false 542083 5 The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust years is one of helpless victims under a death sentence, unable to fight consignment to the ghettos, to the camps, and to the gas chambers. In fact, many Jews struggled alone or with others against the terrors of the Third Reich, risking their lives against overwhelming odds for the slimmest chance of survival, or a mere glimpse of freedom. In Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Describing the entire partisan movement in the region, Tec shows that while most forest fighters in Belorussia were rifle-carrying young men, the members of this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather, always on the lookout for German patrols--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Driven by courage born out of despair, they dug wells, set up workshops to repair guns, made clothes, and resoled shoes, supplied services to other guerilla units, and even established a makeshift hospital and school in the forest. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski, and his journey from his life as the son of the only Jewish peasant family in an isolated rural village to his emergence as a leader possessing the charisma and courage to command under all but impossible circumstances. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis against their former Jewish neighbors. Refusing to turn away the weak or the old for the sake of the survival of the larger group, Bielski would warn new arrivals to the forest, "Life is difficult, we are in danger all the time, but if we perish, if we die, we die like human beings." A scholar, a writer, and herself a Holocaust survivor, author Nechama Techas devoted the last two decades to studying the fate of European Jewry, recording rare but vital examples of human compassion, resistance, altruism and heroism in the face of overwhelming horror and despair. Drawing on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself two weeks before his death in 1987--she reconstructs here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight. 529420 1993 Defiance: The Bielski Partisans total:155|5:23|4:61|3:49|2:18|1:4| 155 546 384 65 4 1 false false Fri Aug 31 15:40:53 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 15:47:06 -0700 2007
It's a great story about the Bielski brothers--European Jews during WWII that led a band of armed part...more...]]> 1 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 09:50:56 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 20:38:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Feb 14 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 13:35:54 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 13:57:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Feb 15 05:52:24 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 15 07:27:30 -0800 2009
That's why I read it. After ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 31 20:36:55 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 31 20:43:18 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jun 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 07:26:01 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 07:22:41 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Mar 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 13:50:44 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 08 14:10:19 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sun Apr 12 13:46:28 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 12 13:50:46 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Mar 25 10:18:45 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 10:24:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Mar 19 18:32:22 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 19 18:38:27 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Feb 13 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 11 08:05:33 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 07:17:59 -0800 2009 Defiance paints a very good picture of what life as a partisan was like. Tec presents the life warts and all, even presenting detail about how the locals felt about the partisans. At one level the book fails. Tec seems to be trying to paint a picture of partisan life and write a biography of Tuvi...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jan 02 16:57:38 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 02 17:29:14 -0800 2009 Defiance is a historical, well researched through interviews and documents, account of how Polish Jews attempted to survive WWII by escaping into the dense Belorussian forests. Specifically the book tells the story of the creation and survival of a group led by Jewish Tuvia Bielski that grew to ov...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Apr 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 27 00:59:02 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 14 23:51:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Apr 06 11:31:17 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 11:35:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Oct 29 18:36:04 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 29 18:43:06 -0700 2009 I love survivor stories so I was totally excited about reading this... Like the other comments here, it was dry. There was a lot of repetition that just made it sort of confusing. I couldn't finish it. The movie was great though, but the book just didn't ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Jul 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 12:48:31 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 00:01:09 -0700 2009
It wasn't novelized and put into a story line. However, it was very interesting and perhaps not as slow going as one might expect for a ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Dec 27 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 15 10:56:06 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 15:43:24 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Tue Jan 20 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 16:35:48 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 11:51:23 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Sep 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 06:30:58 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 16 17:26:31 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Jan 23 04:32:36 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 10:09:46 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 23 04:32:36 -0800 2009 more...]]>