The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews, and Built a Village in the Forest

This is carefully researched remarkably well written narrative of yet another extraordinary Shoah( Holocaust) story. This tells of the Bielski brothers and their struggle to rescue remnants of those being slaughtered by the Nazis in Byelorussia. They build a community of twelve- hundred Jews who they led through a whole series of extraordinary rescues in the forests of Byelorussia. The account is a detailed, dramatic and moving one. Incredible courage and determination are displayed by the Bielski brothers.There are as well surprising manifestations of human goodness, and generosity. This is against a background of overwhelming cruelty, horror and suffering caused by the Nazis and their anti- Semitic local allies. Tuvia makes the notable statement that he would rather rescue one Jewish helpless old lady than kill ten Nazi soldiers. But despite the concentration on saving civilian lives there is is nonetheless much heroic partisan action. The second Bielski brother Zus is the most ferocious and avenging in this regard. I was very deeply moved by this work. And I believe each and every reader who wishes to understand something about the evil and cruelty of human nature on one side, and its heroic greatness on another, should read this book. One hero in this book who I believe deserves special mention is the non- Jewish friend of the Bielski family , Konstantin Koslowsky a Bielorussian peasant who countless times risked his own life and that of his family to save his Jewish friends and neighbors. I have read thousands of books in my life. This is one which I will always remember.

An excellent book. Very well written,extremely interesting and factual. A very worthwhile book for anyone over 14 or 15 years of age.

The story of Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski and the village they built in the woods of Belarus, while waging a continual war against the Nazi occupiers and their anti-Semitic local collaborators, is an inspiring story proving that, contrary to what some people insist upon, there were those out there who did NOT let themselves be led like sheep to the slaughter. These men had been fighters since they were boys, unwilling to take guff or indignities from anyone, unafraid to defend themselves, even physically. They were not the stereotypical pale-faced yeshiva boys of Eastern Europe who ran and cowered from confrontation with anti-Semites. The Bielski brothers were three of the dozen children (eleven surviving past childhood) born to David Bielski and Beyle Mendelavich of Stankevich, Belarus, in an area that, through all of the wars and territorial treaties in those years, often changed hands between the Russians, the Poles, the Belarussians themselves, the Soviets, and finally the Germans. Drawing on their background of defending themselves and not running away from people trying to harm them, the brothers took an active role in partisan activity after the Nazi occupation. Though the three of them had managed to find residence away from the Lida and Novogrudek areas where their parents and most of their siblings were, they could see that what was happening was no small stuff, wasn't liable to stop anytime soon, and cried out to be avenged fully. Rescuing as many of their own people as possible became even more imperative after the murder of their parents, two of their brothers, and Asael's wife and baby daughter. Against all odds, they gave shelter and protection to roughly 1,200 people, began a fully-functioning village in the forest, moved their people to safer locations several times (under active Nazi pursuit and flying bullets no less), made connections with the Soviet partisans, and got many of their residents out of the Lida and Novogrudek ghettoes. They were so successful at getting their people out of the two closest ghettoes, in fact, that 240 of 250 people left in the Novogrudek ghetto on the eve of a planned deportation escaped through a tunnel in a mass escape that was amazingly successful (150 survived and weren't killed in the Nazi gunfire that followed, and the few remaining hidden in the ghetto escaped several days later). Along the way, they had to contend with enemies on four fronts--the Nazis, pro-Nazi collaborators, Soviet partisans who weren't always on the same page as they when it came to why they were fighting the war, and internal dissention among their own people. So much of the Jewish community in the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union had been completely decimated (particularly since most of them had been murdered by Einsatzgruppen instead of being killed in ghettoes or camps where they at least had a small chance of survival), so it was an astonishing thing to see these 1,200 survivors come walking out of the woods in

This book masterfully tells the story of the Bielskis and of the forest world they created, which led to the survival of those who would otherwise have been murdered. This is a triumphant story and one that needs to be shouted from the mountaintops.

My mother and brother spent some time in the Bielski brothers camp after escaping a "selection" in the Lida Ghetto. My mother just finished reading this book and remarked that all of the details are amazingly accurate. Obviously Peter Duffy verified and cross-referenced all of the stories he heard from the various survivors, even after so many years have passed. Duffy glorifies no one, but depicts the situation, the conflicts, the characters just as they were.This is really a more miraculous story than "Shindler's List".