Rating: 
Summary: "Hardly a plaque bears their names."
Review: When the Germans finally retreated from Belarus in the summer of 1944, almost twelve hundred Jewish survivors of the Holocaust shocked the world by materializing from the forest where they had lived in hiding during the German occupation. Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski, three brothers, had managed to establish a well-organized community in the forest which lasted for almost three years, protecting hundreds of Jewish citizens while wreaking havoc on their German occupiers. Author Peter Duffy places this extraordinary story of survival in context by describing the Bielskis' lives and achievements, quoting from Tuvia Bielski's previously unknown journal, and revealing the sociopolitical history, including the anti-Semitism, of Belarus, a region south of Lithuania. In establishing their forest community, open to all Jews, the Bielskis had to fight "wars" on four fronts: the immediate threat from the Germans and the local police; the danger from local peasants and collaborators; the suspicions of Soviet partisans who questioned whether the Bielskis were sufficiently dedicated to their cause; and most of all, internal dissension. This was no "utopian community of enlightened democratic and egalitarian governance," and many readers may cringe at the extremes to which the leadership occasionally resorted in order to eliminate dissension. At its height, the forest village consisted of long, camouflaged dugouts for sleeping, a large kitchen, mill, bakery, bathhouse, tannery, school, jail, theater, and two medical facilities. Tailors, seamstresses, shoemakers, watchmakers, carpenters, mechanics, and experts in demolition provided the 1200-member community with necessary skills, and about sixty cows and thirty horses provided food and transportation. Many of the men served as part of the armed contingent which secured food and engaged in sabotage and the murder of Germans officials. By concentrating on one family and its life during the war, Duffy creates a powerful documentary about Jewish life. Breaking the narrative into six-month installments, he details the progress of the war throughout the region, relentlessly revealing cold statistics--the thousands of people killed in a single ghetto in a single day. As the numbers mount, the reader's horror at the immense scale of the genocide grows, the victims' utter helplessness becomes obvious, and the reader's amazement at the Bielskis' achievement increases. None of the Bielski brothers ever received public recognition for these heroic efforts, and Duffy's attempts to rectify this historical omission by telling their story will resonate with readers. Mary Whipple
Rating: 
Summary: A hero and criminal
Review: Wonder how they described woman and man massacred in Naliboki, who, after being regularly robbed of food and property, organised self-defence and were massacred by Soviet partisans, including Bielski group. Or about AK soldiers killed by Bielski partisans because of Soviet orders.
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