Partisan Twitter Book Club for Teens

Free Set Of Books For Participating Classrooms

Social Media to Engage Your Students
This Fall you can use social media to engage your students by connecting them with classes across the country to analyze and explore the new Jewish partisan memoir, If, By Miracle, by Michael Kutz.

The Twitter Book Club, a real-time online conversation – hosted and moderated by the Azrieli Foundation's Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program (HSMP) – brings reading alive through social media. Students share their research, reactions, and reports in class or after school. JPEF is providing classroom materials and joining forces with HSMP to supplement student conversations with links, "Ask the Expert" sessions, video testimonials, archival photos and other resources.

Participating classes receive free copies of If, By Miracle plus JPEF DVDs, curricula and posters. Optional JPEF online courses are also available for teachers and students.
The 2013 Book Club starts October 15th and is open-ended, so classes can join the conversation when their schedule allows. To get involved, contact Tim MacKay: tim@azrielifoundation.org

About the Book:
If, By Miracle is the gripping account of Jewish partisan Michael Kutz, who at age 10 narrowly escaped the Nazi death squad that murdered his family. Determined to survive, he became the youngest member of a partisan resistance group, taking part in daring operations against the Nazis and their collaborators.

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About Twitter Book Club
Students in participating classrooms can follow us @AzrieliMemoirs, using the hashtag #IfByMiracle, to immediately contribute their ideas and emotional responses to an ongoing dialogue, adding real-time creation and collaboration to the reading process. This social-reading initiative brings learning into a medium and setting in which today's students are confident and capable. It puts a host of relevant, intelligent and thought-provoking multimedia content at their fingertips, creating a dynamic new engagement with the survivor's story and Holocaust education.

• Twitter Book Club flier
• How to join the conversation
• Introduction to If, By Miracle
• Highlights from the 2012 Twitter Book Club

Tefillin being wrapped around Michael’s arm in preparation for his bar mitzvah. Jerusalem, 1990.

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Photo captions:
1. Michael at age thirteen in his hometown after liberation. Fourth from the left, he and the small group of Nieśwież survivors are standing in front of the town’s destroyed main synagogue. Nieśwież, circa 1944. Photo courtesy of Yad Vashem.

2. Michael (front row, on the right) with the partisans. Lodz, circa 1945.

Partisan Tools for Survival: Hidden Identities

For partisan groups, fighting the powerful and well-equipped German army in open combat was typically not an option. Partisans spent much of their time hiding from the enemy, and discovery of their whereabouts was a major, ever-looming threat. The Nazis used local spies, bribes, aerial surveillance, and forest sweeps to root out partisan groups hiding in the countryside, so the partisan had to constantly be on high alert.

Jewish partisans had to fear for their lives not just because they were fighting against the occupying army but because of their Jewish identity. All partisans¹ had to be wary of enemy bullets, lice and typhoid, and of leaving footprints in the fresh snow, but Jewish partisans faced an added threat. For many Jews, their accent, the way they looked or dressed, their unfamiliarity with non-Jewish society, and a myriad of subtle details marked them as "other". This otherness exposed them to mortal danger – and not just from the Nazis and their collaborators, but also from unfriendly members of the Armia Krajowa, antisemitic peasants, and (if they were in a mixed otriad) even their fellow partisans. (For more information on this subject, see our Antisemitism in the Partisans E-Learning course.)

Even a doctor's oath to "do no harm" was no guarantee of safety. After being wounded, Norman Salsitz had to seek treatment from a local doctor – a known antisemite. Norman's anecdote provides a stark illustration of the ever-present danger Jewish partisans found themselves in:

[We] went to the doctor and she said, “I have somebody who was wounded yesterday. He’s from the AK,” if he will look at me. He said yes. She brought me over and he started…he said, “Let down your pants.” So I was afraid that he does it purposely to see if I’m Jewish...I took out a hand grenade and I took out the pin and I said, “If you do something I will let the pin out and we all be killed.”

Identity was treated as a matter of life-and-death – not just by the Nazis, but also by most other groups hostile to the Jews as well, such as the various ultra-right wing nationalist groups in Poland, Ukraine, and the Balkans. Though many Jews lived in their own communities, segregated from the gentile population, they were nonetheless well-known by the locals, and could frequently be singled out by their accents², names that looked or sounded "Jewish", and appearance.

Norman Salsitz

Sonia Orbuch

Sonia Orbuch was born Sarah Shainwald, but the commander of her otriad made her change her given name to the more common and less Jewish-sounding Russian name Sonia – to keep her safe from antisemites. “Here there are no Sarahs,” he explained to her. To keep himself out of trouble in Moscow, Leon Senders concealed his Jewish identity by simply bleaching his hair with peroxide. Likewise, Ben Kamm excelled at smuggling food through the countryside because of his blue eyes and blond hair.

Ben Kamm

Leon Senders

Fluency in other languages helped many partisans avoid danger - particularly if they could speak without a Yiddish or foreign accent. Running away from his village after the Nazis rounded up all his classmates, 15 year old Joe Kubryk found work as a farmhand with a Ukrainian farmer who never suspected he was Jewish – all because Joe spoke fluent Ukrainian. Growing up in Metz on the northern border of France, Bernard Musmand learned to speak German in school at a young age. Later, while running dangerous missions as a courier for the Sixieme³, he used his fluency in German to dispel suspicions about his identity – usually, with a friendly request for the time or for a match.

Joe Kubryk

Bernard Musmand

Bernard was not only fluent in German – he was also well-versed in Catholicism, another useful instrument of disguise. When his family fled to southern France, he had to pose as a Catholic to attend the local boarding school. He was so diligent at keeping up appearances that the priests actually asked him if he was interested in going into the seminary. Leon Idas, a Greek partisan, grew up attending a private school run by the local Orthodox church. Consequently, he was able to use the religious knowledge he learned there to keep his Jewish identity secret when he joined the partisans.

