Miriam Brysk – born March 10, 1935 –Child Holocaust Survivor and Partisan

 

Miriam (Mirka) Miasnik Brysk was born on March 10, 1935, in Warsaw, Poland. She was the only child of Bronka and Dr. Chaim Miasnik, and her parents affectionately called her by her nickname “Mirele.” She grew up on Zelazna Street, with her father’s medical office adjoining their apartment. Her father was a well-known and respected surgeon, an occupation that would later save their lives. She received much love and attention from her extended relatives and grandparents, and she grew especially close to her maternal Aunt Ala, who lived nearby.

When the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Miriam was four years old. The Russians urged able-bodied men to cross into Soviet-occupied Poland. Her father and uncles had gone ahead to Lida, where the family planned to reunite. After Poland fell to the Nazis, Miriam, her mother, and Aunt Ala fled for the border that partitioned German-occupied and Soviet-occupied Poland. They arrived in Lida, where they reunited with Miriam’s father and her uncles, Sevek and Tadek. Despite the chaos around her, Miriam felt comfortable in Lida. She enjoyed nature, picking delicious crisp apples from the orchard in the fall and juicy berries in the summer. Miriam felt she didn’t lack for anything, except that she desperately missed her grandparents in Warsaw.

In the summer of 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. Once again, Miriam heard the roaring of low-flying planes, this time over Lida. They invaded in the early morning; her father and uncles had already left for work. As flames engulfed the city, Miriam, her mother, and Aunt Ala fled to the outskirts of town. After the fires died down, the trio returned to their home which was miraculously still standing. Miriam was overjoyed to be reunited with her father and uncles. However, the retreating Soviet Army ordered able-bodied men to report for military duty. Failure to report was punishable by death. Miriam’s Uncle Sevek had received a call-up notice and was forced to report for service.

The Germans bombed Lida again, this time with greater fury as their grip tightened around the city. On Friday, June 27, 1941, German ground troops entered the city. The following day, the Gestapo SS and SD stormtroopers were sent to kill the Jews of Lida. Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David on their clothing, and anti-Jewish decrees were enforced. Jewish professionals were ordered to come forward and identify themselves. While this group included Miriam’s father, he was spared from death. He was a surgeon and therefore “useful” to the Nazis, as he could operate on wounded Nazi soldiers.

The Lida Ghetto was established in November-December 1941. Thousands of Jews were forced into a dilapidated part of Lida and crowded into small houses. Jewish men and women were ordered to do forced labor, and a Judenrat (Jewish Council) and Jewish Police Force were put into action to enforce Nazis’ commands under the threat of death.

Ghetto life was a slow death as fear, disease, and malnutrition pervaded Miriam’s daily existence. The ghetto was sealed on May 7, 1942. The following day, the Nazis massacred the Jews in the first large aktion. The SS and local collaborators surrounded the ghetto and attacked the Jews with metal pipes and butts of guns. Miriam clung to her parents as they were forced into the streets at the crack of dawn. Terror, panic, and fear consumed Miriam as her mother tried to help a woman cover her baby but was hit from behind and forced to retreat.

They were ordered to assemble and march to the outskirts of Lida. They could hear machine guns fire in the distance as they came to an intersection. The Gebietskommissar and the SS examined papers and waved them in one of two directions: Aunt Ala and Uncle Tadek were sent to the left, while Miriam and her parents were sent to the right—to death.

Soldiers beat them to make them run faster. As they ran, the sound of gunfire grew louder and closer. Amidst the noise and chaos, soldiers were yelling at them. One repeatedly shouted, “Doctor, go back!” Her father wore a red cross armband, and his surgical skills were vital to the Nazis. The soldier physically stopped Miriam’s family and ordered the three of them into the left line. By the narrowest of margins, they survived. The Jews in the left line were ordered to be silent, lie on the ground, and be counted. Next, they were forced to bow to the Germans in appreciation for being spared.

At dusk, they were led back to the ghetto. Soon, rumors spread that ghetto children would be murdered while their parents were doing forced labor. Miriam’s parents sent her to live with a Catholic woman whose daughter’s life Miriam’s father had saved. However, when it became apparent that the killing of the ghetto children was a rumor, Miriam returned to the ghetto and was reunited with her family. Shortly after, Aunt Ala and Uncle Tadek decided to escape the Lida Ghetto and return to Warsaw to be with their parents. Miriam never saw them again.

