Featured Jewish Partisan - Marisa Diena, born on September 29th

"They didn’t know that I was Jewish. It didn’t cross my mind because there, like I said, everyone thought that I was Mara... But there was also Ulisse, Polifemo, Lampo, Fulmine ... they all had battle names. You didn’t know anything about anyone. It wasn’t important. So most people didn’t know that I was Jewish."
— Marisa Diena.

Marisa Diena was born in Turin, Italy on September 29, 1916. Marisa was 8 years old when Benito Mussolini became dictator of Italy and was taught to love Fascism. In 1938, Italy passed its first Racial Laws, in imitation of the Nazi Racial Purity laws, which banned Jews from working in the public sector or attending public school. In 1940, Italy declared war on Britain and France, and by 1942, Turin was being bombed on an almost daily basis. By 1943, Italy was in a state of virtual civil war. Mussolini was deposed and Italy surrendered following the allied invasion of Sicily. Germany responded by seizing control of Northern and Central Italy and reinstating Mussolini as the head of a new puppet regime.

After the Nazis occupied Turin, Marisa fled into the mountains around Torre Pellice to join the partisans. The role of women in the Italian partisans was unique. Since most of the male partisans were army deserters, only women were able to move during the day without arousing suspicion. As a result, Marisa became the vice-commander of information for her unit. During the day, she would ride her bicycle around the countryside, collecting information from local informers. Each night she would report back to her commander. 

In addition to sabotage and guerrilla warfare, Italian partisans tried to keep order in the war-ravaged countryside. Marisa’s unit created local community committees in the Torre Pellice region to distribute rations and helped organize strikes among industrial workers in cities like Turin.
In the spring of 1945, the estimated 300,000 partisans working in Northern Italy organized a national liberation committee. On April 25, 1945, Marisa’s partisan unit liberated Turin, while their comrades in other major cities did the same. 

After the war, as Italian democracy began to blossom, Marisa remained engaged in politics, witnessing the ratification of the new Italian Constitution in 1948. Marisa remained in Italy, sharing her experience as a partisan with elementary school children. She passed away on May 8, 2013.

Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Marisa Diena, including seven videos of her reflecting on her time as a partisan.

Featured Jewish Partisan - Nina Grutz Morecki (z"l)

Nina Grutz Morecki (z"l) was 18 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland. Nina endured the loss of her mother, father, sister and brother-in-law before being sent to Janowska Concentration Camp as part of a work detail.

She luckily escaped a killing pit outside of the camp, and fled deep into the forest where she encountered the Polish Underground and the partisans, for whom she worked for almost a year and a half. Nina provided them with important stamped documents that allowed them to create chaos and havoc among the German military, and perhaps even save other resistors. She did this knowing the danger and the terrible punishment she would face if caught.

Toward the end of the war, Nina met and married another survivor from Lvov, Josef Morecki. Together, they had three grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren at the time of Nina’s death in 2012.

Read about Nina's incredible story, and share your family's partisan stories here.

Featured Jewish Partisan - Brenda Senders, born on August 20th

"You know, you were not fussy where you sleep or where you lay down, and sometimes they ask me how did you get food. You know, you go in with guns and the person will not give you food so you take it yourself. It was a war, it was not a matter of being polite or this way or the other way. It's being survival was at stake."
— Brenda Senders.

Brenda Senders was born in 1925 in the town of Sarny, then part of Polish territory. She was the daughter of a forester, and one of two sisters (the third died during a dysentery epidemic in the ‘30s). Her father was a respected man in the community, and had helped many of the peasants build their houses. During the First World War, he had served as a translator in the German territories. The impression he took away of the Germans as a cultured people prevented him from taking any rumors of Nazi atrocities seriously.
Sarny was located far to the east, on the Sluch River. Consequently, it fell under Soviet control in 1939. As it was for many partisans, the most prominent impact from the Soviet occupation for Brenda was that she spent two years learning the Russian language. But everything changed in the summer of ’41, when the Nazis occupied Sarny and forced all its Jews into a ghetto.