Though Norman Salsitz was already a partisan, joining the AK was the only way he felt he could strike an effective blow against the Nazis – to do so was the patriotic duty of any able Pole. However, he could not do so without concealing his Jewish identity. He managed to join by assuming the name (and ID card) of another AK soldier. Along with Joseph Greenblatt, Norman is one of the many Jewish partisans who worked for the AK under an assumed Christian name. Norman’s allegiances were tested when a command was given to murder a group of Jews hiding on a farm. He volunteered for the mission – after killing his Polish companions, he rescued the Jews and fled to his original partisan unit. There are many other instances of Jews infiltrating the AK under Christian identities, acquiring rank and status, and using their power to help other Jews escape persecution and death.

Left: photo on Norman's ID card; right: the real Norman Salsitz.

Nazi Germany’s plans for the occupied territories included specific methods for singling out and isolating the Jews, such as the infamous yellow badges. When Frank Blaichman smuggled food through the countryside, his preferred method of disguise was to remove the badge from his clothing and hide it until he returned home. Though it may sound simple in hindsight, such an act was punishable by severe beatings, imprisonment, and even death. He could have easily been found out - travel permits were required for even the most routine trips out of town. Frank had no official documents, but he did have a backup: his fluency in Polish allowed him to talk his way out of trouble if he was ever stopped.

The falsification of identity papers was vital to the underground. Romi Cohn was instrumental in providing Jewish refugees with false documents that identified them as Christians. The forgeries were of a very high quality – a connection at the local Gestapo headquarters supplied him with German seals to stamp the documents. Working at an employment agency in the early 1940s, Eta Wrobel used her clerical skills to forge identity papers for Jews. Even the famed mime Marcel Marceau – himself a Jewish partisan – utilized his drawing skills to make false identity cards for Jewish children.

Eta Wrobel

Romi Cohn

Not surprisingly, a number of Jewish partisans served the cause as spies. Their combined skills – as forgers, as polyglots, as people used to living in a constant state of disguise – put them in a unique position. Even though he was only 15 at the time, Joe Kubryk was trained in the arts of espionage. While Leon Senders was valuable to Moscow as a radio operator, his real art was subterfuge. Leon's knowledge of German, Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian helped him fool his enemies and make new friends. He successfully built up a network of informants he used to acquire sensitive information that was instrumental in bombing the German supply lines. Wearing a tattered shepherd’s coat, Leon was so good at disguising himself he was once kicked out of a farmer’s house because a German officer, who wished to eat lunch there, objected to the presence of “Lithuanian swine” at his meal.

In a war where millions of civilians were murdered for no reason other than their identity – be it ethnic, religious, sexual, or political – the means and the opportunity to conceal and change it often meant the difference between life and death. Even the smallest adjustment could have major consequences: Leon Bakst’s father was a merchant, but when the SS asked for his occupation during the first roundup of the Jews in his hometown of Ivie, he simply answered “brush-maker”. He reasoned that the occupiers would have more use for a brush-maker than a merchant. He was correct: his life was spared that day.

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1. Out of the hundreds of thousands of partisans active during the war, only 20,000-30,000 were Jewish.
2. The primary language spoken in Eastern European shtetls was Yiddish, and though not unheard of, unaccented fluency in languages like Polish or Ukrainian was not common.
3. La Sixieme was the underground incarnation of Eclaireurs Israélites, a French Jewish scouting organization. The EI went underground in 1942 and became known as the “Sixth Bureau”, smuggling children and adults into Switzerland, hiding Jews, providing forged documents, and even taking part in battles for the liberation of France.

Featured Jewish Partisan - William Stern

“Hundreds of miles we walked ... barefoot in the snow for several weeks before I was able to take the shoes off a dead German soldier.”
–Bill Stern

Running in the dark, shoeless in the bitter cold, racked with fatigue and hunger, constantly afraid of being discovered, arrested yet again, or thrown back into the horrendous abyss constructed for the annihilation of his people – this was William Stern’s life for eight long years as he struggled to survive, enduring the horrors of concentration camps, incessant deprivation, and unimaginable existential terror. Yet Bill Stern prevailed, eventually joining a partisan group, surviving to see the end of the war, and immigrating to the United States.

William Kurt Stern spent his childhood in Austria, but his family fled to Yugoslavia when he was 13 years old, fearing the rise of Nazism in the region. However, Germany occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, and along with his parents, William was interned at the Kerestinec concentration camp. While at Kerestinec, he slept on the floor with “hundreds of rats scurrying... over us, under our blankets and over our faces”.

Kerestinec concentration camp

During the summer of 1941, William’s family was inexplicably taken from Kerestinec and herded onto a train traveling southward to Sarajevo and then into Montenegro. The journey was terrifying as they switched from train to truck, following narrow roads that were “so narrow and twisting that the driver had to back up to be able to make the turn…this caused the whole back of the truck to hang over the side of the road over an abyss”. William and his family again suffered through successive bouts of starvation and bleak conditions, as they were placed in old, abandoned buildings, heavily guarded by Italian forces. He explained, “Food was scarce even for the local population. Our primary food were figs, which we would pick off trees, when no one was looking”.

This went on for another year until June 1942, when William’s family heard about the chance to go to Split, a Yugoslavian town controlled by the Italians. At this time the Italians were withdrawing from occupied territory and would go to annexed areas such as Split. Since William and his family were under the Italian army’s control and the Italians controlled Split, they were able to obtain a “propusnica” (a travel permission document) to allow the family’s entrance. But they were betrayed by the Italian Carabinieri, who refused them entry and confiscated their precious travel document. But soon after they were denied entry into Split, they found a way to slip past the border police. When they finally arrived, they found shelter, and felt safe and happy for the first time in years.

However, their problems were far from over. Just hours later, the police appeared in the middle of the night and arrested William and his family on the spot. They were immediately thrown into a tiny jail cell with common criminals for twelve days where they had to “sleep on the floor, on one side just to fit. When one person turned everybody had to turn”. Throughout this tortuous experience, they suffered from dysentery and desperate hunger. He explained, “We were told that we were allowed to go to the toilet only twice a day, creating major problems for us”.

