Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust (11 page)

Ethics and morals in the forests possessed meaning only as they impacted surviving; moral difficulties in terms of relationships within the brigade (for example, over food and labor distribution), if they arose, could be negotiated, although internal conflicts on a few occasions reached the point where they exercised a divisive impact on the brigade. Individuals understood the limits, even if they were not explicitly stated. The unspoken dictum meant action threatening the brigade’s unity or safety would not be tolerated, whether it came from the inside or the outside. Bledzow: ‘You ask about ethics and morals; we had ethics and morals but we invented our own to fit how we had to survive. You had to do things to bring in food; that was it, the bottom line. With many of the Russians anti-Semitic and the local farmers hostile, if you didn’t use force, you were a dead man.’ Sonia Bielski praised the fighters and non-fighters, but, she said, ‘human nature’ complicated the picture: ‘Everybody was greedy like an animal; we fought with each other; there were conflicts, but we managed to cooperate … . You were bound to have some jealousies … the fighters received the most generous food por
tions, they had the wives … sometimes the
malbush
felt frustrated and left out.’

Many of those not part of Zush’s brigade but in the main group with Tuvia Bielski fought in their own way by gathering food, guard duty, reconnaissance, and these too involved risks. Sonia O.’s husband, for example, while not a fighter, worked at whatever was asked of him. He had a gun, but never used it; yet she felt safe with him ‘because the group made us safe in the forests; we could protect ourselves.’

Sonia O.’s security in the forest involved more than the presence of guns; it also evolved around a continuing faith that God was watching over this community and would save them. ‘I knew we would make it; at times I had my doubts; it was no bed of roses, but I prayed I might one day see my children and tell them about their grandparents. Even though so many Jews died, we won by giving another generation.’ Sonia smiles; pride fills her eyes. ‘But you know, this faith in what my children might bring kept me going.’

Faith in natality played a significant role in maintaining a psycho
logical balance, never succumbing to fear, depression and despair over loss of family. In Leah J.’s words: ‘God is in your children; it is a terrible thing to be a Jew… . So the children and the knowledge that you might survive and have children become your future and your salvation.’ But there was more to it than that, a negative, troubling counterpoise to natality; the belief that Jews deserved this suffering; guilt in the eyes of God. Sonia O.: ‘This was very much on my mind … maybe God was testing us.’ The men I spoke with had little patience with this spiritual position; they rejected it outright. ‘Germans killed us; not God.’ But, with the exception of Sonia Bielski, the women embraced this concept. Sonia O.: ‘Who are we to know God’s will? When I raised this in the brigade, they shut me up, particularly the fighters if they were around. So, I thought to myself, maybe we went away from God; we moved from his path.’ The sadness in her voice wraps around her words and slows them down. ‘Who knows … it was so long ago … we did something wrong that God didn’t like. And when we survived, it was God telling us to be observant as Jews, to instill faith in our children.’

To prove her worthiness in having survived, Sonia O. argued, she felt she had to demonstrate by faith in God; that meant strict obser
vance, keeping kosher and giving her children religious education.

‘There is a God, I know because I’m alive’; yet, surviving meant overcoming the guilt at having survived. ‘Why me? Why not my sister, brother, father, son?’ Guilt recurs throughout Sonia O.’s nar
rative, a heavy obligation that interrupts the pleasures of natality.

‘My spirit sometimes hurts; it hurt then when we had a few moments to think to ourselves. You feel guilty for the crime you did not commit. I didn’t kill Jews; but I still felt guilty. It bothered me in the woods; and it bothers me now. Why am I alive? Why were my brothers and sisters killed? Why is my little sister dead and not me?’ She is quiet for a moment. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have survived; was it luck? … God’s will?’

These thoughts, recriminations, preoccupy her, a remembrance that possesses no answer, no resolution, an open wound in her soul:

‘The older I become, the more this haunts me. I thought about it once in a while in the forests and later, after the war, there were times when it entered my mind… . But now, this guilt at having survived comes to me all the time. I wake up in the middle of the night, wondering, why me? Why did I survive?’