In 1942, the Nazis closed the ghetto and sent the remaining inhabitants to a death camp. A few electricians managed to smuggle a pair of wire cutters into the camp and cut a hole in the fencing, allowing Brenda, her sister, and hundreds of other prisoners to escape. Many of the escapees were caught, but Brenda and her sister knew the surroundings well and ran straight for the Sluch River, crossing it into the forest. Eventually, Brenda made it to a nearby village, where she sought out her grandfather’s neighbors for help. Initially, Brenda and her sister were separated during the escape, but luckily Brenda found her hiding at the neighbors’, along with her uncle. 

After several months in hiding, Brenda connected with a large Soviet-backed partisan unit, made up of 1600 people. Although she was unarmed, Brenda’s determination to fight convinced the partisan general that she was fit to join. She left her sister hiding with a local peasant, and learned how to shoot a gun and ride a horse. She then joined the partisan cavalry, and became one of the general’s bodyguards.
Brenda’s unit was constantly on the move. They occupied villages, conducted ambushes, shot passing German troops, blew up bases, and obliterated bridges and train tracks. “We didn’t let [the Nazis] rest day or night,” Brenda recalled proudly.

After the war, Brenda left Russia, escaping through Slovakia into Austria. She ended up in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Braunau Am Inn, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, where she was reunited with her sister. In the DP camp, Brenda met her future husband, Leon Senders, a former partisan from the famed Avengers unit. Brenda and Leon married in 1945 and left for Italy, eventually immigrating to the United States that same year. Brenda passed away in September of 2013; Leon passed away earlier that year, in July. They are survived by three children and seven grandchildren.

Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Brenda Senders, including seven videos of her reflecting on her time as a partisan.

Leon and Brenda Senders at their wedding, November 2, 1946

Leon and Brenda Senders at their home in Florida, 2003

Jewish Partisan - Bernard Druskin, born on August 18

"The only thing we used to get [...] parachuted is dynamite, ammunition, and arms, and the rest, we had to live off the fat of the land."
- Bernard Druskin.

Bernard Druskin was born on August 18, 1921, in Vilna, Poland. He was the oldest of the three Druskin children – his two little sisters were named Rachel and Marilyn, and his family worked in the felt supply business. Following the Nazi occupation of Vilna, the Druskin family was sent to live in the Jewish ghetto.

Bernard became a Jewish partisan after escaping from the Vilna Ghetto. He escaped with the help of a compassionate Nazi soldier who showed him how and when to escape. After escaping the ghetto, Bernard lived with friendly farmers, chopping wood for them all day in exchange for his meals. Bernard later found out his family had been executed in retribution for his escaping. Bernard remembers, “I had no reason to live on.”

Bernard then joined the FPO, the United Partisan Organization, and procured a radio to listen to the BBC. Bernard hid in the forests of Belarussia’s Naroch Forest and lived in a camouflaged zemlyanka, or underground bunker. Bernard worked under the Markov brigade and with Commander Jurgis, the head of the Lithuanian Brigade. He spent his time sabotaging railroad lines and phone lines, and stole food and supplies from the German army. Bernard and his compatriots once blew up 5 km of train tracks used by the Nazis, in different sections, calling it "Hanukkah lights."

At times, different groups of partisans competed to see which group could blow up the most trains. The partisans were directly aided by the Russian government, who sent bi-weekly parachute drops of armaments and supplies, and on holidays, vodka.

In July 1944, the Red army liberated the city of Vilna. Instead of taking the German troops as POW’s, the Red Army disarmed them and turned them over to the partisans.

Bernard describes his life as a partisan as the most difficult thing he had done. “Let me tell you something,” Bernard recalled “To be a partisan, it’s not human.”

Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Bernard Druskin, who passed away on March 24, 2008, including seven videos of him reflecting on his time as a partisan.

Jewish Partisan Leah Bedzowski Johnson (z''l) - Honoring her Birthday

Over 80 years ago, on the eve of Leah Bedzowski Johnson's 18th birthday, the Nazis invaded her hometown of Lida, located in the eastern half of Poland. At this time, Leah's father had just passed away, and her family was in mourning. With the arrival of the Nazis and the antisemitic policies they imposed, many more challenges lay ahead for the family.

