Defiance

Defiance

For author and Holocaust survivor Nechama Tec, many accounts of the Holocaust are guilty of “a serious omission and an equally serious distortion. The omission is the conspicuous silence about Jews who, while themselves threatened by death, were saving others. The distortion is the common description of European Jews as victims who went passively to their death.” And so in Defiance she corrects both, telling the story of a remarkable forest community in Western Belorussia—the largest rescue operation of Jews by Jews in WWII—and its charismatic leader, a Jewish peasant named Tuvia Bielski. (Originally published in 1993, this new edition of Defiance coincides with the upcoming release of a major motion picture).

By the time the Germans invaded Russian-occupied Poland in 1941, they were “experienced in Jewish persecution,” and had created separate killing units known as “Einsatzgruppen”—SS men specially trained to kill “enemies” of the Reich. As massacres began, and the rest of the Jews were being herded into ghettos, 35-year-old Tuvia Bielski and three of his brothers fled to the Belorussian countryside. They began a nomadic life, constantly on the move, gathering followers as they roamed. As their numbers grew, they organized themselves into an official partisan detachment, known in Russian as an “otriad,” with Bielski as commander. While most forest fighters in Belorussia were rifle-carrying young men, Bielski insisted on accepting all comers—even if they were unable to fight. His goal was to enlarge the group and save more lives. Women, children and the elderly were welcomed with open arms and even smuggled out of the ghettos to safety. Though he faced vigorous opposition from his own comrades who wanted only to fight, he stood his ground, arguing that “it was better to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans.”

In the fall of 1943, Bielski’s nomadic group organized themselves into a “shtetl,” a small town. They dug wells, set up workshops to repair guns, make clothes, and supply services to other guerilla units, and even established a makeshift hospital and school in the forest. By 1944, the height of the Bielski Otriad, some 1200 Jews were living in this forest refuge.

Despite the many lives saved, Tec acknowledges that disputes over the relative value of saving a life or fighting the enemy continue to this day. Yet she clearly sides with a former forest fighter who told her that heroism, after all, was not fighting with guns, as he himself had done: “Heroism was to save a child, a woman, a human being. To keep Jews in the forest for two years and save them, this was heroism.” Ultimately, Defiance is Tec’s tribute to one man who bravely chose to save lives rather than take them.

Hardcover: 320 pages

Publisher: Oxford University Press ( October 15, 2008 )

Item #: 32-2224

ISBN: 9781607515500

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 0.687 inches

Product Weight: 15.0 ounces