Sonia Bielski, however, dismisses guilt. ‘You have to be a Jew in your own way’; decision, action, healed her soul. ‘Being a partisan was my prayer.’ She drew her spiritual inspiration from the sight of Zush and the fighters, and the knowledge that they were protecting her. ‘Killing Germans: that was our prayer. We knew we had a place; it was in that forest, where we lived; the brigade gave us our freedom; it allowed us to make our own choices; it freed our spirit.’ And even though the forests could be difficult, filled with obstacles, ‘It was ours; those bunkers in the ground; they were our place.’ Freedom and spiritual liberation lay in the protection of the trees: ‘We didn’t have time to think about what we’ve lost, only what we could save by fighting. In those forests we were free.’ But even she, at moments, had her doubts:

‘I once asked my husband, “Why is God killing us?” He would have none of it. He told me not to think about it. “
We
kill Germans, collaborators; God has nothing to do with it.” But I
thought to myself, God is giving and taking; you have to accept that fact, and then do what you can to fight back. I let my hate of the Germans take over; then I stopped thinking about God.’

Yet, Sonia O. reminded me that the group with Tuvia, the non-fighters, possessed plenty of hate and desire for revenge. The ethics of community shifted after the German assault on Novogrudek. What would have been unthinkable in the
shtetl
took on a spiritual and redemptive valence in the forests; normally mild-mannered and peaceful persons acted violently and with rage.

It is late in the afternoon the next day. I had called Sonia O. and asked her if we could continue the discussion. We are alone in her apartment and she seems eager to talk. Yet her mood takes us into deep shadows. ‘Lots of things I don’t want to remember … so much hate on both sides.’ Tears stream down her face, but she insists we explore these painful memories.

‘In the ghetto I was part of a small group determined to find a way out; we had been digging a tunnel. A kid dug with us, but we found out he had been hired by the Germans and police to inform. We later learned he had been responsible for the deaths and capture of several families. Apparently the Germans and police paid him or told him he and his family wouldn’t be killed if he told them where to find Jews.’

Her speech slows; she seems to be catching her breath:

‘There was a barber in our group, a gentle guy; we knew him as a person who never hurt anyone. All he had done in his life was cut hair; but his family had been murdered. One night, after digging, he grabbed an ax and without a word hacked off the head of that kid. I remember his eyes; how wild they were. We buried the head and body in the tunnel. No one ever spoke of it.’

The sadness in Sonia’s eyes is not sympathy for the informer, but for the barber, the memory of his bitterness and the transformation of a gentle soul into a killer, an avenger. She looks at me, and says as much to herself as to me: ‘Look, the Germans wanted to torture you, to rip out your soul and burn your body. We couldn’t avoid
that. We had to protect ourselves.’ She turns away for a moment and we both sit quietly; she looks to the side, towards a large window which opens out to the next building, no view, but an empty space punctuated by the bright whiteness of the building’s structure. Her voice returns, but much softer. I can barely hear.

‘I remember one more thing. I have never described this to anyone. It was horrible, but it happened. A couple of times, we caught German soldiers running from the Russian front. We mur
dered them. Everybody took a stick to kill the German. The one that I saw, they cried, “This is for my mother, my son, my grand
mother” … no mercy. Each person, old men, women got in a blow. When I saw this I started to cry, not for the German. I hated him just as much as anyone else. But the Germans killed my father the same way, beating him to death with sticks … I couldn’t bear to watch it.’

Sonia stops speaking and then continues, insisting: ‘It’s wrong to say only the fighters were violent; all of us in the camp killed Germans when we had the opportunity. But I couldn’t watch this; it brought back the memories of my father’s death. I ran away, into the woods, not for the Germans. What those people did to the soldier was right. But I just kept thinking about my father.’ For many Jews, faith sustained itself on vengeance.