Leah, with her mother Chasia, and her three younger siblings Charles, Sonia, and Benjamin, tried early on to escape from their oppressors. They were taken in by sympathetic farmers on the outskirts of town where they hid for a short period of time. The state soon decreed that all Jews would be confined in ghettos. The farmers could no longer safely harbor the family, so the Bedzowski Family was forced to return to Lida and imprisoned in the ghetto.

Their passport to freedom arrived in a letter from family friend Tuvia Bielski, encouraging the Bedzowskis to join his brigade in the forest. Tuvia and his brothers had escaped the massacre and were hidden deep in the woods. Determined to save as many Jews as possible, the Bielski group was welcoming all escaped Jews into their encampment.

The Bedzowskis readily accepted Tuvia’s help. Tuvia sent a guide to escort the family out of the ghetto. The group traveled by night in silence, past guard dogs, under barbed wire, and often on their hands and knees. When they reached the forest, their guide told them, “You are going to live.” Leah and her family joined the Bielski Brigade that night.

Leah took on the necessary duties of the encampment including food-finding missions and guard duty. Never safe until the war’s end, Leah and her fellow partisans in the Bielski brigade found themselves fighting and sometimes fleeing the German army. On one occasion, the Bedzowski family were separated from the rest of the group as the German army advanced towards them. As they and a few families despondently sat under a tree, wondering what would become of them, a group of young Jewish partisan men came upon them. One of the men was Velvel “Wolf” Yanson, a Jewish partisan from another brigade. Velvel left his group to become the protector of the Bedzowski family. He helped them return to the Bielski group where he became known as “Wolf the Machine Gunner.” “It is thanks to his fortitude and strength that my mother Chasia, brothers Chonon (Charles) and Benjamin, as well as the other families whom he encountered under the tree, were all saved,” says Leah. “If it wasn’t for him, my family would have perished and the Bedzowski/Bedzow name would have vanished for eternity.”

Leah and her husband Wolf

Velvel and Leah were married under a chuppah (marriage canopy) surrounded by their fellow partisans in the forest. The couple stayed with the Bielski group throughout the war until they were liberated. When the Soviet Army tried to enlist Velvel after the war, the couple decided to leave the country. Fleeing through Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, they eventually crossed the Alps into Italy, where they remained for four years at a DP camp in Torino. They immigrated to Montreal, Canada in 1949, where they raised 3 children.

Leah lived in Florida, where she was active in the Jewish community and lectured extensively about her Jewish partisan experience. She insisted that not only her grandchildren and great-grandchildren knew her story, but also anyone she could reach out to, especially the younger generation. “Fight for your rights. Know who you are. This is my legacy,” she always said. Leah passed away on December 4, 2019. May her memory be a blessing.

Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Leah Johnson, including five videos of her reflecting on her time as a partisan. Visit jewishpartisans.org/defiance to see JPEF’s short documentary films and educational materials on the Bielski partisans.

Leah and her husband Wolf circa 1978.

Jack Kagan (z"l) escaped through the Novogrudok tunnel

Jack (Idel) Kagan was born on April 7, 1929, in the town of Navahrodok, Poland (current day Novogrudok, Belarus). He lived in a large house with his parents, Yankel and Dvore, along with his sister Nechamah, his uncle Moshe, his aunt Shoshke (the two sisters, Dvore and Shoshke, had married two brothers), and his cousins Dov (Berl) and Leizer. Together, the two families ran a small production factory and a leather goods shop specializing in gloves, shoes, saddles, and boots. His aunt helped run the family store, while his mother ran the home. Jack always described his home and life in the shtetl as idyllic. 

With great fondness, Jack recalled how one summer, when he was about ten years old, his father invited him to accompany him to the big city of Minsk for the summer fair, where the latest fashions would be on display. For a small child to venture so far from home was a big adventure. His father searched out the most stylish leather goods, purchased samples, and took them home, where Moshe would reverse engineer them. Within no time, the little Jewish shop in the town square was selling the latest fashions from the big city to the delight of the local citizenry.  

