Jewish Guerilla Warfare

 “Fugitives of the Forest – The Heroic Story of Jewish Resistance and Survival During the Second World War” by Allan Levine, 1998

This is a riveting history of Jewish and partisan resistance in Poland, Byelorussia, Lithuania and the Ukraine against the atrocities of Nazi rule.  It involves detailed personal stories of rebels in the ghettos and forests, from Vilna (Vilnius) to Minsk to many small cities and villages.  It includes the story of the Bielski brothers and their 'family camp,' who were the center of the movie “Defiance.” While not its purpose, it provides information answering the question of why there was not more resistance, or more effective resistance, to the Holocaust. 

Levine is sympathetic with nearly all the characters in this story – some in the Judenrat, who attempted to deal with the Nazis as a method of survival; some Zionists who wanted to stay in the ghettos with ‘the community’ to engage in a hopeless fight; and those youth and families, as well as Communists and Socialists, who sought to escape the ghettos for the forests, to join Soviet and anti-German partisan units.  In the ghettos all the groups sometimes formed a united front of Jewish fighters. These mostly unprepared individuals and families were facing the most unprecedented killing spree in modern history.  These stories show how each was confronted with gruesome personal and political choices, as families were torn apart, sometimes dying apart.

Levine makes it clear that while some non-Jews were sympathetic and helped Jews to various degrees, or for a price – even peasants - the majority, especially in rural areas and small towns, were either anti-Semitic or cowed by German terror and collaborated with the German occupation.  Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian and Byelorussian police aided the Einsatzgruppen death squads, and sometimes Jewish ghetto police carried out Wehrmacht orders.  As Levine says, "there were no limits no Nazi reprisals" against Jews, partisans and anyone suspected of aiding them.  After the war, there were even pogroms against Jews in Poland.

The majority of Judenräte (Jewish council) leaders dealt with by the occupiers did not believe that Nazis would liquidate all Jews, so counseled caution, opposed resistance and sometimes arrested Jewish rebels.  They sought to maintain the surrounded ghettos by being cooperative.  Many of them came from the middle-class and were backed by older residents, who thought resistance a fantasy. They were aided by the Orthodox Jewish synagogues and rabbis, who preached non-resistance and turning to God.  Yet some Judenrat prepared resistance to German Aktions or liquidations, and in two cases, participated in uprisings that were later crushed.

Stalin and consequently the Soviet army were totally surprised by Operation Barbarossa.  This led to millions of Jews being caught and surrounded immediately.  It was not just 3 million Soviet soldiers imprisoned and German tanks at the gates of Leningrad and Moscow, but countless civilians too. In 1942 the USSR finally established a coherent partisan strategy, which then drew in Jewish fighters from the ghettos. However the Soviets had no policy on the liquidation of the Jews.  Escaped Soviet soldiers that were now in partisan bands were not interested in sheltering Jewish families, and demanded that every recruit bring a weapon.  Militarily taking care of civilian forest family camps was not a goal, and would have been difficult alone.  The Bielskis were one of the few all-Jewish groups that welcomed civilians, although some Soviet partisan units helped too.  Getting a weapon was difficult for male and female Jewish civilians, who had never been armed.  Most forest units eventually became connected to the Soviet Army as otriads.

Jewish Partisan Unit

In the cities and towns, the stronger the influence of local Communists and Socialists – for instance in Minsk – the more Jews escaped and survived.  The more the Judenrat, Orthodox Judaism, older residents or Zionists prevailed, the fewer lived. In Minsk, Levine estimates 10,000 out of 100,000 got out of the ghetto into the forests (puszcza) and swamps before it was liquidated.  Escape, however, could also be deadly.  Few survived the whole war in the forests alone, as local peasants, especially in Poland, engaged in ‘Jew hunts’ of their fellow villagers and turned them over to the SS to be murdered.  They believed the Jews were all Communists, bandits and Christ-killers, and also got petty rewards.  Partisans eventually punished villagers at the center of these actions.

The book contains descriptions of successful partisan actions, leaders and units in the Wehrmacht’s rear.  The unorganized, sometimes anti-Jewish ‘Russian’ (Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Byelorussian) partisan units slowly came under Soviet military control.  The book describes how the Soviet Army organized and expanded the forest brigades through air-drops and training.  Anti-Semitism still existed among Soviet commanders and partisans, leading to Jews being killed or discriminated against.  The stereotype was that city Jews wouldn’t fight, even when their anti-fascism was evident.   The Soviets didn’t allow all-Jewish partisan units either, but some still existed under nominal Soviet command.  One famous all-Jewish unit was under the umbrella of the Gwardia Ludowa (GL), the Polish CP’s underground army. On the other hand, the nationalist/fascist Polish Armia Krajowa (AK-Home Army) supported by the English attacked Jewish family camps and GL units. At the end of the war, as the Nazi's retreated, attacks by the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Banderovtsky increased on Jewish family camps and all partisans.

Zemlianka - dugout hut

In Jewish family camps few survived living in primitive forest zemliankas – dug out, camouflaged log huts.  Levine estimates 10,000 were still alive under the harsh conditions and Nazi killing parties when the Soviet Army liberated these areas. 1,200 were in the Bielski camp alone.  Their condition reminds one of the status of escaped slaves and deserters before and during the U.S. Civil War, who hid in swamps and woods.  Women mostly served as nurses, cooks and tailors, keeping the bands functioning. Dangerous food expropriations (bambioshki) carried out frequently were the main source of nutrition. Torture and death or suicide were the only choices for partisans captured by the fascists, but especially Jews.  The majority of Jewish partisans were working-class youth, artisans or rural peasants, not in the middle-class or upper-middle class.  This figures.

The value of this book is its analysis of guerilla activity in conditions of ethnic oppression – something that is not far-fetched, even today.  Our forests are fewer, but cities remain…Celebrate victory over Fascism Day...

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, with these terms:  “Enemy at the Gates,” “Leaving World War Two Behind” (Swanson); “Panzer Destroyer:  Memoirs of a Red Army Tank Commander,” “Life and Fate” (Grossman); “The Unwomanly Face of War” (Alexievich); “The  Brown Plague” (Guerin); “The Holocaust Industry” (Finkelstein); “Diary of Bergen-Belsen,” “Son of Saul.”

And I borrowed it from comrade Rick!

Red Frog

May 7, 2022