It is critical not to underestimate the power of this community in the forest to hold and contain selves physically and psychologically battered by the German policy of ghettoization and annihilation. Each participant in the Bielski Brigade had lost if not an entire family, then the majority of their loved ones. Lapsing into madness, a frequent occurrence in the ghettos, especially amongst children, was fought against in the forest, but it took an enormous commitment from everyone to self-defense, and from the community itself to hold and comfort each other. In the words of one survivor, Elsie S., ‘How could a human mind still be normal in the face of this? … I thought I was dying; I lost my entire family in a single day … I was envious when I saw a bird flying; that bird had freedom.’ Ghetto diaries, as conditions become increasingly difficult, describe individuals and families disintegrating emotionally; catatonic children wasting away, fouling themselves against ghetto walls; shrieking
women roaming the streets; suicides increasing daily. The forest community, however, provided barriers to this sinking into madness. Elsie S.: ‘You talked with everyone in the camp. Any work was helpful; you exchange ideas; try to console one another. People, if they wanted, could be understanding. But you couldn’t be morbid all the time. How can you function if you think about death every minute of the day? It was a new way of life.’ In the words of the youngest Bielski brother, Aaron, twelve years old at the time of the Brigade’s founding: ‘With the Bielskis in your camp, you felt you had an army; we knew that to be in the forest, it was far better than the camps. Compared to those living in the concentration camps and ghettos, we lived in the Waldorf Astoria.’ Children in the Bielski Brigade fared far better than children in the ghetto, although children never received any formal schooling. Still, the few children in the brigade played with one another, and adults cushioned them from the trauma suffered during the German assaults.

Aaron (Bielski) Bell, eleven when the German invasion began, wit
nessed the crippling of his father. Hidden behind a wall, he watched while a group of German soldiers beat his father with rifle barrels.
¹⁰
What he calls ‘being terrorized’ remains with him in his dreams and thoughts; it is there in his eyes, as he, with considerable difficulty, speaks about his past. He still bitterly remembers the collaborators and their role in the murder of his parents. Aaron’s father, paralyzed by the beating, lay on his back for ten days until he and his wife were taken away by the Germans. Aaron found refuge with a sym
pathetic neighbor and eventually his brothers took him and his sister’s family to the forests. It is not a time he wants to recall. ‘Look outside, this Palm Beach, it is beautiful, heaven on earth. But I will try to tell you what I can.’ Going back is not where he wants to be and the interview proceeds in fits and starts. But he insists we con
tinue and tells me not to hold back on my questions. He will do as well as he can. What preoccupies him in our interview are the collaborators; he repeatedly comes back to them and their role in murdering Jews:

‘I hated them, the father and son who worked for my parents; both took pleasure in seeing them trucked away by the Germans. My mother, someone later told me, asked the son for her galoshes; and he said, “You won’t be needing galoshes where
you’re going.” When my brothers several months later went into town and brought him back, I felt good when the fighters executed him.’

I asked Aaron if he would consider this a form of ‘goodness’ in the forests. With no hesitation he replied: ‘Of course, when they killed him, it lifted the spirits of our whole group!’

A neighbor had informed on Aaron Bielski by pointing him out on the street to the Germans; he had been walking on the sidewalk, while his mother, because she wore the Jewish star, had to walk in the gutter. Arrested and interrogated as to the whereabouts of his brothers, this eleven-year-old was taken to the police station and forced to dig a trench. The police and Germans threatened to shoot him unless he told them where they could find Zush and Tuvia. The Germans ordered him to jump in the trench and lie down. ‘They said to me this is how it will be when we shoot you. It was terror; I grew up very fast during those moments; but I told them I had no idea where my brothers were.’ The terror, which he refers to throughout the interview, surfaces in his words, movements, pacing back and forth across the kitchen, reaching for his cigarettes. Even now, this 72-year-old survivor seems close to the terror, to its grip on consciousness and memory. It is like, as he put it, a ‘cloud in the soul’ that refuses to disperse. As the youngest Bielski, he had it ‘pretty good in the woods… . I never had time to think about my parents.’ Fighting and surviving defined his moral universe; ‘I quickly became a man’; and while he had a rifle and gun, he never used them. ‘But I wish my brothers would have let me kill Germans; I wasn’t a pushover; when Germans or the anti-Semites who informed on us were killed, I wanted to be there; I wanted to see it; and there were times when I wished I had been the one pulling the trigger. But my brothers never put me in harm’s way.’