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Poland was divided between the two powers. On September 17, the Soviets invaded Poland from the east. Novogrudok was under Soviet occupation until June 1941, when Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union. 

Large sections of Novogrudok were destroyed during the German bombings. German forces occupied the town on July 4, 1941, and the persecution of the Jewish population was put into effect immediately. Jewish homes were plundered, and anti-Jewish laws were promulgated. The Jews of Novogrudok and its surroundings were systematically murdered in a number of mass killing operations from July 1941 to May 1943.

On December 6, 1941, the Jews of Novogrudok and the surrounding villages were forcibly taken out of town to the large courthouse. They were allowed to bring only what they could carry. Selections were made, and over 5,000 Jews were taken away to their deaths and buried in mass graves. Jack and his immediate family were among the remaining Jews taken back to town and confined in the Novogrudok Ghetto. Every day, twelve-year-old Jack and his father were marched down the hill back to the courthouse, which had been converted to workshops to make boots, gloves, and saddles for the German Army.

After another selection and mass murder, the ghetto was closed, and the remaining Jews were moved permanently to the work camp. In the harsh winter of 1942, Jack made his first attempt to escape to join the Bielski partisans, an all-Jewish partisan group that was operating in the forests. With a small group of fellow Jews, he slipped through the main gate and ran to the forests. While crossing a small frozen brook, the ice cracked and Jack fell in, soaking his wool-lined boots. Realizing that he would soon die of frostbite, Jack was forced to return to the camp on his hands and knees. Once inside the camp, a fellow prisoner, a dentist by profession, cut through the boots which were frozen to his feet and amputated Jack’s gangrenous toes, thus saving his life. No longer on the camp’s work register and unable to walk, Jack had to stay hidden–if he was discovered by the guards, he would have been killed immediately.  

On May 7, 1943, the Nazis once again made a selection in the camp. This time, Jack’s mother, sister, aunt, and uncle, who were also workers in the camp, were tragically murdered. Shortly after the massacre, Jack’s father was transferred to another camp and was never seen again. Jack was left alone. He was unable to work and unable to earn his bread ration. His life was saved by the generosity of others. 

Jack's parents, Yankel and Dvore.

Jack's sister, Nechamah 

After that massacre, the realization that no one would be left alive led to a decision by the remaining Jews in the ghetto to escape at whatever cost. After evaluating several options, they decided to dig a tunnel from below the last of the bunks and escape from the camp in a desperate attempt to join the Bielski partisans. They used bags sewn from blankets to carry dirt to the attic. When the attic was filled, double walls were constructed to conceal the earth. From his hiding place on a top bunk, Jack watched as the tunnel lengthened. The remaining 220 Jews in the camp decided that everyone would escape; no one would be left behind to face certain death at the hands of the Lithuanian and Ukrainian guards. 

After many trials and tribulations, by September 1943, the 200-yard-long tunnel was complete, together with wooden supports, a sliding trolley, electric lighting, and a fresh air supply. The escape organizers were concerned that Jack’s wounds would prevent him from crawling all the way through the narrow tunnel and would endanger the entire operation. In the end, they agreed to let him go out last. 

During the stormy night of September 26th, the entire camp of 220 Jews escaped. Unfortunately, as they exited, the guards saw moving shadows. Thinking they were under attack, they opened fire. 70 Jews were killed on the spot, or caught and killed before they managed to reach the forests. Jack, realizing that he would never make it before daybreak, decided to circle back around the town in the opposite direction. By doing so, he avoided the manhunt that followed and three days later made it safely to the forests and the Bielski partisans, where he reunited with his cousin Dov, who had escaped months earlier. Jack marched, as he said, not on his broken and bleeding feet, but on the strength of his spirit. A few people remained in the ghetto at the time of the initial escape, hidden in specially prepared places. They escaped three days later by simply walking out the deserted main gate.

After the Soviets liberated the area, Jack, Dov, and the other partisans—led by the great hero Tuvia Bielski and his brothers—marched back to Novogrudok, much to the consternation of many of the townsfolk who had already occupied the Jews’ houses. After a number of months, Jack, Dov, and the other survivors realized there was no future for Jews in such a large graveyard, and they made the decision to journey west.

They stayed in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and in 1946, Jack managed to obtain a visa invitation from a distant cousin to enter England, while Dov attempted to reach Palestine on board the Exodus ship. 

Jack and his cousin, Dov, in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. 1946.

In London, without money, language, education, or connections, Jack worked hard at his family trade–leather cutting. He eventually switched materials from skins to plastic and opened his own factory following in the entrepreneurial spirit of his father and uncle. He quickly built a successful business. In 1955, he married Barbara Steinfeld, and together they built a Jewish home with their three children.     

In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Jack returned to his hometown, Novogrudok. There, over the sites of the massacres, he established monuments to the Jews of the town.  He also established a museum to commemorate the escape and the heroism of the Jewish partisans. He participated in a variety of educational programs and published three books about the escape, his beloved town, and the partisans. 

Recently a film was made called Tunnel of Hope about the greatest of escapes and the search for the remains of the tunnel by, amongst others, his children and grandchildren. (The film was co-produced by Michael Kagan, Jack’s son, and Tamara Vershitskaya the former director of the Partisan Museum in Novogrudok.) Jack is also featured prominently in JPEF's film A Partisan Returns. 

Jack and Barbara with their children and grandchildren in Novogrudok during the filming of the Tunnel of Hope in 2014.

In 2013, Jack was appointed by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to become a member of the Holocaust Commission, which would determine the future of Holocaust education in the UK. Jack was also awarded the Medal of Heroism by the Belarusian government and was honored by the Queen of England with the British Empire Medal (BEM). Jack passed away in 2016.

Jack at the launch of his book “Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans” at the Imperial War Museum, London which held a photographic exhibition of Jack’s story and the escape. 1998.

Leon Idas, born July 11, 1925, Fought for the Liberation of Greece at 16

"We are Jewish, and you know what happened to the Jews, I said, they round them up and we come here, we didn't care if it is Communists or Royalists or Democratic, Conservative, we come here to become Partisan, to fight the common enemy — the Nazis." – Leon Idas.

Leon Idas was born July 11, 1925 in Athens, Greece. He grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood with his father, a textiles merchant, mother, four brothers, and sister. Leon attended a private school run by the Greek Orthodox Church. The Christian theology Leon learned proved useful as a means to keep his Jewish identity hidden during the war.

Shortly after the beginning of the German occupation of Greece in 1941, sixteen year-old Leon joined a group of partisans fighting for the liberation of Greece under a socialist banner. At that time, there were three groups of partisans in Greece: socialist, democratic, and loyalist. Leon fought and served as communications specialist with the partisans for more than three years, winding wires through the trees in various villages to establish telephone communication.

Leon Idas training to use a machine gun.

The partisans lived in bases in the mountains of Greece where they organized armed resistance against the German army. Aided by nearby villages, British airdrops of supplies and their own resourcefulness, the partisans primarily employed ambush and guerrilla tactics against the German army. The Germans in turn attempted to eliminate the partisans by destroying villages that supported them.

Leon Idas (middle) with two army friends

Leon spent more than three years with the partisans. During that time, Leon suffered through hunger, lice, a lack of adequate clothing, and had virtually no contact with his family, save for a single encounter with one of his brothers who was fighting for another partisan group.

At the end of the war, in December 1945, Leon left the partisans and returned to his family home in Athens. Once there, he was reunited with what was left of his family and learned that his parents and brother Gabriel had died in Auschwitz during this time.


Leon eventually made his way to the United States with no more than 50 cents in his pocket, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland. He married and raised a family of three sons and one daughter, and started his own clothing business, Royal Vintage Clothing. Leon passed away on April 12, 2013, and was laid to rest in the private Jewish Family Cemetery on the island of Samos, Greece, alongside his grandfather Leon Goldstein and Uncle Albert Goldstein.

Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Leon Idas, including seven videos of him reflecting on his time as a partisan. Leon's son, Sam Idas, has created a photo montage of Leon's life. He was gracious enough to share it with JPEF - click here to view the montage video.