Thanks for Four Years of Awesome
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Blogged Around Philly: Farewell Edition
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Robert Bielski has a good handshake: firm but not vise-like, it's the handshake of a man who has confidence but doesn't feel the need to prove anything. It's a bright, chilly December day, but inside his Manhattan office the heat is almost stifling. "Make yourself comfortable," he says, gesturing toward a black leather sofa. On an end table next to the sofa is a framed family portrait—Bielski's extended family, he proudly says. It's his family that I've come here to talk about, specifically his father Tuvia.
Tuvia Bielski was the leader of the Bielski Partisans, a Jewish resistance group that saved over 1,200 Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Along with his brothers Zus and Asael, Tuvia took to the woods, creating as safe a haven as he could for the Jews that they rescued. At the same time, the brothers and their followers boldly confronted the Nazis and Nazi collaborators with a surprising show of armed force that often struck right at the heart of enemy operations.
Unlike some other partisan groups that rescued and recruited primarily young men capable of fighting, the Bielskis took everyone who wanted to join them. Thus, their ranks swelled with women, children, the sick and the elderly. Despite the treacherous conditions in the forest and the constant threat of attack that forced them to pick up and move at a moment's notice, the Bielski group lost very few members over the course of the war.
Their heroic actions, which should be the stuff of legend, have gone largely unknown and uncelebrated by the world at large. Now, however, the story of the Bielski brothers and their partisans is about to be splashed onto big screens across the country in Defiance, a film that's already garnering Oscar buzz.
It's not just the acting that makes this film a must-see, though. According to Robert Bielski, "It's important because [people] need to see that Jews did resist [Nazi persecution]. This was the largest armed rescue of Jews by Jews in World War II. And not all Jews were passive; Jewish passivity was not by choice. They had no choice. My father and his brothers had a choice; they could've gone to the slaughter. They were lucky."
The fact that the brothers had a choice—that any Jews had a choice—and that they fought back is strangely absent from many history books. The story of the Holocaust and of the partisan fighters who helped bring about its end is an important one, especially given the veracity of the old adage about those who, not knowing history, are doomed to repeat it.
When I was in high school in the late '80s and early '90s, we were taught about the Holocaust, but only in the larger context of World War II and not as a singular event in world history. We were certainly never told about Jewish armed resistance, only about the ghettos, the concentration camps and the massacre. Even growing up half Jewish with concentration camp survivors on my father's side of the family, I never knew that there was so much more to the story, including coordinated efforts to fight back. Why has this taken so long to come to light, and why, in the books and classes that teach world history of this time period, are the heroics of the Bielskis and others of their ilk largely ignored?
Robert Bielski considers this. "In the '70s they didn't talk about the Holocaust," he begins, then pauses to think. "[It was] probably in the mid-'80s when people started to talk about it. The survivors really didn't want to talk about it for many years. They were coaxed by their children to tell their stories."
It was time—finally—to talk, and it was important that they did. "The survivors, they're dwindling," Bielski says sadly. "We only have another five to 10 years, and then all the original eyewitnesses are going to be gone."
Bielski himself grew up knowing the story of his family's ordeal and role in the war. He was, as he puts it, born into it. But though tales of the Bielski partisans were often told in his household, Tuvia Bielski was not one to boast. "My father never sought accolades, never considered himself a hero," he says. "He just did what he had to do to save himself, his family and any other Jewish person that he was able to save. So, it's a real super hero story, but they weren't super heroes—they were just people."
Tuvia Bielski and his brothers may have felt they were just people doing what they had to do, but their leadership, bravery and determination had a profound effect on the people whose lives they saved—an effect that is still evident many years later.
"My father just was a regular father, like anybody else," Bielski tells me when I ask about his childhood. "But people would come to visit, people that originally I had thought were family, but these were the survivors. And they would hug him and kiss him and treat him like God. And when I was very young, I just thought they were family. But then I realized that these were the survivors, and I realized the magnitude of what my father did."
Bielski notes that he and his family are bonded with the surviving partisans and their descendents, referring to them as "one big family, even though we're not blood." Now, several generations from the events that forged their bond, the 1,200 survivors have children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren to whom the story has been passed down. The size of this group—now numbering in the tens of thousands—hints at a somber question: had Hitler not ordered the extermination of millions of Jews, how many more people—their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren—would be living, working, curing diseases, creating art, improving society and passing down their stories today?
