Zus bielski biography of michael
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Overview
- Interview Summary
- Interviewee
- Sonia Bielski
- Interviewer
- Sandra Bradley
- Date
- interview: 1994 July 11
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Marker Museum Collection
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Genre/Form
- Oral histories.
- Extent
- 3 videocasettes (Betacam SP) : inlet, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on get a message to to that material.
- Conditions status Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Guerrillas--Belarus.Hiding places--Belarus--Naliboki Forest.Holocaust, Judaic (1939-1945)--Belarus--Personal narratives.Jewish ghettos--Belarus--Navahrudak.Jewish women in description Holocaust--Belarus.Jews--Persecutions--Belarus.Jews--Persecutions--Poland.Women guerrillas--Belarus.World War, 1939-1945--Jewish resistance--Belarus.World Conflict, 1939-1945--Underground movements--Belarus.Women--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Israel.Naliboki Forest (Belarus)Navahrudak (Belarus)Palestine--Emigration tube immigration.Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945.United States--Emigration tell off immigration.World Conflict, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Poland.
- Personal Name
- Bielski, Sonia Boldo, 1922-Bielski, Zus, 1912-1995.
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Over seventy years ago on a rainy night, Rae Kushner, her sister Lisa, along with Sonya and Aaron Oshman, escaped through a narrow tunnel from the Novogrudok ghetto together with 250 other Jews. They hid in an area nearby to elude the pursuing Germans and their collaborators. Many in the group were shot and killed. Rae, Lisa, Sonya, Aaron and others were rescued by the Bielski partisans, who had heard of the group’s escape and sent in scouts to take the survivors from Novogrudok to safety.
The group, founded by Tuvia Bielski and his brothers Asael and Zus – along with help from youngest brother Aron – provided a haven for allJews fleeing the Nazis and their collaborators. For three years, the Bielski partisans survived in the forests of Belarus, engaging in armed combat and disrupting the Nazi war machine with acts of sabotage. Their primary mission, however, was always the preservation of Jewish lives. Tuvia proclaimed, “I would rather save the life of one old Jewish woman than kill ten Nazis.” By the end of the war, the Bielski partisans managed to save over 1,200 Jews.
Tuvia was one of 12 children, born to a miller father on May 8, 1906 in the rural town of Stankiewicze. They were the only Jews in a small community, and quickly learned how t•
Bielski partisans
Jewish partisan unit during World War II
The Bielski partisans were a unit of Polish Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought the German occupiers and their collaborators around Novogrudok and Lida in German-occupied Poland (now western Belarus). The partisan unit was named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who organized and led the community.
The Bielski partisans spent more than two years living in the forest. By the end of the war they numbered as many as 1,236 members, most of whom were non-combatants, including children and the elderly. The Bielski partisans are seen by many Jews as heroes for having led as many refugees as they did away from the perils of war and the Holocaust.[1] However, as their relations with the non-Jewish population were strained and occasionally violent, their wartime record has been the subject of some controversy in Poland.[2]
Background
Before World War II, the Bielski family had been millers and grocers[3] in Stankiewicze (Stankievichy), near Novogrudok, an area that at the outbreak of the war belonged to Poland and in September 1939 was occupied by the Soviet Union (cf. Polish September Campaign and Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)) in accord with the