Defiance: The Bielski Partisans

Additional Defiance: The Bielski Partisans Information

Describing the entire partisan movement in the region, Tec shows that while most forest fighters in Belorussia were rifle-carrying young men, the members of this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather, always on the lookout for German patrols--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Driven by courage born out of despair, they dug wells, set up workshops to repair guns, made clothes, and resoled shoes, supplied services to other guerilla units, and even established a makeshift hospital and school in the forest. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski, and his journey from his life as the son of the only Jewish peasant family in an isolated rural village to his emergence as a leader possessing the charisma and courage to command under all but impossible circumstances.

Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis against their former Jewish neighbors. Refusing to turn away the weak or the old for the sake of the survival of the larger group, Bielski would warn new arrivals to the forest, "Life is difficult, we are in danger all the time, but if we perish, if we die, we die like human beings."

A scholar, a writer, and herself a Holocaust survivor, author Nechama Techas devoted the last two decades to studying the fate of European Jewry, recording rare but vital examples of human compassion, resistance, altruism and heroism in the face of overwhelming horror and despair. Drawing on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself two weeks before his death in 1987--she reconstructs here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight.

What Customers Say About Defiance: The Bielski Partisans:

What they went through was just inspiring. Fantastic book & a wonderful movie so incredibly moving.

If I was to be critical of the narrative it is very much a hero worship of Tuvia Bielski. At the end you are left wondering whether his lack of success in later life was as a result of being ostracized due to his behavior in the forests or just through plain bad luck.In conclusion an interesting historical read. If you are primarily looking for an easy and a hard to put down read then this is not the book for you. Clearly an impressive man but his very frequent infidelities seemed to somehow be justified by the author and also his killing of rebellious otriad members and the brutal and cold blooded murder of the tanner at the end of the book are by in large glossed over. I'd like now to read an account from the Russian Otriad's who were camped out in the same forests to really understand how the Bielski Partisans were viewed by their neighbours.Russ Sheehan However the detail provided for those who are curious or are a emotionally involved in this remarkable story is very impressive indeed. The writing is more an account by the author in dispersed with first person commentary.

My wife's maiden name is Stankiewicz, so we were especially interested in reading this book. The Bielski brothers were from the small village of Stankiewicz in Belo-Russia. If you're into Holocaust history, this book is for you. Written by a person who spent years interviewing survivors of the Holocaust. The author goes into much greater detail than the filmmakers had time to do.

A little dry and difficult to read, as it could have been presented in an easier to read, less research paper/Documentary format. Defiance by Nechama Tec is a well researched, well documented look at the hitory of the Jewish people living in Western Belarus during the events leading up to and during World War II. but over all a necessary read for anyone who wants to understand the plight of the Jewish people during World War II. And the author is sometimes a bit ethnocentric in the way she presents things. Painting a vivid picture of the chaos of war, the fight for survival and the plight of a people who were nearly wiped out by the germans during their occupation of Poland through the return of the russian army at the end of the war. A Compelling look at those who refused to set quietly await death.

I applaud her for believing in this project and for the filmmakers for bringing this lost story to the screen. It's been forty years since I read 'Treblinka' by Jean-Francois Steiner ( a flawed book, I've now come to understand, since that author took liberties with history). I've longed to read a true, verifiable history of Jewish partisans in Poland from a legitimate scholar, and it seems that Nechama Tec has provided a trustworthy account in this book.