After the liquidation, young Jews in the ghetto began preparing to fight back. Their center of activity took place in the attic of 15 Kholodna Street, where they gathered rifles, grenades, and ammunition that was smuggled from outside the ghetto. However, many Jews were against the idea of armed resistance, convinced that working in Nazi factories would save their lives. The armed resisters left the ghetto and joined partisans in the forests.

On November 9, 1942, the partisans in the Lipiczany Forest wanted Miriam’s father in the forest because of his renowned surgical skills. “Broneczka, how can we take a child of seven into the bitter cold of winter, to an unknown place?” Miriam heard her father whisper. “This may be our only opportunity for survival,” came her mother’s response.

Miriam and her parents packed their belongings and were smuggled out the ghetto under the cover of darkness by a group of partisans. They crossed the partially frozen Niemen River and walked deep into the thick Lipiczany Forest. The forest was so dense that very little sunshine managed to penetrate through the canopies, and fog lingered among the thick undergrowth. The impenetrability of the forest made it an ideal hiding place, as the Germans were hesitant to send their soldiers into an area so difficult to navigate.

They reached the all-Jewish partisan camp the following night. Miriam and her parents were assigned sleeping places in an underground cellar called a ziemlyanka, an earthen dugout lined with logs to insulate the floor and wooden boards to sleep on. A small fire vented to the outside, like a fireplace, to keep the space warm. Miriam was overwhelmed by the newness of this life and approached a group of armed partisans with a question. “Are you afraid of living in the cold forest?” she asked them. “We are not afraid,” they laughed. “We have guns to protect us. We are no longer living in the ghettos.” This answer made her feel safe and proud to be a Jew.

Miriam was the only child in the group. Nonetheless, she was assigned specific chores that were required for the group’s survival. She helped collect wood for fires and melted snow for drinking and washing. Her mother cooked for the camp, while her father was sent on missions to treat wounded partisans throughout the forest.

In mid-December 1942, three weeks after they arrived, they learned that a large contingent of German troops had entered the wilderness to capture and kill the partisans. Miriam’s father was away helping injured partisans. Miriam and her mother attempted to keep up with armed partisans as they ran in different directions, but they did not want a child with them in case she cried and gave them all away. Miriam and her mother joined a small, barely armed group of stragglers and headed deeper into the forest. They were cold, lost, and hungry for days, and were nearly discovered by German soldiers. They ran into various Russian partisan groups who would not give them protection. After weeks in the cold, Miriam and her mother came upon a partisan who brought them back to Miriam’s father.

Because Miriam’s father was the only surgeon in the forest, requiring him to travel to various partisan camps, the Soviet high command oversaw the establishment of a central forest hospital for the entire Lipiczany wilderness. It was constructed on a small island, surrounded by vast swamps. Her father was instrumental in recruiting forty Jews to staff the hospital along with Jews to carry out raids to secure food. Miriam and her mother were brought to live in the hospital, sharing a ziemlyanka with the hospital staff. The hospital was heavily guarded and, for additional safety, Miriam wore boys’ clothing, and her head was shaved. “Now you look like a real partisan, Mirele,” the hospital staff remarked.

The hospital expanded as more facilities were built to accommodate operating rooms and hospital beds. Miriam often watched her father operate late into the night. Because the hospital was staffed by Jews, her father convinced the raiders who went on food missions to “lose” some food along the way. This lost food went to family camps, an action that was undertaken with secrecy so as not to arouse the suspicions of the Russians in charge. Acts of anti-semitism occurred daily, as Jews were singled out by Russian partisans.

Disguised as a boy, Miriam helped around the hospital by carrying large wooden logs used for making fires or building new structures and assisted the nurses in sterilizing materials for surgeries. In addition, she often cleaned the partisan machine guns and rifles because her small hands were an asset. On her eighth birthday, Miriam’s parents gave her a pistol. She felt like a true partisan.

In the early summer of 1944, the Soviet Army liberated the east. The partisans converged to meet the liberators, hugging and saluting them with tears in their eyes. For Miriam, it was a time of both joy and deep sorrow for all she had lost during the war.

