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In summer 1944, only days after Russian soldiers marched through what is now Belarus spreading the news that Hitler's army had been defeated in the Soviet Union, gentiles gathered outside their homes to stare in disbelief. There, emerging from the dense forest, was a kilometer-long procession of 1,200 Jews marching toward the ruins of their homes and families. " `How did you survive?' " the villagers asked. " `Are you ghosts?' "
Amazingly enough, they weren't. Though many had previously been locked in ghettos, hidden in basements or herded in trains en route to gas chambers, these Jews were very much alive. And it was all thanks to three brothers: Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski.
Their story is told in the new book "The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews, and Built a Village in the Forest," by Peter Duffy.
As far as the Nazis and their supporters were concerned, the Bielski brothers--three dark, charismatic and volatile Jews--had always been trouble: They walked on sidewalks when Jews were shunted to streets; they picked fights, posed as Nazis or Russian fighters, sneaked into ghettos to rescue Jews; they charmed women and killed Nazi supporters.
At the dawn of World War II, when Nazi soldiers launched a manhunt for Zus and Asael, their father, David, gave his sons a simple message:
"Stay in the woods. This war won't last forever."
They obeyed, retreating into the forests surrounding their family farm in Stankevich. The Nazis began torturing their family, demanding to know where the brothers were hidden, but they refused to talk. Nazi soldiers executed several of the Bielskis' siblings, a wife and child, and their parents, who had survived anti-Semitic czarist rule in Russia by bribing soldiers because they didn't believe in fleeing or fighting. The brothers, eventually joined by Tuvia, stayed deep in the woods, and what began as an act of personal survival quickly became a mission to save Jews and find revenge.
They started delivering messages to friends and family in hiding or in ghettos: Save yourselves, the brothers said, join us in the forest. And they did. The Bielski clan quickly grew from a dozen to more than 100, and they built what would eventually become a village. It started with underground wooden bunkers with dirt floors and rows of straw bunks, and as the clan grew to include doctors, lawyers and carpenters, they built a makeshift hospital, a shoe shop, theater, barbershop, bakery and more. They organized an army that guarded the village and rode through the forest pillaging enemy homes for food, livestock and weapons, and inflicting as much other damage as possible.
But much to the chagrin of Tuvia's two younger brothers, their group consisted largely of people they called "malbushim," a Hebrew word meaning clothes, because, as Duffy says, "they were as useless to survival of the base as a pair of pants." The malbushim were the young, the old, the sick and vulnerable, and Tuvia refused to turn any away. His mantra: " `I would rather save one old Jewish woman . . . than kill ten German soldiers.' "
Throughout the war, the brothers sashayed around their villages and forests in knee-high boots and long leather jackets, guns perpetually lodged in their pants, cursing and drinking moonshine-like booze to numb their nerves. Tuvia was the group's leader. He spoke many languages smoothly and had an inborn talent for getting what he wanted; he even convinced the Red Army and Russian partisans that his group was fighting for communist Russia, which allowed them access to weapons and protection from partisan fighters whom they eventually joined in battle against the Nazis.
Tuvia was the negotiator, fighting only when necessary. But he could fight. He killed childhood friends who turned on Jews as adults, and had a former neighbor beheaded with an ax. He forced a Nazi informer and his family to lie on the floor to be "strafed with bullets" as they pleaded for life, then torched their home, leaving a sign in its ruins threatening the same fate for anyone who aided Germans. " `No living soul was left,' " he later said, " `not even a cat or a dog.' " And he was the peaceful brother.
Word of the "forest Jews" spread quickly: Jews in ghettos whispered the Bielski name and told stories many believed to be fairy tales, stories of a secret village in the forest where Jews lived free and fought back. As groups escaped the Nazis through holes in ghetto fences and tunnels dug from barracks, the Bielskis' following grew to more than 1,200. But word didn't just spread among Jews: Local Nazis placed large bounties on the brothers' heads and infiltrated the forests to destroy them. At various times, the clan had to abandon everything it couldn't carry and trudge deeper into forests and swamps in a long, starving convoy.
"The Bielski Brothers" is a haunting book. Along with the brothers' story, Duffy traces the torture and extermination of Jews--a familiar tale that never loses its power--with vivid detail. A child standing in line for execution beside his family mouths the words, " `Father, they are killing us,' " moments before he's killed; another father kisses his daughter on the forehead before his death. As the book progresses, readers experience one slaughter after another--first 2,000 Jews, then 4,000, then 8,000, then 300,000, then more, and more, until an estimated 6 million are dead.
Duffy never judges whether the Nazis and their supporters deserved the brutality they experienced at the hands of the Bielski clan, which is a good thing. Readers can decide for themselves. No doubt, it's shocking the first few times the brothers beat, behead and shoot at point-blank range. But as the slaughter of Jews continues, many readers will find themselves cheering each Bielski victory--while at the same time feeling unsettled by the brothers' uncontrolled anger and violent tendencies. The Bielskis devoted themselves to saving Jewish life, yet they quickly killed anyone who threatened their power--including Jews within their ranks. There's nothing easy to reconcile about that.
And therein lies one of the most powerful elements of "The Bielski Brothers": It makes you squirm. It's full of deeply human contradictions that put you in the awkward position of trying to understand how a man could be driven to behead his neighbor with an ax.
By the final stage of World War II, the Bielski brothers had saved as many Jews as Oskar Schindler and inflicted more enemy casualties than the famous Warsaw ghetto uprising. Toward the end of the war, they worked for a short time for the Russian government, then Asael was drafted into the Red Army--where he died in a conflict with the Germans--and Tuvia and Zus packed up their families and made their way to Israel. They fought in the war for independence in 1948, lived in Israel until the mid-1950s, then headed for Brooklyn. Once in the U.S. they drove delivery trucks and pumped gas, and they died anonymously, their story all but vanishing into obscurity. Fortunately, Duffy's book (and the deal he reportedly has made with Miramax for a film version) promises to rectify that by telling their story to the general public.
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Duffy, a freelance writer who lives in Brooklyn, stumbled on the Bielskis' story when he noticed a reference to "Forest Jews" while doing "a random online search," and he followed it out of curiosity.
The precision of Duffy's reporting shows through vivid details that bring his characters and their experiences to life--everything from the bacon the young Bielski brothers kept stashed in their barn because it wasn't kosher to their lives in the woods, where frigid air froze hot soup in their bowls and they had to kill typhus-ridden lice by burning them from their flesh. The result is a book with the grip of good fiction and the punch of hard truth.
