Revised january 30, 2009 a tangled web

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368 Leonid Smilovitsky, “Antisemitism in the Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941–1944: The Case of Belorussia,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 20, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 214–15.

369 Ibid., 219.

370 Ibid., 219–20.

371 Ibid., 227. In a Highly unusual move, after some Jews carried out an investigation and launched a formal complaint, Kozlov was put on trial and hanged. The commander of the demolition unit was shot for covering up the crime. Ibid., 228.

372 Ibid., 221.

373 Ibid., 223–25.

374 Since Jewish memoirs relate events that the authors actually experienced at the hands of the Soviets, as opposed to what they heard (as is generally the case when describing atrocities attributed to the Polish partisans), they are far more reliable in their treatment of Soviet atrocities.

375 Tec, Resilience and Courage, 292.

376 Eliezer Tash (Tur-Shalom), ed., The Community of Semiatych [Siemiatycze Memorial Book] (Tel Aviv: Association of Former Residents of Semiatych in Israel and the Diaspora, 1965), xi.

377 Kopel Kolpanitzky, Sentenced to Life: The Story of a Survivor of the Lahwah Ghetto (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), 91, 96.

378 Tec, Resilience and Courage, 291–92.

379 Aron Irlicht, “Hershel Posesorski—A Heroic Partisan,” in Kowalski, ed., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 3 (1986), 498. On Hershl Posesorski’s murder by a Ukrainian unit commander named Ananchenko (his unit included many Ukrainians who had served as policemen for the Germans before switching sides), and the lack of response on the part of the Soviet command, see the account of A.I. in Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution, 242–43.

380 Yerachmiel Moorstein, ed., Zelva Memorial Book (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 1992), 73.

381 Testimony of Lidia Brown-Abramson in Tec, Resilience and Courage, 293.

382 Tec, Defiance, 99.

383 Tec, Defiance, 70.

384 “Brest” in in Shmuel Spector, ed., Pinkas Hakehillot: Polin, vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 226–37; English translation: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, vol. V, Internet: .

385 Zissman, The Warriors, 127–29, 135.

386 Itzchak Lichtenberg, “Partisans at War,” in Kowalski, ed., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 2 (1985), 594.

387 Lyuba Rudnicki, “Outside of the Ghetto,” in Eliezer Yerushalmi, ed., Navaredok Memorial Book, Internet: , 246 ff.; translation of Pinkas Navaredok (Tel Aviv: Navaredker Relief Committee in the USA and Israel, 1963). See also, Tec, Defiance, 59–60.

388 Michael Walzer-Fass and Moshe Kaplan, eds., Tooretz-Yeremitz: Book of Remembrance (Tel Aviv: Tooretz-Yeremitz Societies in Israel and the U.S.A., 1977), 94–96.

389 Account of Meyshe Kaganovitsh in Kaganovich, ed., In Memory of the Jewish Community of Ivye (Internet: www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ivye/).

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

391 Silverman, From Victims to Victors, 108, 159, 200, 210.

392 “Novogrudok,” in Shmuel Spector and Bracha Freundlich, eds., Pinkas Hakehillot: Polin, vol. 8 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), 430–37; English translation: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, vol. VIII, Internet: .

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

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

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

396 Testimony of Mina Volkowiski in ibid., 296.

397 Sorid, One More Miracle, 67–68.

398 Sorid, One More Miracle, 90.

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

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

401 Tec, Defiance, 156.

402 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.

403 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.

404 Ibid., 88–89.

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

406 Margolis, Wspomnienia wileńskie, 137–43.

407 Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto, 134–35.

408 Tec, Defiance, 207.

409 Yoran, The Defiant, 146.

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

411 Podberesky, Never the Last Road, 81.

412 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, dated June 19, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2517. Polish historian Dariusz Libionka suggests that Kovner turned to the Soviet partisans for support only after he was rebuffed by the Home Army, but offers no evidence for this untenable proposition. While the Jewish underground in Wilno (Fareinikte Partizaner Organizatsie–FPO), which included Communist groups, did indeed request arms from the Home Army, it refused to support Polish jurisdiction over Wilno, which the Soviets had seized in 1939. Its show of disloyalty toward Poland understandably resulted in the Home Army refusing to extend aid to that organization and not trusting its members. See Dariusz Libionka, “ZWZ-AK i Delegatura Rządu RP wobec eksterminacji Żydów polskich,” in Żbikowski, ed., Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945, 99, 111.

