Product Description

The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust years is one of helpless victims under a death sentence, unable to fight consignment to the ghettos, to the camps, and to the gas chambers. In fact, many Jews struggled alone or with others against the terrors of the Third Reich, risking their lives against overwhelming odds for the slimmest chance of survival, or a mere glimpse of freedom. In Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community inwestern Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Describing the entire partisan movement in the region, Tec shows that while most forest fighters in Belorussia were rifle-carrying young men, the members of this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather, always on the lookout for German patrols--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Driven by courage born out of despair, they dug wells, set up workshops to repair guns, made clothes, and resoled shoes, supplied services to other guerilla units, and even established a makeshift hospital and school in the forest. Arguing that this success would have beenunthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski, and his journey from his life as the son of the only Jewish peasant family in an isolated rural village to his emergence as a leader possessing the charisma and courage to command under all but impossible circumstances. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis against their former Jewish neighbors. Refusing to turn away the weak or the old for the sake of the survival of the larger group, Bielski would warn new arrivals to the forest, "Life is difficult, weare in danger all the time, but if we perish, if we die, we die like human beings." A scholar, a writer, and herself a Holocaust survivor, author Nechama Techas devoted the last two decades to studying the fate of European Jewry, recording rare but vital examples of human compassion, resistance, altruism and heroism in the face of overwhelming horror and despair. Drawing on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself two weeks before his death in 1987--she reconstructs here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183130 in Books
• Published on: 1994-12-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Tec ( When Light Pierced the Darkness ) relates the suspenseful and inspiring story of Jewish partisans who fought the Germans from their base in the Nalibocka Forest in Belorussia. Their leader, Tuvia Bielski, was an uneducated man who--though he had lost his parents, brothers and wife to the Germans--put efforts to preserve the lives of Jews above revenge. The partisans worked to rescue Jews in hiding and to smuggle Jews out of nearby ghettos, but also to punish Jewish collaborators. By the end of the war, Bielski had gathered more than 1200 Jews of all ages into the forest. That they suffered a loss of "only" 5% is remarkable, given that their refuge was virtually surrounded by Germans. Bielski died in 1987 and was buried in Jerusalem in a ceremony reserved for Israel's national heroes. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Powerful account by Holocaust survivor Tec (Sociology/Univ. of Connecticut; In the Lion's Den, 1989, etc.) of the operations of a Jewish partisan group in WW II Belorussia. Seeking to counteract the widespread conception of European Jews as victims who went meekly to their deaths, Tec researched the extraordinary story of the three Bielski brothers and their partisan group, using interviews with group survivors in Israel, the US, and elsewhere. Led by the oldest brother, Tuvia, the partisan group had grown to more than 1,200 Jews by the time Russian forces liberated them in 1944. The Bielski brothers, Tec explains, determined early on to save not only themselves and their families but every Jew who would join them. Resisting efforts to limit their group only to fighters, Tuvia accepted any Jew until more than 70% of the group was comprised of women, children, and middle-aged and elderly men. A charismatic leader of limited education but great intelligence and diplomatic ability, Tuvia maintained good relations with a variety of other partisan groups, some initially hostile. Putting his emphasis on saving lives rather than on killing Germans, he nonetheless acted ruthlessly against those collaborating with the Nazis, and in so doing saved many Jewish lives. At the end of the war, with Stalin's control of Belorussia becoming more oppressive, Tuvia and his brothers escaped to Romania, traveling on to Palestine and then the US--although Tuvia never again gained the recognition or prominence that his leadership qualities might have justified. A remarkable story of a great leader, as well as of a neglected aspect of WW II. (Eleven halftones, two line drawings-- not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"We are again in the debt of Nechama tec for offering us yet another unforgetable account of heroic Jewish survival in the midst of untold death and destruction with Defiance."--Jewish Spectator

"Nechama Tec tells an exciting story of rescuers and fighters--a story that should have been documented years ago. Now that the story has been told, it will undoubtedly be retold, and perhaps with new information and emphases. But most important of all, Defiance will no doubt engender further interest in the subject of Jewish partisan activity."--Social Education

"For students of the Holocaust, Nechama Tec's study of the exploits of the Bielski partisans in the forests of Belarus is absolutely essential reading. For the general reader, her book can be read as an exciting adventure story....Professor Tec not only knows how to tell a story, she knows how to recognize a good story when she hears one."--SHOFAR

"The saga of the Bielski partisans is one of the most elevating and inspiring stories in the chronicle of death and despair that is the Holocaust....Defiance is an accomplished and startling work of Holocaust documentation."--Los Angeles Times

"As a descendant of a Holocaust escqpee, I was practically breast-fed information about this era, but I knew nothing of this amazing chapter in Jewish History before reading nechama Tec's riveting Defiance. Tec interviewed many survivors from the Bielski group, including Tuvia Bielski, to create a meticulous record of a charismatic leader and a hidden Jewish community that survived, despite incredible physical hardships and the constant risk of captrue and execution....Defiance brings to light [Bielski's] incredible heroism in a fscinating account that should erase forever the notion that all Europe's Jews went quietly to the gas chambers."--Carol Tice, writing in L.A. Reader's Monthly Book Supplement

"Nechama Tec, who has taught us so much about the rescuers, has taught us once again. With the skill of a novelist and the discipline of a sociologist, Tec brings the reader into the Bielskis' partisan camp. Unique among partisan units, the Bielski group were committed not only to the able-bodied, skilled fighters but in saving Jews--men, women, and children, the old and the young. Tec tells the story with passion and compassion, and in her skilled hands we see the anguish of those who lived on the brink of death, the ambiguity of heroism, and the humanity--flawed and noble--of those who fought against all odds in this extraordinary brigade. The story of the Bielski brothers has long merited telling. Tec has done it justice."--Michael Berenbaum, Director, U.S. Holocaust Research Institute, author of The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"An absorbing look at how a small number of determined people under a charismatic commander managed to escape the Nazzis and not only survive but rescue some 1,200 persons of all ages....Tec is particularly effective in providing an insider's view of life as a partisan and refugee in the Belorussian forest and in detailing how Bielski was able to ensure his group's survival by cooperation with Soviet partisan groups who shared the forest and used the Bielski group's facilities as factory, hospital and workshop."--Booklist

"Tuvia Bielski was the only real hero I have known. Since I was a boy, 'Bielski' has sounded to me like 'Maccabbee'. Now, thanks to Nechama Tec's powerful and meticulous book, I know precisely why. This story is like almost no other. Gazing steadily at the courage of these Jewish fighters is about as hard as gazing at the sun, so great is the light that they cast on the darness around them. Humanly, Jewishly, Defiance must be cherished. It is a blow against ignorance and despair."--Leon Wieseltier, writing in The New Republic

echama Tec's new book is both imaginative and pathbreaking. She explores a little-known dimension of the Holocaust years--the rescue of Jews by Jews....We're fortunate to have this story told by a consummate writer and scholar. Professor Tec writes with a sense of drama without resorting to hyperbole. Her research is extensive and entirely compelling."--Abraham H. Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League

"The suspenseful and inspiring story of Jewish partisans who fought the Germans from their base in the Nalibocka Forest in Belorussia."--Publishers Weekly