Mourning the Loss of Jewish Partisan Benjamin Levin

We went on actions, like cutting telephone poles. A bridge - to destroy something. They always liked to go with me because I knew the forest, and had the instinct in the forest - how to move and where to go and what's going on.
— Benjamin Levin

Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Levin escaped execution when Germany invaded his hometown of Vilna in July 1941. A plucky young man, accustomed to running around the streets with his friends, he knew the area well and managed to evade Nazi capture during the first weeks of the occupation.
Tipped off by friends, Benjamin and his family fled from the village before the Vilna ghetto was erected, but they later returned during what they perceived to be a period of relative calm. Unfortunately, this calm was short lived and violence against the Jews continued to erupt. Deciding that it was not safe to remain in Vilna, Benjamin’s father Chaim encouraged him to escape to the woods with a group of other young Jews, and join the fighting partisan units.
Benjamin and his companions joined a brigade composed of Jews, Russians, Poles and Lithuanians, led by an old forester whose expertise kept the city boys alive. Upon the complete liquidation of the ghetto, other survivors from Vilna joined them.
Although he was a teenager, Benjamin knew the forests well and was well acquainted with the customs of the local peasants. These traits made him a valuable asset to the group on food and supply raids, and on missions to destroy bridges.

While Benjamin survived the war, and witnessed the liberation of Vilna, sadly the Nazis and their collaborators killed his parents and older brother. After the war, he made aliyah to Israel where he married and had two children.
Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Benjamin Levin, including five videos of him reflecting on his time as a partisan. The NY Post featured Benjamin in a April 2017 article.

Benjamin passed away on April 13, 2020.

Afraid to Eat, Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman Risked Her Life Observing Passover

"Every picture has a story. This is a picture when I was accepted into the Partisans but many Jewish people escaped from ghettos, from concentration camps and they were not accepted in the Partisans because they had families. They had little children, so they were in in the woods hiding. But the Partisans had an obligation and they felt they should do it to bring them and to bring them to deliver to them some food so they would survive even without joining the Partisans."
— Faye Schulman.

Faye Schulman was born to a large family on November 28, 1919 in Lenin, Poland. She learned photography from her brother Moishe and assisted him in his photography business. On August 14, 1942, the Germans killed 1,850 Jews from the Lenin ghetto, including Faye's parents, sisters and younger brother. They spared only 26 people that day, among them was Faye for her photographic abilities. The Germans ordered Faye to develop their photographs of the massacre. Secretly, she also made copies for herself.

During a partisan raid, Faye fled to the forests and joined the Molotava Brigade, a partisan group made mostly of escaped Soviet Red Army POWs. She was accepted because her brother-in-law had been a doctor and they were desperate for anyone with experience in medicine. Faye served the group as a nurse from September 1942 to July 1944, even though she had no previous medical experience, assisting the camp’s doctor, a veterinarian.

During a raid on Lenin, Faye succeeded in recovering her old photography equipment. During the next two years, she took over a hundred photographs, developing the medium format negatives under blankets and making “sun prints” during the day. On missions Faye buried the camera and tripod to keep it safe. Her photos show a rare side of partisan activity – one is of a funeral scene where two Jewish partisans are being buried alongside Russian partisans, despite the intense antisemitism in the group. In another image, Schulman and three young Jewish men smile joyously after an unexpected reunion in the forest—each believing that the other had been killed.
"I want people to know that there was resistance. Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.” She is the only known Jewish partisan photographer.
After liberation, Faye married Morris Schulman, another Jewish partisan. Faye and Morris enjoyed a prosperous life as decorated Soviet partisans, but wanted to leave Pinsk, Poland, which reminded them of a "graveyard." Morris and Faye lived in the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camps in Germany for the next three years, and immigrated to Canada in 1948.

Today Faye lives in Toronto, Canada and shares her experiences with diverse audiences. She has two children and six grandchildren.
The photographs she took during the war have been turned into a traveling photography exhibition entitled Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photography of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman. The exhibit is produced by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation and curated by Jill Vexler, Ph.D. In 2010, her book A Partisan's Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust was published.
Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Faye Schulman, including six videos of her reflecting on her time as a partisan and information about the Pictures of Resistance exhibit.