Finally in July 1942, the Italian army moved William and his parents out of the jail and shipped them off on a ferry to Dubrovnik, a southern city in Croatia. Before the Nazis seized the city in the autumn of 1943, it was occupied by the Italians. Though Jews were likely to be persecuted by the local ustashi – a Croatian fascist organization appointed by the Nazis to rule over occupied Yugoslavia and responsible for over a half a million murders of Jews, Roma, and Serbs – the Italians did not allow mass deportations, and many refugees fled to Dubrovnik during that period. However, dire starvation was also rampant. William describes scrounging for rotten fruit and cabbage leaves at the market place when the Italian army was not paying close attention. “It was so bad, that I only weighed forty two kilos (under a hundred pounds). I was sixteen years old and about 6ft. 2 inches tall. I was so thin that I could see my heart beat and looked like a skeleton”. Were it not for the nuns, who gave out a thin soup made of corn meal once a day, they would not have survived.

In the autumn of that year, the Germans successfully persuaded the Italians to round up Dubrovnik’s Jews, and in October 1942, William and his family were moved to Kupari, a concentration camp along the Adriatic coast operated by the Italian Carabinieri. Here they suffered through constant hunger and debilitating illness, all the while being expected to perform relentless hard labor. William’s mother became so sick the doctor declared that she would not survive. Thankfully, she recovered but did not regain her strength for a long time after.

Ultimately, Italy capitulated to the Allies in October 1943. After a year in the concentration camp, one day William and his family “woke up to find that all the watch towers and other military posts [of the concentration camp] were deserted… all the troops had left”. By now, William was 16 years old. Soon after, partisans from the mainland arrived to help relocate them from the concentration camp to liberated territory. It was important to be quick since “the Germans or even worse, the dreaded Ustashi were imminent”.

William, his parents, and several other people walked with the partisans for many hours through the countryside before arriving at a farm where they were allowed to stay. For the next six months, they stayed with the partisans in the same farmhouse, “simply sitting and waiting”. It was not uncommon for them to wake up in the morning to German air raids: “We were attacked by the Germans from the air. We heard a plane making circles around us, and then they started to drop bombs on us.”

The partisans fighting in Yugoslavia during this time were a unified body, led by commander Josip Broz Tito – no small feat for a region ravaged by nationalist bloodshed. After hiding out and dodging German air raids for half a year, William decided to join Tito’s partisan brigade. He remained an active member for a whole year, leaving his parents behind. To stay agile and light, his partisan group always consisted of 12 to 18 men and women who “were very nice people”. William said, “We went into areas that were dangerous, full of Nazis, and would kill as many as we could. When they went to fight back, we would go behind a tree and hide, and then fight back when the time was right”.

Eventually, in February 1945, William received a note from partisan command ordering him to go to Topusco. When he arrived there, he was lucky to rediscover his parents at the Rab concentration camp. Two months later William, his parents, and all other Jews from the concentration camp were transported by a British warship to Bari, Italy, where they were “deloused and disinfected”, free and safe after many long years. Since William spoke four different languages – English, Italian, Croatian, and German – he was hired as an interpreter for the British occupation. “They treated me very well. I could even wear one of their uniforms. They needed me for all the languages I could speak”.

William and his family wanted to go to the United States but were not allowed to immigrate for another three years. In March of 1948, they were finally given immigration visas and set off for New York on a Russian ship called “Rossia”. In New York, they were greeted by William’s uncle who instantly took them in and helped them to settle and find work. “The Jewish community was very guiding and supportive in helping me with starting my new life,” William recalls.

By the time he arrived in New York, he was 22 years old. His first priority was to catch up on the 10 years of education he had missed. He scored well on a high school equivalency test, and attended a university in New York. During his studies, he worked the night shifts as a hotel elevator operator, then a bus boy. With the help of the Tisch family, he eventually climbed his way up the ranks of the hotel industry, where he continued to work for another 42 years.

Despite his traumatic youth, William has successfully re-established himself in the U.S. Contributing factors to William’s success include his ability to learn languages and close family relationships that gave him purpose and support. He is the father of two children: Eric, who lives in the Bay Area; and Amy, who lives in Baltimore. William resides with his wife Joyce, just south of San Francisco.

Partisans In The Arts - Nandor Glid, Sculptor

Much of Nandor Glid’s story pre-World War II is a mystery to the public - perhaps in part because, like many, he lost all he knew in the Holocaust. Glid was born in Subotica, Yugoslavia (now Northern Serbia). While his family was sent to Auschwitz, he was deported to Szeged, Hungary, where he was forced to work at a labor camp. He managed to escape and join Tito's Yugoslav Partisans, who played a major role in driving German forces out of Yugoslavia. Glid was wounded in March 1945 during a battle in Bolman, Yugoslavia.

After the war, Glid was admitted into the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade where he studied sculpture, among other mediums. He won numerous awards and recognition for his highly expressive sculptures and graphics. Glid’s most recognizable work is the “International Monument”, which was picked out of other competitive entries to provide a memorial for the victims of the Dachau concentration camp. Glid’s strikingly composed sculpture was deemed the winner by judge Albert Guerisse, a Belgian Communist who was himself imprisoned at Dachau. Glid created the piece in 1959 and it was dedicated and implemented at the museum in 1968 where it stands today - an aptly arresting vision in front of the museum’s entrance:

“International Monument” at the Dauchau Museum

A talented sculptor, sketcher, and graphic artist, Glid continued to produce highly recognizable and expressive sculptures that speak loudly of his experiences, many of which are monuments scattered throughout the former Yugoslavia. Many of his works have been exhibited internationally. His final work was commissioned by the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece and dedicated to Jewish Holocaust Victims by the President of Greece in 1997. Glid was able to complete designs for the project, but passed away before he could begin the execution of the monument. Based on these plans, his son, Daniel, completed the bronze sculpture and it is now located near the pre-World War II Jewish quarter of Salonika, Greece - an area that lost 96% of its Jewish population during the war.

"One for Hundred" (1980). Sumarice Park, Kragujevac, Serbia

“Burning Menora” (dedicated in 1990). Overlooking the Danube, Dorcol, Serbia

Guest Blogger - Moshe Baran: Memories Revisited

Moshe Baran is a Polish-Jewish partisan who escaped from a labor camp near Krasne and joined a Russian partisan group. Now in his 90s, Moshe Baran lives in Pittsburgh, and devotes his time to speaking out about his experiences and the destructive power of hatred, which can have devastating consequences for society if left unchecked.