Contrary to what is often claimed in Holocaust literature, there is no evidence that any planned revolt in a ghetto failed to materialize because of a lack of Polish aid. Many Jewish authors, and even historians, however, have considerable difficulty in coming to terms with this harsh reality, preferring instead to lay the blame squarely on the Poles. Michael Berenbaum, former director of the Research Institute at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for example, writes: “For a variety of reasons, including the fact that antisemitism among some Armia Krajowa members, who were in positions of significance, prevented the adequate supply of arms to Jewish fighters, armed revolt was not carried out in many of the ghettos where Jewish resistance movements existed.” (Letter to the Canadian Polish Congress, dated May 16, 1996). A survivor from Łódź, who was deported to the ghetto in Staszów, ruminates: “As to why more people didn’t fight, the answer is simple: With what? We had no weapons, and the Poles around us could not be depended on to help. … Moreover, common sense told us that fighting the combined Germans and unfriendly Poles would be futile.” See Manny Drukier, Carved in Stone: Holocaust Years—A Boy’s Tale (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 182, 216. These are bogus arguments. Jews did in fact, when they were so disposed, acquire arms and ammunition, albeit in limited quantities, via the black market and from other sources, in the same manner as the Polish underground, and staged open revolts in a number of places such as Warsaw (with the help of the Poles), Białystok, Częstochowa, Nieśwież, Łuck, etc. Needless to add, these revolts were directed at the Germans, not the Poles. While arms were acquired in many ghettos, very few ghettos staged revolts. Invariably, the Jewish underground faced major opposition from within their community which was usually spearheaded by the Jewish Council, with local leaders and even rabbis joining in. With little support forthcoming from the general population, the resolve of the few was usually thwarted.

In Ejszyszki, Rabbi Shimon Rozovsky’s impassioned plea to acquire arms and “protect ourselves till our last breath” was sternly rebuffed by one faction of the Jewish Council, so the plan died. See Alufi and Barkeli, “Aishishuk”; Its History and Its Destruction, 62; Eliach, There Once Was a World, 581. In Kurzeniec, the Judenrat warned the parents of underground members who were collecting weapons of the threat these activities posed to all of the town’s Jews. “When we heard about it,” one Jew recalled, “we stormed into the meeting with two drawn guns. We threatened to kill whoever threaten [sic] our families.” See the account of Zalman Uri Gurevitz in Meyerowitz, ed., The Scroll of Kurzeniac. A similar situation existed in Iwie (Iwje) where the Judenrat warned the brother of an underground member who started to procure arms that this “activity was liable to bring about the handing over [of] my family to the gendarme.” See the account of Meyshe Kaganovitsh in Kaganovich, ed., In Memory of the Jewish Community of Ivye. In Głębokie, after some Jews managed to procure weapons from Poles outside the ghetto, “In the Jewish police it was decided to quietly confiscate the weapons and to, somehow, get rid of us … Once, while my brother was sleeping, two Jewish policemen came, took him to the Judenrat cellar, beat him and demanded he give the weapons. … I was called to present myself. I let it be known that I would not come and that if, indeed, they tried to arrest me, I have in my possession a hand grenade … The Judenrat men were scared the Germans would find out about the weapons and backed off. So, except for the Germans, the Judenrat and the Jewish police also became our enemies. They interfered and threatened at any attempt to revolt or escape from the ghetto.” See Dov Katzovitch, “With the Partisans and in the Red Army,” in Shtokfish, Book in Memory of Dokszitz-Parafianow, Chapter 4. In Krasne near Mołodeczno, the Judenrat dispatched Jewish police to investigate and break up an underground organization that smuggled men and arms to the forest. See Kowalski, ed., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 4 (1991), 473. The Brasław memorial book confirms that, even though arms and ammunition were available from outside sources, a planned revolt did not take place for three reasons: (1) the Jews were worn down by the Germans; (2) the eternal hope that the German plans would not materialize; and most importantly, (3) the opposition of the Jewish Council to the plan. See Machnes and Klinov, eds., Darkness and Desolation, 597–98. Two groups were established in Brześć at the beginning of 1942 as preparations were made for a revolt. Weapons were acquired from various sources (purchases from Italian soldiers, thefts from warehouses of booty) including rifles, several pistols, hand grenades, and ten machine guns. The underground had a printing press and possessed a radio. Contacts were established with the Soviet underground. The plan was to open fire on the Germans with all their firepower on the first day that they came to liquidate the ghetto, and to ignite homes and warehouses, and to break out and flee to the forests. At the beginning of October 1942, the Polish underground informed the Jewish underground that extermination units had assembled in the city consisting of German, Ukrainian and Lithuanian policemen. Yet the Jewish underground proved incapable of mobilizing its members and mounting a revolt, and only a a small number of Jews managed to escape to the forest. The Germans, probably tipped off by informers, surrounded the hiding place of the printing press and radio and blew them up, along with the people there. See “Brest” in Shmuel Spector, ed., Pinkas Hakehillot: Polin, vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 226–37; English translation: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, vol. V, Internet: