Revised january 30, 2009 a tangled web

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306 Soome Jewish sources concede that Soviet partisan combat activities and heroism (and by necessary extension, those of Jews) have been greatly exaggerated. See Tec, Defiance, 83, 225; Nechama Tec, “Jewish Resistance in Belorussian Forests: Fighting and the Rescue of Jews by Jews,” in Ruby Rohrlich, ed., Resisting the Holocaust (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998), 79. The casualty toll for an assault on the Lida-Baranowicze railroad on January 5, 1944, which allegedly took the lives of two Germans and injured 13, was later inflated by Russian partisans to 21 Germans killed, and by Zus Bielski to 50 Germans killed. The commanders of both the Russian and Jewish detachments that participated in the sabotage were presented with awards by the commander of the Kirov Brigade. See Duffy, The Bielski Brothers, 230. Without checking German records, however, we cannot be sure exactly how many casualties there were as a result of that operation. Generally, there is a lack of confirmation in the meticulous field reports prepared by the Germans, as well as in other sources, of many of the accomplishments claimed by Soviet partisans, for example, those of the Markov Brigade. See Jarosław Wołkonowski, “Zdrada nad Naroczą,” Karta (Warsaw), no. 13 (1995): 138. One Jewish partisan noted: “Toward the end of the war, when we were leaving the partisans, the Russians were distributing titles, medals, and orders, even the highest kind of distinctions. Some of those could be bought with vodka. Also, whoever had good connections could count on receiving a medal.” See Tec, In the Lion’s Den, 202. Documents in the Belorussian archives in Minsk disclose that Jewish partisans were known to have paid their Soviet colleagues large quantities of gold jewelry (wedding bands, earrings, and crosses stolen from civilians) to “appropriate” Soviet military operations. When Soviet partisans in the field turned to headquarters for permission to do so, they were advised to up the ante.

Belorussian historian Aliaksei Litvin, a researcher at the Institute of the History of the (Communist) Party in Minsk, exposed some of the highly inflated claims about the Soviet partisan movement made by Ponomarenko and others, which are characteristic of Soviet historiography, and challenged the long-held claim of near universal support for the Communist underground among the Belorussian population. He also lent credence to the contention of Polish historians that the Soviet side was never interested in reaching a compromise with the Poles. See Aliaksei Litvin, Akupatsyia Belarusi (1941–1944): Pytanni supratsivu i kalabaratsyi (Minsk: Belaruski knihazbor, 2000). A case in point are the reports regarding the May 1943 massacre in Naliboki, referred to earlier, which turned that blood bath of civilians into a military action that yielded large quantities of weapons. See Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 89. Some examples of “embellished” accounts from other parts of Poland, such as the Brańsk area, can be found in Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 234; and Zbigniew Romaniuk, “Brańsk and Its Environs in the Years 1939–1953: Reminiscences of Events,” in The Story of Two Shtetls, Part One, 85.

307 Sokolov, Okkupatsiia, 104.

308 Musial, ed., Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrußland, 22, 107–108, and Marek J. Chodakiewicz’s review in Sarmatian Review, no. 2 (April) 2006: 1217–20. See also Bogdan Musial’s forthcoming book Sowjetische Partisanen 1941–1941: Mythos und Wirklichkeit (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009). The Soviet historiogtraphy on the occupation in Ukraine is similarly marred and reported German losses are often grossly inflated. See Aleksander Gogun, “Stalinowska wojna partyzancka na Ukrainie 1941–1944,” Part Two, Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość, vol. 11 (2007, no. 2): 129, 133.

309 Musial, ed., Sowjetische Partisanen in Weißrußland, 106.

310 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Third edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), vol. 2, 545

311 Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej, 43–45; Wardzyńska, “Radziecki ruch partyzancki i jego zwalczanie w Generalnym Komisariacie Białorusi,” Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość: Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu–Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, no. 39 (1996): 46–50. On the activities of the German police in Belorussia see Wolfgang Curilla, Die Deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland, 1941–1944 (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2006).

312 Bryna Bar Oni, The Vapor (Chicago: Visual Impact, 1976), 73. According to another source this raid resulted in the family camp dwindling from 360 to 150 people. Many villages were also laid waste and houses were burned down along with their inhabitants. Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry, 342–45.

313 Bar Oni, The Vapor, 85, 90; Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry, 353–54.

314 Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry, 356.

315 Yechiel Granatstein, The War of a Jewish Partisan: A Youth Imperiled By His Russian Comrades and Nazi Conquerors (Brooklyn, New York: Mesorah Publications, 1986), 171.

316 Hans-Heinrich Nolte, “Destruction and Resistance: The Jewish Shtetl of Slonim, 1941–44,” in Robert W. Thurston and Bernd Bonwetsch, eds., The People’s War: Responses to World War II in the Soviet Union (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 45.

317 Account of Meyshe Kaganovitsh in M. [Moshe] Kaganovich, ed., In Memory of the Jewish Community of Ivye, Internet: www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ivye/; translation of Sefer zikaron le-kehilat Ivye (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Residents of Ivie in Israel and United Ivier Relief in America, 1968).

318 Account of Shimon Zimmerman in Meyerowitz, ed., The Scroll of Kurzeniac.

319 Account of Yitzhak Zimerman in Meyerowitz, ed., The Scroll of Kurzeniac.

320 Yoran, The Defiant, 122, 124, 125.

321 Zissman, The Warriors, 123–24.

322 Account of Hertsl Traetsky in Vladimir Levin and David Meltser, Chernaia kniga z krasnymi stranitsami: Tragediia i geroizm evreev Belorussii (Baltimore: Vestnik Information Agency, 1996), 306.

323 Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto, 124.

324 Aviel, A Village Named Dowgalishok, 220–30; testimony of Lejb Rajzer, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/555/2.

325 Spector, Lost Jewish Worlds, 179.

326 Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 452–53.

327 Levin, Fighting Back, 185.

328 Account of Nissan Reznik in Boneh, ed., History of the Jews of Pinsk, Part Two, Chapter 6.

329 Yoran, The Defiant, 144–46.

330 Kowalski, A Secret Press in Nazi Europe, 268–69.

331 Arad, The Partisan, 149–50.

332 Kowalski, A Secret Press in Nazi Europe, 275.

333 Silverman, From Victims to Victors, 191.

334 Kowalski, ed., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 4 (1991), 102. See also the findings of Israeli historian Shmuel Krakowski, cited in Gilbert, The Holocaust, 464.

335 Nechama Tec, “Partisan Interconnections in Belorussian Forests and the Rescue of Jews by Jews,” in John J. Michalczyk, ed., Resisters, Rescuers, and Refugees: Historical and Ethical Issues (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1997), 120.

336 Tec, Defiance, 81.

337 Ibid., 154–55.

338 Ibid., 264.

339 Kenneth Slepyan, “The Soviet Partisan Movement and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 5. See also his monograph Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans in World War II (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2006).

340 Kuszelewicz, Un Juif de Biélorussie de Lida à Karaganda, 83–84.

341 Kenneth Slepyan, “The Soviet Partisan Movement and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 7.

342 Yehuda Bauer, “Jewish Baranowicze in the Holocaust,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 31 (2003): 122, 128, n.87, 131 n.96.

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

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

345 Tec, In the Lion’s Den, 184.

346 Liza Ettinger, From the Lida Ghetto to the Bielski Partisans, typescript, December 1984, 45–46 (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives).

347 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.

348 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.”

349 Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto, 128.

350 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.

351 Arad, The Partisan, 116.

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

353 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: www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/dokshitsy/)

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

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

356 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.

357 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.

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

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

360 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.

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

362 Kahn, No Time To Mourn, 88–89.

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

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

365 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.

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

367 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: