[.uk] The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who ... (ISBN 0066210747)

War and Beyond!:
The brothers witnesses such unbearable cruelty at the hands of the Germans and many local gentiles that they saw no choice but to fight if they were going to survive. Their fight included their protection of hundreds and hundreds of Jews. Through their charisma, organizing skills, and aggressiveness, they successfully accomplished their task. Along the way, however, it appears that they developed a certain hubris, a feeling of such self-importance that they became what can only be called tyrannical. Although there is a question of whether they or some of their people were unduly robbing the surrounding peasants and appeared less than completely with their Soviet sponsors, there is no question that they took what ever they wanted for themselves, including accommodations and women. Perhaps as with Moses, Tuvia committed such a cruel act upon the dissolution of the camp that he paid for it by becoming a failure in later life, never able to re-capture his former authority and self-satisfaction.

the ends don't justify the means:
they killed innocent jews even after they were liberated. another sad story of blind faith, absolute power corrupting absolutely and "spin". a book should be written about the family who suffered after the husband and father was shot over a pair of boots. how was it that they were allowed into america after being labeled war crimminals. did someone look under the table?

An inspiring story:
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 July of 1944 after the area was liberated by the Red Army. (Although it was never really said just how many of the Bielski siblings survived, apart from Tuvia, Asael, Zus, their baby brother Aron who worked as a scout in the woods, their sister Taibe, and an older brother in America; are we to assume they were killed or that some of them were also in the woods? We know two of their brothers were killed, but we're never told anything about the fates of most of their other siblings.) There are those who claim that all books about the Shoah are just the same story over and over again, or are too depressing, but how many of those books are written about Jewish partisans who actively fought back and in the process also saved over a thousand of their own people, complete with creating their own village where life went on in (relatively speaking) normal circumstances? This is an inspiring story about three heroic brothers, not just some tale of sadness, woe, despair, and having to wait to be rescued by an outside force. I've also never read a book about the Shoah in Belarus; it's not too common to run across books with the Nazi-occupied USSR as the setting, seeing as how most of the people living there were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen early on, no chance of surviving the way someone in, say, Holland, France, or Hungary might have. This was hands-down one of the largest groups of Jews saved by anyone during the Shoah. It's about time these unsung heroes of the Shoah got more recognition.

mm soo good!:
Great book! I can't wait for the movie in 2006! :) I also recommend Lala's Story and Survival in Auschwitz!

Three brave brothers...:
These three brothers saved over 1200 Jews in Belorussia by making a home for them in the forest. They were tough as nails, and fought to save their people while fighting the enemy. It's a dramatic story, and once read, you'll never forget the three brothers--Zus, Tuvia and Asael--nor their comrades-in-arms, nor the people they saved. It's a real testament to the survival of the human spirit.