The Bielski partisans

The Bielski brothers

The Bielskis were a Jewish farming family from the village of Stankiewicze, near Nowogrodek (Novogrudok), in what is now western Belarus. USHMM names the brothers who led the unit:

• Tuvia Bielski (1906-1987), the commander, a former Zionist activist and Polish Army veteran
• Asael Bielski (1908-1945)
• Alexander Zus Bielski (1910-1995)
• Aron (Aharon) Bielski (1927-2025), the youngest, who later lived in the United States as Aron Bell (English Wikipedia)

Their parents and other relatives were murdered in the Nowogrodek ghetto in December 1941; English Wikipedia gives the date as 8 December 1941. The surviving brothers fled to the nearby forests.

From a small group to a forest community

The group began in 1942 with family members and friends: about 30 people according to USHMM, or 13 neighbours from the ghetto and about 40 people in all according to English Wikipedia. The Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF) says Tuvia was in command of a small group by May 1942.

What made the unit different was its rule of accepting any Jew. The Bielskis sent guides into the ghettos to bring people out. JPEF notes that many escapees from the Nowogrodek ghetto came through the family of Konstantin Kozlovski, a non-Jew who sheltered them.

In December 1943 the unit moved to a permanent base in the swamps of the Naliboki forest, on the right bank of the Niemen River (USHMM). It had workshops employing at least 200 people, a mill, a bakery, a laundry, an infirmary, a school, a synagogue and a court and jail. JPEF adds a soap factory, a bathhouse, tailors and musicians. The workshops also served other partisan units in exchange for food and arms. See Family camps on the Hebrew site.

Why the unit was called "Kalinin"

Readers who search for "Kalinin" in connection with the Bielskis are looking for the unit itself. According to USHMM, after the group moved deeper into the forest in 1943 it was formally split into two detachments of the Kirov Brigade of Soviet partisans: the "Kalinin" detachment and the "Ordzhonikidze" detachment. Both were named, in the Soviet way, after Soviet leaders.

English Wikipedia dates the split to September 1943. The Ordzhonikidze detachment had about 180 mostly Jewish fighters under a non-Jewish commander, and the Kalinin detachment, the Bielski family camp, had about 800 people, 160 of them armed. On 1 April 1944, according to the same article, the Kalinin detachment was renamed the Bielski otriad (detachment).

Fighting and hard questions

The unit raided for food, killed collaborators who had betrayed Jews, and joined Soviet partisans in operations such as burning crops so that German forces could not harvest them (JPEF, English Wikipedia). USHMM says about 50 of its members were killed.

English Wikipedia also records disputed episodes. It describes relations with the Polish underground and local villagers as strained and sometimes violent, and reports the view of the Polish historian Kazimierz Krajewski that the unit's own claims of enemies killed were overstated, as well as his account of an attack on the village of Kamien in May 1944. It also tells of the trial and execution, on Tuvia's orders, of Israel Kessler, who tried to form a breakaway group. We report these as the sources give them.

Liberation and after

The Soviet offensive began on 22 June 1944, and within six weeks all of Belorussia was liberated (USHMM). The Kalinin detachment marched into Nowogrodek in the summer of 1944 and disbanded (English Wikipedia).

Asael was drafted into the Red Army and was killed in East Prussia in February 1945 (USHMM). In 1945 Tuvia and Zus emigrated with their families to Palestine, fought in the 1948 war, and later moved to the United States, where they ran a trucking business in New York (USHMM, English Wikipedia).

Nechama Tec's book *Defiance: The Bielski Partisans* (Oxford University Press, 1993) and Peter Duffy's *The Bielski Brothers* (2004) tell the story in English. The 2008 film *Defiance*, directed by Edward Zwick, starred Daniel Craig as Tuvia and Liev Schreiber as Zus. For the wider picture, see Jewish partisans.