Moshe maintains an active blog entitled Languages Can Kill: Messages of Genocide, which focuses on hate speech and its consequences. We are proud to repost his reflections on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's 20th anniversary celebration, which he attended this spring:

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Memories Revisited

It is Monday, April 28, 2013 in Washington, DC, and we are approaching May 8, the 68th anniversary of the end of the war. The Holocaust Museum is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its opening. I am attending a salute to the veterans of WWII and Holocaust survivors, a gathering of more than 4000 people, among them 900 survivors and 150 veterans. We are assembled to witness the presentation of the flags of the American divisions who entered concentration camps in Germany and Austria. The Army orchestra plays as each unit enters with its flag and a voice announces the camps they liberated. Those who are present rise and applaud, my face and those around me flooding with tears of sorrow and pain mixed with tears of joy and pride in those who finally destroyed the beast of the 20th century. President Clinton, Elie Wiesel, teachers and students who are engaged in preserving the memory of the Holocaust are sharing their experiences.

As I stand there, my memory takes me back to January of 1945 when the Second Russian Army, of which I was part, moved west to seal the fate of Hitler’s thousand year Reich. We drove over recent battlefields where the remnants of vehicles were mixed with the remains of bodies. It takes me back to the summer of 1944 when the Russian army, after several years of fighting German hordes, advanced to the west and liberated Belarus and entered Poland. I was part of the resistance that was sabotaging the communications of the occupying forces. I remember the day in 1942 when I stole weapons from a German warehouse, escaped from the forced labor camp where I had been imprisoned for six months, found a group of local Jews who had sought shelter in the surrounding forests and swamps and joined the resistance. I recall the horrible time in the fall of 1941 when the Germans ordered us out of our ancestral homes and herded 300 families into 15 homes, separated by barbed wire from the rest of the town and guarded around the clock, deprived of access to food, water and basic necessities. There we waited knowing that we are doomed, trembling at the sound of mechanized vehicles that might signal the arrival of our fate. From behind the barbed wire we watched as our former neighbors went about their lives assembling in the church across the street to pray after they had been preying on us, performing weddings accompanied by the sound of music. My mind goes back to the good old days prior to 1939 when under Polish rule, in the midst of a Belarusian minority, we enjoyed a naively tranquil life in the shtetl, a village of 300 families, a rabbi, a Hebrew day school, a bank, a free loan association, and volunteers who cared for widows, orphans, and those just passing through. That all came to an end when the Red Storm from the east and the Nazi hell that eventually engulfed all of Europe from the west converged in our place.

I move back towards the present, recalling a visit to an extermination camp in Poland in 2004 accompanied by my son-in-law Paul and grandsons Yossi and Boaz. After stepping out of the barracks where we saw compartments with childrens’ shoes, clothing, and luggage marked from various countries, Paul went outside, sat on the steps and burst into tears. He cried and cried, lacking words, and expressing in the only way he could the despair that he felt.

What is the responsibility of those of us who survived, and those who witnessed the liberation of the concentration camps? It is to share our memories with as wide an audience as possible. We are the last of those who can tell the story in the first person, who can bear personal witness to the destruction of an entire culture. It is painful for us to reach the point in life where the world is so unsettled, where killings and bombings are a daily occurrence. We hoped that WWII would be the end of all wars, but today we live in a world where the institutions of peace are paralyzed and where war is an everyday event, an unremarkable item in the news over which we shake our heads.

In the great economic turmoil of the last few years, there is one bright spot. Israel, the bright and beautiful child of the tragedy of WWII, the dream of a people who were nearly destroyed, has emerged unscathed, one of only five countries that continued to grow and prosper during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. We pray and hope that the example set by Israel will serve as a beacon to humankind.

Click here to view the original post on Moshe's blog.

Oakland School for the Arts Students Respond to Talk Given by Jewish Partisan Murray Gordon

Across the nation, every year, students in high schools read Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” However, few students are introduced to the history of the Jewish partisans alongside such popular pieces of Holocaust literature. A great way to introduce students to this parallel history is through a letter-writing project. Using JPEF’s biographies and first-person video testimonials by Jewish partisans, students can respond to these materials with a letter to a partisan expressing their general reflections and feelings; or they can respond to a specific teacher-generated prompt – for example, “if you could interview your partisan, what questions would you ask them?”

One class at the Oakland School for the Arts last May had the opportunity to ask Jewish partisan Murray Gordon their questions face-to-face. They heard the first-hand account of his experience as a partisan during the war: about his escape from the ghetto, joining a Lithuanian partisan group, sabotaging German supply trains and a narrow miss with a Nazi bayonet. Afterwards, a few students got a chance to ask him questions directly.

Hearing Gordon’s story helped students make the connection between present and past. Students were deeply engaged and their letters expressed thanks for his talk, sharing that Gordon was their “new hero,” and that they would like to continue his “fight for equality.” One student letter included the following sentiment, “I admire your selflessness and the fight for the freedom of your people.”

Encourage your students to make a personal connection to a Jewish partisan by assigning them to read a JPEF biography and watch the accompanying video testimonial clips. Ask students to write letters to Jewish partisans describing their reaction to these stories of resistance. Even if a student’s chosen partisan might no longer be alive, it's still a great theoretical exercise, and if students choose a living partisan they can send the letters directly to their partisans through JPEF. Submit your stories to us and we may post them on our blog!

Forced Remorse and the de-Nazification of German Society

May 8th marked the 68th anniversary of the Allied victory against Nazi Germany. Though the theater of war had closed, the liberating armies – and the rest of the world – experienced a new kind of shock and horror as evidence of a carefully planned, technologically sophisticated genocide against European Jews and other groups began to emerge.
“The things I saw beggar description,” wrote Eisenhower in a cable to Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, describing his reaction to his visit to the Ohrdruf concentration camp:

The visual evidence and verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, [US General] George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.’

Eisenhower was deeply shaken by this experience, and soon after, requested that a delegation comprised of congress members and journalists see for themselves what he saw. Not long after the world learned the terrible truth, the inevitable question was asked: what did the German people know of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews and when?