As Bielski points out, "It shows you that [because of] the six million people who were killed, how many people we lost who would've been productive, who would've changed the course of this world—and how the Germans changed the course of the world by eliminating these six million people."
Suddenly feeling the need to demonstrate my grasp of the enormity of the situation, I tell Bielski about my visit to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. As I relay the intense feelings of anger, despair and helplessness I felt while standing in the gas chamber, he nods knowingly. Bielski himself has trod the ground where his ancestors were slaughtered.
Defiance was shot on location in Lithuania, roughly 50 kilometers from Tuvia's birthplace in Belarus. Bielski spent several days there on set and visiting the sites, then returned six weeks later with his entire family so that they could experience first hand the forests and countryside where this powerful tale unfolded.
The location adds to the rich authenticity of the film, which Bielski found to be impressively accurate. "It's a Hollywood movie," he tells me, "so there's Hollywood in it. But the film itself is very, very close to the actual history." He is careful to note, though, that Defiance covers only a portion of the time the partisans spent in the forest.
This reminds me that I wanted to ask his opinion of the Polish government's allegations of Bielski involvement in a civilian massacre in the Naliboki forest. An investigation was launched, and I can tell I've hit a sore point as soon as the question comes out of my mouth.
Bielski, bristling slightly, tackles the issue head on. "They said that there was a massacre in the Naliboki forest in May of 1944, but the Bielskis never made it to Naliboki until August. They were not part of that massacre. We have historical, factual evidence."
It's obvious that he comes from a family of fighters—a family of survivors. "My kids have the same mode of survival that I was born with...we all have a survival gene in us. We're all leaders."
So is his niece, documentary filmmaker Sharon Rennert. Though not connected with the movie Defiance, Rennert has her own project underway to preserve the family legacy. In Our Hands: the Legacy of the Bielski Partisans is currently in production. Bielski proudly offers to show me some scenes from the work in progress—mainly interviews and snippets from old family movies.
As he fiddles with his computer, my gaze drifts up to the framed poster above his desk, a grainy black and white photograph of the partisans. Below that, a color still from the film serves as wallpaper on his computer screen. On the opposite wall is a photo of Bielski with the cast and crew of Defiance on location in Lithuania. Also in the photo is his son Jordan Bielski, who plays one of the collaborators in the film—ironically "on the other team," as his father puts it. "Ed Zwick wanted a Bielski to be in the movie, for the spirit of the movie," he says.
Once he gets the DVD working, Bielski and I settle back to view the scenes. I can't help thinking that the family movies—shot at birthdays, bar mitzvahs, weddings and other events—could easily be my own family's films, captured on the old super-8 camera we all mugged for at every opportunity. I tell Bielski this and he laughs, saying, "Look at you getting all misty-eyed."
Then he becomes serious again, pointing out each person on the screen, putting names with the faces that look so much like the ones I grew up with. Robert Bielski at eight years old—minus a few pounds—is practically a dead ringer for my father at the same age. Once again it occurs to me that I might not even be here had it not been for the Jewish armed resistance that until recently I knew so little about.
When the documentary clips come to a close, Bielski shuts the laptop and turns back to me. "What else?" he asks, as I'm still digesting the footage I've just seen. Snapping out of my reverie, I ask him how he feels about Defiance coming out at the same time as other Holocaust movies, like Valkyrie. He replies, "They're different stories. I think that Defiance is more of an emotional film. I have seen the movie probably 25 times, from its first rough cut in April of last year. I've seen it in different versions until the final [cut] and the reaction is always the same: it gets a standing ovation with tears streaming down everybody's faces. That's the reaction. It's amazing."
Bielski himself hosted two screenings of the film: one for the entire Bielski family and one for the partisans and their descendents. Ed Zwick, the film's director, attended both screenings to gauge viewers' reactions.
"The family's reaction was amazing," Bielski says. "The characters were really dead on. They caught our parents' nuances. I provided some very private [family] films to them prior to production that the actors looked at. And they caught those mannerisms perfectly." He continues, "[The partisans] also were completely floored by the movie. Many of the partisans looked and they could not believe that the movie recreated [the experience] exactly the way it was."
Our time together is coming to a close. After I finish my last hasty notes, Bielski bids me adieu and I step back into the bustling New York streets. Crowds of people swarm around me as I head down Broadway, and I wonder how many of these people might be part of Tuvia Bielski's legacy.
Defiance opens in select theaters on December 31 and everywhere on January 16.
Image credit: Paramount Pictures, via About.com.
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