After the liberation, the Soviets sent them to the nearby hamlet of Szczuczyn. Her father was awarded the Order of Lenin, one of the highest medals bestowed in the Soviet Union. However, they were not content to settle for life under communism, nor to endure the rampant anti-semitism in post-war Europe. Miriam’s parents each had brothers who were living in America and decided to try and reunite with them. Young Miriam could not even imagine a place on earth not ravaged by war.

Miriam and her parents traveled through Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania before arriving in a Displaced Persons camp in Allied-occupied Austria. They were then transported to Italy by Jewish soldiers who were part of Bricha, a clandestine operation that helped Jews escape post-war Europe to Israel. While Miriam longed to immigrate to Israel, her parents decided that America would be best because they had family there. With her uncles’ sponsorship, Miriam and her parents left Naples, Italy, and sailed to Brooklyn on the Marine Falcon in February 1947.

Miriam was struck by the naivete of Americans towards the war and resented their remarks that dismissed her war experiences because she was a child. She struggled in school, trying to catch up for all the years she had lost, and her relationship with her parents was strained. Miriam felt alone and abandoned in her pain, devoid of love and support.

However, life changed for the better in 1955 when Miriam graduated from New York University, an accomplishment for which she had struggled long and hard. She was passionate about science and majored in biology and chemistry. Around this time, Miriam’s cousin introduced her to Henry Brysk, a young physicist and assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. They were married in June 1955.

Miriam and Henry have two daughters, Judy and Havi, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, with another great-grandchild on the way. Miriam earned her M.S. in Microbiology from the University of Michigan, and Ph.D. in Biological and Biomedical Sciences from Columbia University. She is Professor Emeritus, was the director of Dermatology Research Laboratory at the University of Texas, and has published eighty-five peer-reviewed scientific research manuscripts.

After returning to Eastern Europe in 2002, Miriam decided to write her memoir Amidst the Shadow of the Trees, and channel her suffering and pain into art. She has made a commitment to spend the rest of her life remembering the Holocaust through writing, art, music, and poetry.

Miriam has created three large bodies of art, In a Confined Silence, Children of the Holocaust, and Scroll of Remembrance along with 25 solo art exhibits and several works that are in the permanent art collection at Yad Vashem. In addition to her memoir, Miriam is also the author of Etched in My Memory, and The Stones Weep: Teaching the Holocaust Through a Survivor’s Art.

You can find Miriam’s work on her website: www.miriambrysk.com.

Featured Jewish Partisan - Sima Simieticka, Born In 1923

The eldest of two daughters, Sima Simieticka was born on March 8, 1923 to a family of tailors in Warsaw. Her father left the family for Russia when she was only two years old – he went to the newly-established Soviet state to seek his fortunes, but instead ended up in front of the firing squad for being a Trotskyist.

Sima and her sister lived with their mother and grandfather, who both worked as tailors, often accepting bartered goods in payment for their services. The family was very poor, and often went hungry.


Despite these difficulties, Sima attended school until the age of 14. Two years later, in autumn of 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland and the family fled across the Bug river to Soviet-occupied territory. Unfortunately, Sima’s grandfather stayed behind.

Sima and her family ended up on a work farm, where they remained for a time, doing whatever work needed to be done. Though life under the Soviets was difficult and fraught with hidden dangers¹, Sima and her family persevered.

At one of the camps, she was forced to work on a farm located outside of the camp premises. Compared to the camp, she was treated nicely there and even received extra bread rations, which she was careful to share with her mother and sister (by walking as fast as possible so she wouldn’t have time to eat it all).

When a rumor spread that her labor camp was about to be burned, she found a hiding place underneath an oven in a local hospital. She remained there for three days with ten other people, hiding in silence. Unfortunately, her mother and sister were not allowed inside the hiding place – there was not enough room or air for them. She was not the only one burdened by such difficult and harrowing moral choices – in a small, airless hiding space, the price of silence was often paid with a crying infant’s life. Her mother and sister were both gassed and then burned in the ovens.

After ten days of hiding in the cramped space, Sima decided she would rather be shot by a guard than burned alive or suffocated, so she left her hiding place. She vividly remembers her escape, how she took off her wooden shoes and crawled underneath the barbed wire. The camp was burning; it appeared that no guards remained on the premises, but she heard music coming from a watchtower, so she knew to be wary. In the bitter cold of the midwinter night, she ran to the house of the farmer she worked for. His dog recognized her and started barking, but she called out its name – “Lizek, be quiet!”

She was lucky: the farmer was friendly, and prepared a bed for her. Early the next morning, he woke her up, gave her a big breakfast, and told her where the partisans were. For one week she walked through the deep snow and across frozen rivers – only to be turned down for being Jewish by the first brigade she came across.

She did better with the next brigade – a group of about 15, which allowed her to join. The brigade accommodated Russian soldiers, some Belarussian civilians, and even a German deserter. Though she was a Jew and a woman, she was accepted because she was one of the first and worked as a nurse. She was even issued a weapon, although she never had occasion to use it, and could have easily been robbed of it by antisemitic partisans who took to harassing other Jews in the otriad. And as a young woman trying to survive on her own in the forest, she was constantly under threat from the men she lived with. “You defend yourself as long as you can. If you cannot anymore, you stop defending yourself,” Sima stated grimly.

The otriad focused on survival; when they were not on the move, they spent much of their time hiding in zemlyankas – holes in the ground covered with branches, where about 4-10 people could stand upright. They gathered food by taking supplies from peasants, and by foraging for berries and other edible growth.

Soviet parachutists landed in the spring of 1944, bringing with them guns and liberation. Free to go wherever she wanted, she chose Lodz, arriving there on the back of a truck, uninjured and in good health. In Lodz, she was able to locate her cousins with the aid of the Joint Distribution Committee. They had returned there as well, after surviving the deportations to Siberia.

Sima and her husband Stanley

Eventually, Sima met her husband and together they immigrated to Germany. Though Sima received an offer and the necessary immigration papers from her uncle to join him in Brazil, Sima’s husband refused to leave Germany and give up his career in medicine to become a tailor in a foreign land. Consequently, they remained in Germany for the rest of their lives.

Jessica Tannenbaum, Sima’s daughter in law, visited JPEF's offices in spring 2013 from Weiden, Germany, sharing Sima's story of resistance and survival, as well as cherished photos and mementos. Committed to perpetuating the Jewish partisan legacy and ensuring that the tragedy of the Holocaust is remembered.

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1. On one occasion, the local Soviet administration asked all the refugees where they eventually wanted to end up. Nothing happened to those who said “Russia”, but anyone who said “Poland” or “Warsaw” was deported to Siberia. Some of Sima’s cousins were deported there in this fashion.

Bring Jewish Women in the Partisans to Women's History Month with JPEF's Resources

March 2024 marks the 44th Women's History Month. JPEF's website has an extensive library of easily accessible resources and lesson plans to help educators and parents teach about the history of women in the Jewish partisans.

So many brave women — young and old alike — fought back to defeat the Germans and their collaborators. JPEF is proud to share these women's stories. Please check out the following resources on our website:

* Curriculum, film, and related historical links can be found on the Women in the Partisans Resource Page.

* Everyday the Impossible: Jewish Women in the Partisans

 is a 15-minute film about the women who made up less than 10 percent of the partisans. The film introduces viewers to eight Jewish partisans as we hear their firsthand experiences from the partisan camps.

* A Partisan Returns is a riveting story of former Bielski partisan Lisa Reibel's escape from the Novogrudek ghetto, and her journey back to visit her home nearly 65 years later.

* Pictures of Resistance is JPEF's traveling photographic exhibit, showcasing pictures taken by Faye Schulman, the only known Jewish partisan photographer.

Consider reading these five excellent books about Jewish women partisans, all of which are featured on the JPEF website:

• Here, There Are No Sarahs by Sonia Orbuch
• My Life My Way by Eta Wrobel
• A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust by Faye Schulman
• Essie: The True Story of a Teenage Fighter in the Bielski Partisans by Essie Shor and Andrea Zakin
• Paula's Window: Papa, the Bielski Partisans, and A Life Unexpected by Paula Burger
• Resistance and Survival: The Jewish Community in Kaunas 1941-1944 by Sara Ginaite-Rubinson
• With Courage Shall We Fight by Ralph and Albert Berger
• Never the Last Road by Mira Shelub

* Background, in-depth information, and great techniques for teaching about Jewish women partisans in your classroom is the focus of JPEF's online course, which awards CEUs.

Please be sure to visit our Jewish Partisan Community website to read the learn about the more than 40 women who fought as Jewish partisans, whose biographies we have published since 2017.

Jewish Partisan Walter Marx (z''l) – born February 27, 1926 – Lost His Family Home on Kristallnacht

"I believe that the Italian partisans were very effective in pinning down a certain amount of German troops...And of course, the Italians, partisans, were ultimately in a position to arrest Mussolini and to put an end to the fascist regime in Italy... I believe that the Italian partisans did a lot to reestablish the good name of the Italian people by wiping out some of the bad things that the fascist had committed. And by putting themselves on the side of the allies, they negated the portion that Italy had played in being part of the, uh, fascist axis comprising Germany, Italy, and Japan."
–Walter Marx

Walter was born on February 27, 1926 to a family of wholesale paper merchants in Heilbronn, an industrial hub in southern Germany. When the antisemitism he experienced from his classmates and teacher became unbearable, 9-year-old Walter was sent to Luxembourg to live with relatives and attend school there. When the Nazi Aryanization laws came into effect in 1938, Walter’s father was forced to relinquish control of their business; on Kristallnacht, the family home was destroyed and his father was taken to Dachau, where he lost a finger to frostbite after being made to stand out in the rain all night. The Germans eventually released his father and both parents left the country to join Walter.

Walter Marx with his parents and cousin

But only 10 days after Walter's family managed to secure an apartment in Luxembourg, the Nazis invaded, eventually expelling Walter and his family down to the southern coast of France, where they lived in an apartment until 1942. Walter was 14 at the time, and found work as an errand boy to support the family. In 1942, the Germans occupied the town and the family got word that Jewish males were being arrested, so they fled to the village of Lamalou-les-Bains, in the interior of France. There, the French police arrested Walter's father and he was never heard from again - they eventually found out he was sent to his death at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.

The remaining family got word that the Jews were relatively safe in the Italian-occupied part of France, so they made their way to Nice, where they were directed by the local Jewish community to a nearby village by the name of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, which became a safe haven for Jews¹.

You could hear Yiddish. You could hear French. You could hear Polish. You could hear Russian. You could hear any language, any European language, you know and people were standing in the street talking loud and nobody could touch them because the Italians were protecting us. This was fine and this, these were probably the best days of my life. I was 17 years old at the time and also my father was missing. You know, he had been deported before. We were pretty happy.

But those days came to an end in autumn of 1943 — Mussolini was deposed, and the Italian army capitulated to the Allies. Having no reason to remain in France, the Italian army started simply walking back home across the Alps. Having heard that the Germans were heading for the village, Walter's family — along with around a thousand other Jews — followed the retreating army over the mountains into Italy.

There were no roads. People were carrying children. People were carrying suitcases which they abandoned after a short while and we walked for two or three days until we descended on the other side...

The first small town in Italy they reached was Borgo San Dalmazzo. It had already been absorbed by the German army, and Walter was warned to flee by an innkeeper's daughter he befriended, as the Germans were rounding up all foreigners, and anyone who failed to report to them will be shot. Exhausted by the trek, the family decided to flee no more and reported to the German authorities. They were put in a camp with 350 other people, and Walter was put to work clearing out equipment and supplies left behind by the fleeing Italian army in their barracks. One night, he broke one of the vertebrae in his spine, and was hospitalized for months. "I screamed and I lost consciousness and I remember waking up as my companions, with a German soldier, with an SS actually, an SS man, were carrying me to a hospital," he remembers. While he was in the hospital, the same innkeeper's daughter would come to visit him every few days. It was she who informed him that his mother and cousin were deported to a concentration camp along with the other 350 prisoners, where they were both killed.

The inn in Borgo San Dalmazzo

At the end of his convalescence, the hospital director told Walter that the SS were inquiring if he was fit enough to be transported, so Walter fled to Genoa, where the bishop of Cunio was supposed to arrange for help. However, the arrangement fell through, and Walter had no choice but to return to the inn at Borgo San Dalmazzo. Though his young acquaintance there was not able to shelter him, she promised to introduce him to the Underground, as his thick German accent would have raised some suspicions if he had tried to go there by himself.

Walter joined the Underground in 1944. Because his spinal injury left him unable to walk without a cane, his primary responsibility was to solicit food from Italian farmers and manage paperwork. They lived up in the mountains in groups no larger than 20-25 people. The area was under partisan control: the local population was largely supportive, and the local authorities issued most of the partisans fake ID documents. To explain his thick accent, Walter's ID stated that he was born in France, near the German border.

One day, Walter was rounded up while attempting to buy food and taken to a jail in Cunio. After several days, as he was being taken to interrogation, a man walked up to him and offered to help him if Walter would act as an Italian interpreter for the German SS. Walter agreed, and to his surprise, the policemen that were escorting his group to interrogation simply let the strange man lead him away, out of their sight. As an Italian interpreter for the SS headquarters, he gathered critical intelligence, which he would relay every night to his liaison - a double agent working for the Underground. With the intelligence he learned, Walter even captured an Italian spy sent to locate Jews and partisans hiding in the mountainside. His unit actively engaged the Germans, once stalling a convoy of troops from advancing on a strategic road to France by employing mortar and small arms fire.

Walter after the war

After the war, Walter studied to be a dental mechanic in a school outside Paris, and eventually immigrated to the United States in October of 1946. He married his wife Ellen in 1950, and settled down in New York, finding work with a freight forwarding company in lower Manhattan.

In 1997, Walter was invited by the Italian government to be honored for his role in the Underground. The woman who hid him in her parents' hotel — then in her 80s — was there in the crowd as he gave a speech, and when he mentioned her role in his story, she raised her hand and shouted, "I was that lady!" Walter eventually invited her to New York, where she spent a week with his family. This touching story made the front page of the New York Times.

Walter passed away on August 13, 2013. He is survived by his wife, three sons, and five grandsons.

Speaking about his odyssey through war-torn Europe, Walter would often tell his children, "the experience has helped me face life with a lot of courage, and surviving has given me a sense of pride."

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1. Due to the efforts of Angelo Donati, an influential Jewish banker who used his military and diplomatic connections to get the Italian authorities to protect the Jews from the Germans and the French, the Italian authorities of Nice sent any Jewish refugees to Saint-Martin-Vésubie, where they lived under the protection of the Italian army.

Remembering Rae Kushner (z''l) and her Escape from the Novogrudok Ghetto

"But he knew the way how to go in the woods. We didn't know nothing. I [was with] my sister and my father and I said to him, '…we're going to die together or we're going to be rescued together.' We were sitting under the bushes for 10 days. And it was pouring."
— Rae Kushner.

Reichel "Rae" Kushner, was born to Nashum and Hinda Kushner, on February 27, 1923, in Novogrudok, Poland. The second-oldest of four children, she had one brother Channon, and two sisters, Chana and Lisa. Her family resided in, and contributed to, a thriving Jewish community of about 6,000 members, which also compromised just over half of the entire population. The Kushner family had a strong, middle class foundation built on her father's thriving fur business.

In September of 1939, just after the signing of what was known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the Eastern part of Poland was invaded by Soviet Troops, and life for young Rae Kushner and her family changed drastically. Rae expressed thereafter that survival under Soviet occupation was relatively "tolerable" in comparison to what took place after the Nazi invasion. These life altering episodes began June 22, 1941, during World War II, with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, during which Nazi troops aggressively attacked occupied Soviet territories. Though rumors from the West of massive and barbaric killings had reached Novogrudok by that point, few Jews actually believed that the Germans would carry out such atrocities.

Following several massacres, the surviving Jews were forced into provisional ghettos in a suburb of Novogrudok. Rae, her family, and many others, were forced to crowd into the city’s courthouse, and were inflicted with preposterous living conditions. During this time they instigated a plan of escape from captivity. Unfortunately, Nazi troops were often "entertained" with the weekly slaying of large numbers of Jews; which subsequently lead to the untimely deaths of Rae's mother Hinda and eldest sister Chana during one of these cruel and fatal disseminations on May 7, 1943.

Starting in the middle of May, the remaining Jews dug a narrow tunnel during the night from the courthouse to a nearby forest, using tools made in the ghetto workshops and hiding the dirt in the walls of buildings. Rae, along with her remaining family and approximately 600 others, helped to execute the escape when the route was finally completed. The passage was only large enough for one person to crawl through, and of the 600 only about 250 were able to reach the forest. Many of the escapees were met with darkness, disorientation, and even gunfire; only 170 survived. Rae’s brother Channon was among those who escaped, though he later lost his life. Losing his glasses during the crawl through the tunnel, he became disoriented and afflicted by the heinous conditions of the forest.

Rae and her surviving family spent the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur hidden in the cold, dark, dense woods. She and her younger sister grew famished: "It was in those forests, and in those moments of pain and hunger, when those men and women were digging for their lives, that it became evident that it was either Israel, or nothing." Determined to live another day, they eventually made their way to the home of an unknown ally. The woman fed them and allowed them to sleep in her stable with the cows for one week – a risk that carried the penalty of violent death.

Shortly thereafter, Rae, her family, and others from Novogrudok, sought refuge with a partisan group led by Tuvia Bielski. The Bielski Partisans managed to shelter over 1,200 Jews. Rae regularly stood guard and often cooked camp meals, consisting of mostly potatoes grown in the surrounding forest, soup and small pieces of bread. During that time, Rae became better acquainted with Joseph Kushner, whom she knew prior to the war. They fell in love and were married in August of 1945, a little over a year after the Bielski camp was liberated by the Red Army. Joseph and Rae became one, among the many partisan couples, who "found love in the forests."

Postwar, Rae returned to her hometown of Novogrudok, only to find it destroyed and in complete devastation. She and the remaining members of the Kushner family ended up in an Italian Displaced Persons Camp for three years. It was there that Rae gave birth to her daughter Linda, the first of her four children.


In 1949, the family was able to relocate from Europe to New York where Rae gave birth to three more children, two sons, Murray and Charles, and a second daughter, Esther. Rae passed away in 2004, but her name lives on with great relevance and influence today. The Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston, New Jersey, is one of the most prestigious Jewish Schools on the East Coast, with over 850 students attending.

Visit Rae's partisan page, for more information and to view seven videos of her speaking about her experiences. JPEF's short film A Partisan Returns features the story of Rae's escape from the Novogrudok.

Sam Lato (z''l), born on February 24, Became a Partisan at 17

"Whenever you went on assignment, the most dangerous part is coming back. Going there, they don’t know you're there, so you sneak in. While you sneak in, they might catch you, they might shoot you, but going back is the problem, because they know you're here, and they're going to go after you. However, if they don't know the direction you went, they won't catch you, but if they saw one, they're going to go after you. Because this is their army here. So that was the most dangerous part."
— Sam Lato.

Sam Lato was born in Baronovich, Poland on February 24, 1925. He moved with his family to Warsaw at the age of three, where his skills as a craftsman earned him a scholarship to a local Jewish trade school. He eventually returned to Baronovich, which went under Soviet control in 1939 after the blitzkrieg of Poland.

Life was calm in Baronvich until 1941 when the Germans invaded Poland and quickly occupied Sam’s hometown. Soon, the Baronvich ghetto was formed. It was here that Sam became a member of the local resistance, even before he knew of the partisans’ existence. He started making cigarette lighters to sell on the black market, and smuggled ammunition and medical supplies from his factory job.

A year later, the Germans began to commit massive acts of violence against the locals. While Sam was fortunate enough to avoid several massacres, he and 15 other young men decided to take their chances in the forests of Belarus. At the age of seventeen, Sam fled from Baronvich and eventually found his way to a partisan camp. He was surprised to discover that there were already over a hundred Baronvich Jews in the brigade. Sam wasn’t with the partisans long before he met Genia Wishnia, whom he married only a few months later. They went on several missions together.

Sam’s brigade was in poor condition when he first arrived. They had no explosives to commit sabotage, and their camp was infested with lice. Sam and his friends would joke, “When you take off your jacket, put it in the corner so it [won’t] go away. Otherwise, the lice [are] going to move it outside for fresh air.” However, in the spring of 1943, they began receiving airdrop support from the Russians. They received new weapons, clothes and medical supplies. Soviet paratroopers even came to help coordinate the brigade’s activities, and Sam was recruited into their ranks as an auxiliary.

Sam and Genia in Germany, 1946

Sam was, at one point, assigned to accompany a Polish paratrooper. He followed him everywhere because no one was supposed to be alone. Sam didn’t think much of the short Pole, and didn’t know who he was or what he did. After Sam was relieved of his assignment and returned to his brigade, he was summoned by his colonel. The colonel instructed Sam to never repeat what he saw or heard during his time with the Pole, because he was none other than the exiled Polish prime minister.


In 1944, Sam joined the Russians in their advance to the Baltic Sea. After the war, he and Genia stayed in the USSR for several years before ultimately immigrating to the United States with their son, Edward. Genia lost her life to breast cancer in 1987. In 2006, Sam wrote a book about his time as a partisan in response to the denial of the Holocaust, as well as those who believed that the Jews went quietly. "The Jews did not go quietly,” he said in a 2009 interview. “Resistance, both peaceful and fierce, was waged by rabbis, senior adults, men, women and children alike." The book, From Ghetto to Guerilla: Memoir of a Jewish Resistance Fighter, received the gold medal for its category at the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and was introduced to the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center in Hollywood, Florida in February 2008.
Sam passed away in 2012, leaving behind three grandchildren.

Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Sam Lato, including seven videos of him reflecting on his time as a partisan.

Jewish Partisan hero Mira Shelub turns 102 on January 13, 2024

"Somehow, you know, when we came out from them, from the ghetto, I cannot tell you how good it felt to breathe the fresh air, to know that we are free, to know that we can go. Okay, there were difficulties, obstacles, but we knew that we can go, that nobody will stop us, to breathe the fresh air, to see the trees. It was something, a special, special experience and then we came to the forest. We came to the forest and then, and we were lucky enough, I mention again that we were nice, young, pretty so they accepted us, and we joined the Partisans." — Mira Shelub.

A Polish Jew born in what is now Belarus, Mira Shelub joined a partisan group that operated in the forest near her native Zdziedciol at the age of 18. With her family, she escaped Zdziedciol’s ghetto in 1942 as the Germans began killing off the population.

Mira’s group engaged in sabotage against the Nazis and their Polish collaborators by disrupting communications and transportation to the war front. They blew up trains, attacked police stations, and stole food that had been provided for the Germans by peasants.

In Mira’s group, women comprised about a quarter of the partisans. They did the cooking, took care of the laundry and provided other vital support.

Nochim Shelub

While working with the partisans, Mira met her husband Nochim, who was the leader of the group. Nochim had first been in a mixed group run by Russians. However, anti-Semitism was common among the non-Jewish resistance fighters, and so he decided to form his own unit, though he still continued to coordinate activities with the Russians.

On a few attacks, Mira carried extra ammunition for her husband’s machine gun. In the summer, the unit slept on the ground in the open forest; during winter they took refuge in underground huts (called zemlyankas), or with sympathetic peasant families. Constant movement was a necessity to avoid detection. When it snowed, they had to alter their tracks into confusing patterns so that they could not be followed. Mira recounts:

“In the forest, we did not only fight a physical battle, but also a spiritual battle. We were sitting around the fire, singing songs together, supporting each other and dreaming about betters days and a better future… a better tomorrow.”

After the Russian liberation in 1944, the couple made their way to Austria, then finally to the United States, where Mira had contacts with relatives. They settled in San Francisco, and soon after Norman opened a sandwich shop near the Embarcadero. They had three children – a daughter and two sons. Mira lives in San Francisco and continues speaking with students and educators about her Jewish partisan experience.

In February 2019, JPEF Director of Development and Outreach Sheri Rosenblum enjoyed a lovely visit with Mira and her daughter Elaine in San Francisco.

Mira recounts the extraordinary story of her partisan experience in her memoir Never the Last Road: A Partisan's Life. Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Mira Shelub, including seven videos of her reflecting on her time as a partisan.