A German girl walks by the exhumed bodies of prisoners from the Flossenberg concentration camp

“How many people heard or read the reports (about the murder of European Jews) and to what extent the reports were believed and their meaning grasped…is impossible to ascertain.”¹ The Allies, conscious of the role Goebbles and his powerful propaganda machine had in keeping the public supportive of the regime, decided to confront the German people with visual evidence of Nazi crimes – the program included compulsory visits to nearby concentration camps, posters displaying dead bodies of prisoners hung in public places, and forcing German POWs to view films documenting the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. It also included the removal of all remnants of Nazism from public life - including the removal of anyone affiliated with the Nazi party from public offices, teaching posts, and any other positions of influence over society. This was also the first time in history that propaganda was treated as an instrument of war crimes, with prominent Nazi propagandists put on trial and convicted alongside other senior party officials at the Nuremberg tribunals².
This is not to say that there was no debate over these forced viewings. The displayed footage did provoke discussion among the POWs and the German population, albeit with unintended consequences: wary of being manipulated by images and media again, many Germans argued that it was the Allies who were now tricking them with their propaganda. “They showed us ghastly photos of corpses piled up in the concentration camps,” writes diarist Ursula Von Kardoff, a native of southern Germany, “But the people here who saw them said that they were really pictures of the bombing of Dresden. This is the result of Goebbles’s propaganda. These people no longer believe anything and mistrust everything and everybody.”
James Agee, American author, screenwriter and film critic, made the point in his May 19, 1945 article for the Nation that the forced viewing of these films and sites of atrocities was a method to pin the guilt on the whole of the German people, justifying what he called a “hard peace” against them. Ultimately, he argues against a passion for vengeance because it is:

…a terrifyingly strong one, very easily and probably inevitably wrought up by such evidence, even at our distance. But however well aware I am of its strength, and that in its full immediate force and expression it is in some respects irrelevant to moral inquiry, I doubt that it is ever to be honored, or regarded as other than evil - and in every direction fatally degrading and destructive; even when it is obeyed in hot blood or in a crisis of prevention; far worse when it is obeyed in cold blood and in the illusion of carrying out justice.

The photos below give two perspectives on one such viewing in which German POWs on American soil are forced to watch scenes from concentration camps. The photographs are taken at different angles: one depicts the back of the POWs’ heads, so that they are faceless, leaving only the projected image on the screen to provide context; the other depicts only the faces of the POWs as they react to the footage.

The two photographs and this old newsreel video are an excellent springboard for discussion regarding the role of propaganda in shaping war memory, and the role and responsibility of victors in the stabilization and reconstruction of societies ravaged by war and conflict. In the larger context of the Allied efforts to rebuild Germany, these programs of "forced remorse" point to the social complexities of post-war reconstruction: the balance between the need to teach the truth about the horrors of genocide in hopes of creating a stable society and an immediate imperative to satisfy the need for justice or even vengeance.

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1. P. 142, State of Deception: the Power of Nazi Propaganda, Steven Luckert and Susan Bachrach; published by USHMM in conjunction with an exhibit by the same name, 2009-2011.
2. The most prominent among them - Julius Streicher, editor of the rabidly anti-Semitic Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer, which routinely printed explicit calls for the death of Jews - was sentenced to hang.

Ask A Partisan Q&A - Frank Blaichman

JPEF executive director Mitch Braff had a chance to record a short Q&A session with former Jewish partisan platoon commander Frank Blaichman while visiting at his home in New York City. The questions all came from the Ask A Partisan section of our website, where students submit questions to be answered later by a panel of Jewish partisans – including Blaichman. Here are some of his responses:
Q1. So was it difficult to go back to normal life after the war?

Q2. What did you learn in the resistance about dealing with other people?

Q3. Were there kids born and raised in the resistance environment? Was this allowed?


To learn more about Frank Blaichman, you can download the JPEF study guide on the Curriculum Page of the site, or read his memoir, "Rather Die Fighting"

New JPEF Resources For 2013

Ideal for Days of Remembrance / 70th Anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Revolt

April 19, 2013 marks the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, where the vastly outnumbered Jewish underground managed to force the German army outside of the walls of the ghetto, holding them off for over three weeks (two weeks longer than the German invasion of France).

Most students don't realize that the astonishing story of the Warsaw revolt was more than just an isolated incident and represents only a few of the millions of acts of Jewish resistance that occurred each day of the Holocaust, forming a vast pattern of Jewish defiance in the face of genocide.

JPEF recently released two new lessons to help you dramatically teach your students about the broad spectrum of Jewish armed and unarmed resistance. We also have four new e-learning courses and other resources that you can use during Yom HaShoah v’HaGevurah (April 7, 2013) and the National Days of Remembrance (April 7-14).

Two New Lessons

(available at www.jewishpartisans.org/elearning and www.jewishpartisans.org/resist)

Tactics of Resistance: Give your students tools to analyze conflict and make better choices in how they respond to aggression in their own lives. Includes:

• The ‘Resistance Matrix’, a framework for analyzing historical and current events throughout the rest of the school year
• Jewish Resistance Slideshow of archival images (accessible via e-learning - can be used with or without the lesson)

Strengthening Jewish Pride: Transform student perceptions and foster a more positive sense of Jewish identity

• Can be used in as little as 30 minutes
• Includes resources for integrating this transformative lesson into nearly any Jewish context (History, Holidays, B’nai Mitzvah/Youth Groups, etc.)

Free Online Professional Development

Four New Teacher Trainings to help you use these and other lessons:

• Finding Leadership (taking initiative to make a positive difference)
• Ethics of War (includes a short play to read in-class)
• Tactics of Resistance
• Strengthening Jewish Pride

Improved Interface - faster, easier to use
Free CE Units for New Jersey educators; more locations coming soon
Now accessible via iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices

Additional Recommended Resources:

Putting the Gevurah Back into Yom HaShoah — The full name of this Remembrance Day, and the way it is marked in Israel, is Yom HaShoah v'HaGevurah - Holocaust and Heroism Day. The two are mentioned as one. Click the link to learn more.

New partisan profiles:

• Leon Bakst
• Charles Bedzow
• Leah Johnson
• Allen Small

USHMM Days of Remembrance — Information for teachers and events, including DVD of remembrance planning resources.

We Fought Back — New young adult nonfiction reader from Scholastic books; features several partisans from the JPEF website.

Beyond Courage — A well-researched and visually rich new text on resistance during the holocaust for young adult researchers.

Guest Blogger – Moshe Baran: A Journey Into Memory

Moshe Baran is a Jewish partisan from the town of Horodok, located in present-day southwestern Ukraine but belonging to Poland prior to the war. (View a video of pre-war life in the Horodok shtetl here.) Moshe was in his early 20s when the Nazis rounded up the Jews in Horodok and sent him to a labor camp near Krasne, where he worked grueling 12-hour shifts laying railroad ties and survived on bread crust and potato peel soup.

Having heard about the resistance movement – and the price of admission in the form of a weapon - he was eventually able to assemble a gun from scrap parts he managed to obtain with the aid of friends. He eventually escaped and joined a Russian partisan battalion, where he mined roads, planned ambushes, and set fires in the woods to mark airdrop spots. Moshe was also able to arrange the rescue of his mother, brother, and sister, which was a truly fortunate and rare occurrence for his situation. After the Russians liberated the region in ‘44, he was conscripted into the Red Army – but was spared the uncertain fate of the front lines, thanks to his bookkeeping skills.

After the war, he ended up at a DP camp in Linz, Austria; there, he met his wife Malka, a survivor of the Treblinka concentration camp. They married in the newly-formed state of Israel and emigrated to New York City in 1954. Now in his 90s, Moshe Baran lives in Pittsburgh, and devotes his time to speaking out about his experiences and the destructive power of hatred, which can have devastating consequences for society if left unchecked.

We are honored to re-post the following blog post from Moshe’s blog, Languages Can Kill: Messages of Genocide:

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A Journey Into Memory

I had the privilege on January 9 to be interviewed for a documentary on the subject of Jewish resistance during the Second World War in Belarus. The documentary is being produced by Julia Mintz for national release later this year. During the interview, she led me to recount stories of the period prior to the War in the 1930s when the Nazis took power in Germany and began their hate campaign against the Jews. Even when the hate campagain eventually spilled over into Poland, in Belarus in the east where I lived at the time, I did not experience any blatant anti-semitism. The Belarus were a minority in Poland, and we Jews were a minority among them. So there was generally an amiable relationship among the population.

In the process of the interview for the documentary, I recalled that the news of what was going on in Germany and in western Poland certainly had reached us at the time. But as it is in human nature, unless one experiences something oneself, it not was easy to believe that what we were hearing could affect us directly. As with most ordinary people, we were simply naive enough to rely upon the humanity of our fellow humans. This proved to be a great disappointment, to put it mildly.

When words of hate are being disseminated we need to take it very seriously. There is never room for complacency, even when it seems that we ourselves are safe and unlikely to be affected by such speech. Words of hate lead to acts of hate, acts of hate lead to atrocities and genocide. We did not believe at the time that the words we were hearing could affect us in such a short time. But hate has no borders: those words did affect us, and they eventually affected the entire world.

“Love blinds us to faults, hatred to virtues” — Moshe Ibn Ezra

Click here to view the original post on Moshe's blog.

Jewish Partisan Morris Sorid (z''l) Passes Away

Last month, the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation mourned the passing of Jewish partisan Morris Sorid.

Born Moshe Yudewitz, he worked in Pruzany, Poland as a respected educator; by the time the Nazis invaded in 1940, he was living with his wife Regina and their young daughter, Tsveeyah. Having already confined them to a ghetto, the Nazis began the systematic deportation of Pruzany’s 10,000 Jews on January 27, 1943. Realizing that their best chance for survival lay in escape, Morris and Regina tearfully left Tsveeyah in the care of her grandparents several days later and hid in a bunker underneath their home. After 18 days, they escaped the ghetto and found temporary refuge in the home of a Catholic farmer, who risked his life to harbor them.

Shortly after, Morris and Regina began their odyssey in the forests of the Bilaloviez Wilderness; after wandering for about a week, they met and were accepted into the Russian Chapayev Brigade. With five detachments, the Chapayev Brigade was part of the larger Malenkovah Otriad.

A trained midwife, Regina treated the sick and the wounded. Morris participated in various acts of armed resistance, from securing food to blowing up bridges. By November 1943, he was appointed Deputy Commander of the Malenkovah Otriad. Morris and Regina were liberated from the forest in July 1944 and their first son was born just two months later. They named him Victor, as a remembrance of their liberation.

Morris Sorid (far left) in Munich, Germany with other survivors, 1948.

After the war, Morris and Regina learned that their daughter and the rest of the family had perished in Aushwitz. They spent several years in a DP camp in Germany before emigrating to the United States in 1948 and settling in Brooklyn. Morris changed the family name to Sorid, a variation of the Hebrew word for survivor “sarad”. He worked long hours to provide for his family, which by now included a second son Harvey. At 95 years old, Morris penned his memoir titled "One More Miracle." Eventually relocating to Far Rockaway, Morris achieved fame in October 2012 as the oldest evacuee from Hurricane Sandy and his story was the subject of many news articles. Read another article about his remarkable life on Philly.com.

Morris passed away on January 14, 2013, just shy of his 102nd birthday. The board and staff of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation extend their deepest condolences to the entire Sorid Family. May Morris’ memory be a blessing.

Educator Guest Blog: JPEF Web Quest by Debra Bella

Debra Bella, an educator from Robbinsville High School in New Jersey, created a web quest for her students using materials found on our main website. Students follow the prompts, answering the questions as they go along. Debra was kind enough to send us the directions for the web quest, which can be downloaded as a PDF here, along with the answer sheet.

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Jewish Partisans Webquest

DIRECTIONS: Go to the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation
www.jewishpartisans.org

Use the website to complete the web quest about Jewish partisans. Read the directions carefully. Write all responses on the answer sheet.

PART 1 — SOMEONE LIKE ME

Under Explore on the toolbar → select Someone Like Me.

• Answer the questions. Select one of the photos that remain and read the short biography about the person. (If no picture remains, change your response(s) until one or more picture(s) appear.) There are 2 pages to the biography section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom.
• Use the toolbar to look at the images. Use the toolbar to watch the video.
  1. What is the name of the person you researched? Male/Female? Age?
  2. Describe their activities as a partisan.
  3. What impressed you the most?
  4. What question would you ask them if you could?

PART 2 — PARTISANS

Click Explore on the small toolbar → select WHAT is a Partisan? There are 2 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom.

• Read about Jewish partisans and the varied forms of resistance.
  5. How is a partisan defined?
  6. What were some ways Jews resisted? Do you think these were effective resistance methods? Why or why not?

On the small toolbar, select WHO Were the Jewish Partisans? There are 2 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom.

7. Describe who the partisans were.
8. What percentage were women?
9. Which partisan group took families with young children?
10. Click on the name Frank Blaichman. There are 2 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom. How old was he when he joined the resistance? Describe his role as a partisan. Use the toolbar to watch the video.
    Frank said, “The reality was we had nothing to lose, and our way to survive was to fight.” Do agree or disagree with his statement? Why or why not?

On the small toolbar, select WHEN did the Partisans Fight? There are 2 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom.

• Read about the fighting.
  11. When and where was the first known partisan fighting?

On the small toolbar, select WHERE did the Partisans Fight? There are 2 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom.

• Read about the where the partisans fought.
  12. The partisans fought in almost every country in Europe. Where did they hide?
  13. Click on the name Gertrude ‘Gertie’ Boyarski. Describe her role as a partisan. What impressed you the most?

On the small toolbar, select WHY did the Partisans Fight?

• Read about the reasons why people chose to fight.
  14. Click on the name Sonia Orbuch. There are 2 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom. How old was she when she joined the resistance? Describe her role as a partisan. Use the toolbar to watch the video. What impressed you the most about Sonia?

On the small toolbar, select HOW did the Partisans Accomplish Their Goals? There are 2 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom.

• Read about how the partisans fought against the Nazis.
  15. What advantages did the partisans have over the Nazis?
  16. What is anti-Semitism?
  17. Do you think it was ethical for the partisans to steal what they needed? Defend your response.

PART 3 — VIRTUAL UNDERGROUND BUNKER

Click Explore on the toolbar → select Virtual Underground Bunker.

• Read about the underground bunkers.
  18. 18. Use the virtual camera to explore the inside of the zemlyankas. Describe what you see.
  19. Using the toolbar, select More About the Zemlyankas. There are 3 pages to this section. To advance to the next page, use the arrow located on the right bottom. Read about them. Would you be able to live like this? Why or why not?

PART 4 — PERSONAL REACTION

Based on all that you have learned, write a personal reaction. Your paragraph must have 5 to 7 sentences.

Armia Krajowa (AK) and the Jewish partisans

Over the years, there has been heated debate among Polish and Jewish academics over the treatment of Polish Jews by the Armia Krajowa (AK) during the war and the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation recently found itself in the midst of this controversy.
The Armia Krajowa, “Home Army”, was the largest underground resistance group in Poland, with an estimated 250,000-400,000 members. The group conducted sabotage and intelligence operations against the Germans. One of its main purposes was to fill the power vacuum in Poland that would inevitably follow Germany’s defeat with a nationalist Polish group. Originally, the AK planned to attack the Germans only upon their impending retreat.
It should be understood that Jewish resistance and Polish non-Jewish resistance were working under two different and conflicting time pressures. Ghettoized Jews had only until deportation to rise in arms, whether or not they had a chance for victory; otherwise it would be too late and they would be killed. The AK could wait until there was a chance for victory, until the Soviet army was within range. While individual Poles were being persecuted and the Polish nation decimated, there was no plan to murder all the Poles and they could choose when and where to battle the Germans.
Leading up to World War II, Poland experienced an increase in antisemitic sentiment following the 1935 death of its politically moderate Chief of State Jozef Pilsudski, and the subsequent rise of the nationalistic Endejca party which enacted a wide array of antisemitic laws aimed at disenfranchising the Jews and confiscating their property. Cultural differences also played a role in inciting antisemitism. In rural areas, Jews primarily spoke Yiddish and many Poles regarded this as their refusal to assimilate, a sign of disloyalty to Poland. The influx of Jewish refugees fleeing the Ukraine further accelerated antisemitism among Poles who feared that they brought Bolshevist and Communist elements with them.
Antisemitism predictably arose among nationalist groups including the AK. Virulent antisemitism was especially prevalent among the partisan contingent of the group (2,500 – 3,000 armed fighters), many of whom came from the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ), a Polish, anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi paramilitary organization, where there was already a strong undercurrent of antisemitism. There were also many members of the AK who, unaffected by this prejudice, took action to help the Jews. The famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal credits the AK with sheltering his wife during the war and there are other documented instances of friendly AK commanders helping Jewish partisan units in their area – even warning them of pending danger¹.

Soldiers of the Armia Krajowa, 27th Division

JPEF acknowledges the honorable actions of individuals in the AK, but must also describe the antisemitic violence perpetrated by others within the organization. Over the years, it has conducted numerous interviews with Jewish partisans from Poland who routinely spoke of antisemitic actions directed at them and other Jews by the AK. Abe Asner reported that the AK often posed a greater threat to the Jewish partisans than the Nazis, as their familiarity with the forests and with local residents put them in a better position to locate Jews. Rose Holm stated that she escaped post-war Poland with her husband because of the AK’s continued reprisals against the surviving Jewish population. The survivor testimonies of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw also contain a number of references to the danger the AK posed to Jews in hiding, and of a prevailing air of antisemitism in the group. These testimonies were collected in the years 1945-1946, and are not affected by revisionists. View JPEF’s short film Antisemitism in the Partisans, narrated by Larry King, for more details.
The AK holds a near-sacred position in the hearts and minds of many Poles, representing their national counterpart to the Allied struggle – much like La Résistance does for the French. Questioning its treatment of Jews undoubtedly assails its credibility as a national icon, resulting in the failure to acknowledge this chapter of the AK’s history and the outright refusal to admit that many of its factions were not only antisemitic but engaged in the persecution and killing of Jews. When even the popular internet encyclopedia Wikipedia ignores this fact, and labels it “disputed”, it is incumbent upon the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation to ensure historical accuracy on its website.
JPEF’s glossary definition of the AK was developed through both extensive historical research and interviews with surviving Jewish partisans who interacted with the AK. While we understand that JPEF’s description of the AK may upset both surviving members and their families, we present the truth as best as we are able to discern from both written documentation and partisan testimony. JPEF acknowledges that there were many members of the AK who helped rescue Jews and collaborated with Jewish partisans to fight against the Germans and holds these honorable men and women in high esteem. We also hold the cause of the AK, the battle against German occupation, in equally high esteem.
Click here to see the definition of the Armia Krajowa on our glossary page.

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1. War Of The Doomed, Ch.6, p.132

People who resisted - Sophie Schwartz

When the French police arrested more than 13,000 Parisian Jews at the behest of Germany during a massive raid on July 16, 1942, Sophie Schwartz-Micnic took action to protect as many children as possible. She and her fellow resistors provided hundreds of children with fake identities and hid them with host families, saving their lives.

René Goldman and
Sophie Schwartz in 1959

René Goldman, himself a rescued child currently living in Canada, is the author of a book on Sophie’s fascinating life story. In Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle dernier: Sophie Schwartz-Micnic, 1905-1999, he tells the story of a woman who he considers to be his adoptive mother.

Sophie Schwartz was born in 1905, in an area of Poland belonging to the Russian Empire at the time. She grew up in a well-off, Orthodox Jewish family with her seven siblings. Horrified by the Great War, she became interested in politics at age 13 and joined the youth section of the Bund, a secular Jewish socialist party. When she turned 15, her parents could not afford to send her to school anymore, so Sophie started working in a curtain factory, where she joined a union. These were the beginnings of her involvement in activism, which would continue for most of her life.

At age 19, her father banned her from political activism after she was briefly arrested. She defied him and left the family house for an autonomous life, emigrating to western Europe, far away from her parents’ worries.

Sophie would never see her parents again; they perished with three of her siblings in 1942 after they were deported.

In 1927, after spending some time in Holland, Sophie emigrated to Belgium. At once, she got involved in both Jewish and communist organizations, including the Kultur-Liga, where she met the like-minded Leizer Micnik, her future husband. Leizer’s involvement in a trade union would later force them to leave Belgium and immigrate to France. He was arrested and handed off to the Germans by the French police in 1942, never to be seen again.

During her lifetime, Sophie was very devoted to the Jewish community, and to all deprived families in general. When World War II broke out, she immediately took part in the underground: she headed a committee to aid women whose husbands were taken by the police and ran an illegal printing shop producing Yiddish pamphlets and false identity cards. The soul of her work, however, became saving Jewish children, and she created several homes for those who had lost their families. After the aforementioned July raid – known as the infamous Vel' d'Hiv Roundup – she worked tirelessly to smuggle hundreds of children into hiding among the peasantry. The following year, she organized a daring operation to rescue children from the asylums set up by the UGIF¹, escorting 63 of them out of the facilities by female underground members posing as relatives. She eventually became the head of the CCE (Central Commission for Children) that reportedly supported several hundreds of children – 450 of them in 1949 alone.

Children of deported Jews, in a UGIF facility

In several passages of the book, she argues that being Jewish pushed her into believing in communism; she actually saw this as a hope for equal rights and a better life, not only for the Jews, but for all mankind. Though she would become ideologically disillusioned following her awareness of Stalin’s crimes and her subsequent expulsion from Poland in 1968, it is obvious that the various organizations she took part in gave her an effective network and resources that she could rely on to assist the many operations she organized to save lives and, after the war, make this world a better place to live.

After being expelled from Poland, she spent the rest of her life back in France, surrounded by her old friends and fellow underground members. Because of her past with the resistance, she obtained a residence permit, and then French nationality. René Goldman, the author of her biography, kept in touch with her as she became older, up until her death in 1999 at age 93. He was called upon to read an eulogy at her funeral.

According to René Goldman, Sophie never gave up her optimism and her generosity, even after the many disillusions she went through. He states, “Throughout her life, she had not only the courage of her ideas, but the courage and intellectual probity to recognize that it was wrong to believe in an ideology that was a serious and sad mistake.” He adds: “Sophie was an example of unity of thought and action, which, according to the teaching of Judaism, is the essence of integrity.”

*“Tout au long de sa vie, elle avait eu non seulement le courage de ses idées, mais aussi ce même courage et la probité intellectuelle de reconnaître qu'elle avait eu tort de croire en une idéologie qui fut une grave et triste erreur.” L’auteur ajoute:“Sophie avait été un exemple d'unité de la pensée et de l'action, unité qui, au regard de l'enseignement du judaïsme, est l'essence même de l'intégrité.”

Sophie Schwartz-Micnic accompanying a group of children on a train in 1947.

Reference: “Une femme juive dans les tourmentes du siècle dernier: Sophie Schwartz-Micnic, 1905-1999”, AGP : Paris, 2006.

— Written By Isaline Jaccard

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1. The UGIF – or L'Union générale des israélites de France – was an organization created by French law in 1941 at the behest of occupying Germany. Its main purpose was to take control of all other Jewish organizations, social agencies, philanthropies – including their assets – and to oversee the administration of Jewish affairs while taking their cues from the Vichy regime and the Nazis. In effect, they were France’s nationwide equivalent to the Judenrat councils set up in the ghettoes of eastern Europe.

Happy Thanksgiving From JPEF!

Allen and his childhood friend Leon Bakst were reunited for the first time in over 65 years at the November 2011 Jewish partisan reunion in NYC. While their meeting is the focus of JPEF's newest documentary film The Reunion, it was not the only life-altering experience Allen had at this event. He was surprised to reconnect with Judith Ginsburg, another fellow partisan who, unbeknownst to Allen, has been living in Florida a short distance from his home for many years. Since November 2011, the Ginsburg and Small families have celebrated many happy occasions together – including Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

Allen Small and Judith Ginsburg at the 2011 Partisan Reunion in NYC.

Allen credits the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation with bringing him new family members on this holiday of Thanksgiving and is grateful for the blessings that have come to him since last November. JPEF, in turn, is grateful for Allen for having stood up against the forces of evil and oppression at an incredibly young age – and for sharing his story with us, which you can read on the JPEF Partisan Pages, where new short biographies have been posted for Allen Small and his friend Leon Bakst.

Stay tuned for two more new biographies on our partisan pages after the holiday weekend!