took in many Jewish fighters and extended protection to a Jewish civilian camp, also contrasts the humane treatment accorded to Jews in this Polish formation with the anti-Semitism rampant in the ranks and leadership of Soviet detachments in the area. See Joseph Pell and Fred Rosenbaum, Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California (Berkeley, California: Western Jewish History Enter of the Judah L. Magnes Museum and RDR Books, 2004), 65–107, especially 85–86, 96.

553 See, for example, Rubin, Against the Tide, 111, 128, 136, 137.

554 Rubin, Against the Tide, 114, 119, 121, 148–49, 152; Tec, Resilience and Courage, 316–17.

555 Account of David Plotnik in Boneh, History of the Jews of Pinsk, Part Two, Chapter 5.

556 Account of Fani Solomian Lotz in Tec, Resilience and Courage, 316–17.

557 “Ksiądz Roman Mosiewicz,” W Służbie Miłosierdzia (Białystok), no. 1 (January), 2008.

558 The following examples from the Wilno region are representative. In Olkieniki, where many Jews played on the local soccer team, “Relations between the Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors were generally correct. Friendly relations developed with some of the peasants in the nearby villages.” See Spector, Lost Jewish Worlds, 232. In Marcinkańce, a small town near the Lithuanian border, which was inhabited mostly by Poles and Jews, “By and large, the economic life of the Jews was prosperous. … The attitude of the Christian population towards their Jewish neighbors was friendly.” See L. Koniuchowsky, “The Liquidation of the Jews of Marcinkonis: A Collective Report,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 8 (1953): 206, 208. In Oszmiana, “Jewish farms and villages were scattered like tiny islands in the sea of the native peasants. Yet between the two communities there were good neighbourly relations, there was even friendliness towards each other.” See Moshea Becker (Ra’Anana), “Jewish Farmers in Oshmana”, in M. Gelbart, ed, Sefer Zikaron le-kehilat Oshmana (Tel Aviv: Oshmaner Organization and the Oshmaner Society in the U.S.A., 1969), 22; Internet English translation: . In Zdzięcioł, “we were living mixed with them [Christians]. And we we were always, always friendly and so did they. … In our little town, I would say [there was no anti-Semitism] because we had actions [dealings] with the Polish priest. He was very, very good to us … he never let anything to with the anti-semitism or whatever. Sure there was, you know, but basically as a whole we had none. I didn’t feel it.” See Interview with Sonia Heidocovsky Zissman, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, May 25, 1995, 2. A resident of Dołhinów stated: “We did not feel anti-Semitism on the part of the Christian population.” See the testimony of Jofe Gerszon, June 20, 1959, Yad Vashem Archives, file 03/1293. Leon Berkowicz, who hails from Baranowicze and was the son of a “successful businessman … well respected in the timber industry,” recalls: “I attended a Polish government [high] school and although social contact was almost non-existent, nobody was handicapped because of his origin or his religion. The Jewish boys excelled academically, but if they were usually first in maths and science they were nearly always last in sports. Physical education was a low priority in Jewish upbringing. Somehow, I was an exception and … the sports-master always gave me top marks. … I was very proud when the captain from the 78^th Polish infantry regiment asked me to join their soccer team and play for them in Wilno … I had two Christian friends at school … Our relationship was based on mutual respect and understanding. On a few occasions I went to their homes and they came to mine; I had the impression that the parents of both sides raised their eyebrows.” See Berk, Destined to Live, 3–4. Aharon Arlazoroff, who lived in a mixed neighbourhood of Wilno, stated that in their building Jews and non-Jews lived in relative harmony and did not recall any anti-Semitic incidents. See the testimony of Aharon Arlazoroff, Internet: