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.

Jewish Partisan Lilka (Ticktin) Bielski (z''l) – born January 13, 1926

Lilka Ticktin was born in Bialystock, Poland, on January 13, 1926. Before she was a year old, her family settled in Novogrudok. Her mother, Zina, was from a well-to-do, cultured family. Her father, Alter, had a thriving business collecting rags and processing them in multiple warehouses to produce paper. The Ticktin family was well-known in the shtetl, and often paid for weddings, a bris, or a Shabbos meal for those who couldn’t afford it.

Lilka went to a local Hebrew school, then followed in the footsteps of her older brother, Meir, and attended high school in Bialystock. At the age of 13, her mother got sick and passed away. Relatives came to stay with the children, until Lilka was sent back to Bialystock to finish her schooling. Her father eventually remarried. The new stepmother was a divorced, single mother, who worked as a seamstress to make ends meet. 

When the Russians invaded the area, and the family fled to Lida, moving into a small apartment. Alter also brought his wife’s family to Lida, including her two sisters, and her mother.

Meanwhile, Lilka’s friend lived in the same building as Tuvia Bielski, who was working in Lida as a bookkeeper. The two young girls were captivated by him and often spied on Tuvia through the window. Once, he caught them, finding their infatuation amusing, and offered to take them to the movies.

In 1941, the Germans bombed Lida, and the family escaped to the countryside, staying with peasants. When things calmed down, they went home. Tuvia also left Lida, returning to his family home in Stenkevich. When the Germans entered Lida, the Jewish population was divided into three ghettos: Postawska, Koszarowa, and Piaski. Lilka remembers that she did not feel particularly afraid, and even regarded some of the Germans as friends.  

All that changed later when the SS entered the picture. The evening of May 7, 1942, all three ghettos were fenced in. The next day, the Germans went house to house, rounding up all the Jews. Lilka was taken out with her family, wearing only a nightgown and shoeless. All the Jews were lined up and told to go to either the right or the left. Because her stepbrother was of use to the Germans, he had special privileges and he, his mother, Alter, and Lilka were told to go left. His aunt and grandmother joined those going right. When the selection was finished, those who went to the right were marched out of town, lined up by a pit, and shot by the Germans. Over 5,500 Jews were massacred. Those who remained in the ghetto were herded into one small area and told to be ready for work at 6 AM the next morning. 

Tuvia, meanwhile, after seeing his family killed by the Nazis, had taken refuge in the woods surrounding Stenkevich, together with his brothers, and a handful of family members. He sent letters into the ghetto, urging the Jews to leave immediately, before they were killed. He wrote, “I don’t promise anything, but at least you’ll be free.” Alter insisted that he was staying where he was, adamant that he would share his fate with his fellow Jews.

One night, Lilka was awakened by her father shaking her and saying, “Get dressed, we are leaving tonight.” She was stunned by her father’s change of heart, but quickly got ready. Alter told her, “I dreamed that you survive. I’m not sure about me, but in my dream, you live through this.” They crawled under a fence, and remained crawling for a full kilometer, until they were met by Tuvia. He sent them to the family camp with his brother, Asael. That group now numbered twenty-one.

There were grumblings among the seventeen already in the group about adding more mouths to feed and take care of, but Tuvia was insistent that he would save as many Jews as he could. It became his primary mission: “I would rather save one old Jewish woman than kill ten Nazis”, Lilka remembers him saying.

The group continued to grow; first, friends and relatives, and then Jews they had never met, who escaped from the ghettos or from trains bound for the extermination camps, motivated in part by knowing they had a place to go – The Bielski Camp. Hunger was widespread in the area and the Jewish refugees, the Belarusian peasants, and the Nazi army, all competed for what little food there was.  

The Bielski partisans regularly sent out food missions, to help procure food for their growing numbers. Alter insisted on joining one of these missions. At age 49, he was considered old and entitled to stay behind at the camp. Even though a tearful Lilka begged him not to go, he insisted on joining the group. That was the last time she saw her father. The group was out late, and the sun was rising.  Rather than risk discovery in the dawning light, they opted to stay in the house of a local farmer until night fell again. The Nazis came and slaughtered them all, save for one, who hid beneath a stove. 

Almost a year later, Lilka’s stepmother became extremely ill with the flu. Her son decided to bring her to the home of local peasants, where her sister had been in hiding. The Nazis discovered them, and they were slaughtered. 

Now, two years after she left Lida for the camp, Lilka found herself all alone. But the relationship between Lilka and Tuvia had been growing. At first, he would just make sure she always had enough to eat, and always showed her kindness and compassion for her circumstances. Soon, the awe and admiration the young Lilka had for the commander turned to mutual love. Tuvia continued to look out for Lilka and they eventually married in the woods. The marriage that lasted for 45 years, until Tuvia’s death in 1987. Lilka never looked for any privilege as the Commander’s wife, and she often did her part, standing guard over the camp overnight, gun in hand. She made formal reports to the Commander in the morning about the night’s activities.

As the Commander’s wife, she also played the part of hostess, entertaining the leaders of the Russian partisans. It was vital for the group to be of use to the Russian Otriads (or brigades), so they provided leather boots and gun repair in the workshops of the Shtetl Bielski, as it became known.

Despite the misgivings of those in the group, Tuvia felt it was vitally important that they accept all Jews into the community.  “As a small group, we have no chance,” he said, “we will survive in the woods, at least some of us. If we stay in the ghetto, we will all perish.”

The group, eventually numbering over 1,200 people, survived the war. In July of 1944, as the Red Army advanced and the Nazis retreated in panic. The day of liberation came unexpectedly. Much of the group returned to Novogrudok, but found their homes were now occupied by the local peasants. 

Lilka and Tuvia soon realized they had to leave Novogrudok; Tuvia was too well known, and they found out the NKVD, the predecessor to the KBG, was looking for him.  Tuvia and his brother Zus, along with their wives, Lilka and Sonia, and younger brother Aron, boarded a train heading west. It was a treacherous journey, as they were stopped numerous times by the NKVD.

They continued west, through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, where they settled for some time. While living in Romania, the group was contacted by a Zionist organization, promising legal passage to Palestine.  

They boarded the ship to Palestine and arrived in the promised land just in time for Israel’s war for independence. Tuvia went from fighting in one war to fighting in another. Lilka gave birth to a girl in Palestine in 1946. Tuvia and Lilka and their infant girl, Ruth, were given housing in the settlement called Holon, south of Tel Aviv. 

Eventually, war broke out during the fight for Israel’s independence. Tuvia was involved in the fighting but assured a worried Lilka that he would return soon. It was Yom Kippur, and he still hadn’t returned. Lilka knew something was wrong.  She walked to the military headquarters to see if she could get any news. They explained that the truck Tuvia was traveling in had been blown up in the desert and all of the occupants killed.

With a heavy heart, Lilka returned to Holon. Night fell, and she prepared to sit Shiva, tearing her clothing in the Jewish tradition. Suddenly, her young daughter stood up in her crib, calling “Aba, Aba” (father). Lilka turned to the door and could not believe her eyes. There, stood Tuvia, dirty and exhausted. His truck had exploded, but he had survived and walked through the desert for three days to return to his family.

In 1952, Lilka had another baby, a boy, who they named Meir Aztzmon, after Lilka’s brother. Ruth affectionately nicknamed him Mickey.

Tuvia soon began to develop health problems and was diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer. At the urging of two brothers, who had immigrated to the United States prior to the war, he made the journey to New York in 1955 for an operation. Lilka and her two children followed in 1956, where they eventually added a third child, son Robert. Lilka lived a fairly ordinary life in Brooklyn, raising her children and adjusting to life in a new country. She enjoyed watching her children grow up, get married, and have children of their own. Tuvia’s family and other relatives followed, also settling in Brooklyn. Lilka loved cooking for the holidays and spent winters in her later years of her life in Hallendale, Florida. Tuvia and Lilka eventually had nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Presently, they have two more great-grandchildren on the way.

Tuvia died in June 1987 and Lilka in September 2001. They are buried side by side on a hillside in Har HaMenuchot Cemetery, overlooking Jerusalem.  

Abe Asner's Military Training Helped Him Save Lives

"Grodno still was a ghetto, and lots of people went back to the ghetto like Saul, his father, his mother. And I said, “Me and my brothers, we’re not going back to the ghetto. We’re not going. We’re going to win, doesn’t matter what. If I die, I’ll die standing up — not to shoot me in the back.”
-Abe Asner
Jewish partisan Abe Asner (z''l), was born in the district of Lida, Poland on October 19, 1916. In 1938, Abe followed in the footsteps of his brothers and joined the Polish army. On June 22, 1941, Abe was visiting a cousin in Lithuania when he awoke to the sight of German planes littering the sky with bombs. When German tanks surrounded the ghetto where Abe and his brothers were staying, they had to make a choice: stay among the 3,000 Jews who were facing imminent death or flee to the forests. Abe disappeared into the trees with nothing but the clothes on his back.

The forest proved to be a breeding ground for resistance fighters. Soon Abe was among 60 Jewish and Russian POWs running missions. His military training gave him the skills to kill German soldiers who attempted to search the dense forest. In the beginning, Abe thought the resistance would only last a few weeks. It continued for over four years, and their partisan unit grew to several thousand people, including the woman who became Abe’s wife.

Abe and his brothers were successful on many missions. They sabotaged enemy supplies, halted German food convoys, and rescued Jews from ghettos. They frustrated the Germans with their efficiency under the cover of darkness. “The night was our mother,” Abe remembers. Eventually the Germans placed a bounty on their heads. “So much money to catch us, dead or alive,” Abe recalls.

The ongoing violence of the Partisan missions wore away at Abe’s psyche. When the war finally ended, he worked hard to adjust to normal life. Despite the physical and emotional scars he carried, Abe knew his deeds helped to shape the lives of countless people.

Abe’s passion burned brightly when he recalled his partisan days. “We don’t go like sheep. We did as much as we could. We did a lot,” he said. “People should know somebody did (fight back). People should know.”

After the war Abe moved to Canada with his wife where they had two daughters and four grandchildren. Abe passed away on May 26, 2015 at the age of 98.

Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Abe Asner, including six videos of him reflecting on his time as a partisan.

Don Felson (z''l) Dynamited Railroads to Disrupt German Conveys Carrying Supplies

Don Felson was born October 12, 1925 in Glubokie, Poland. A small town about a hundred miles northeast of Vilna, the town sits on a low plain amidst hills in present-day Belarus. In 1941, the Germans invaded Glubokie, and promptly established a ghetto for the town’s Jewish inhabitants.

Don, who had a job at a German POW infirmary at the time, was tipped off about the first massacre by a sympathetic German doctor, who warned him not to return to the ghetto on the night of the raid. As Russian POWs began to escape from the camp where Don worked, rumors of partisan units hidden in the forests spread throughout the village. In the fall of 1942, Don’s older brother Stan left for the forest – he convinced a Jewish partisan who was seeking recruits to take him along, despite the fact that he had no combat experience and no weapon.

The Felson family: Stan Felson on the left, Don Felson on the right

Six months later Stan returned for Don. Though Stan made it seem like joining the partisans was a matter of survival, Stan’s haggard and disheveled appearance made Don skeptical. At first he declined, but with his mother’s urging, he agreed to join Stan. He brought their mother and younger brother along with them, sequestering them in a friendly village while the two teenagers went off to join the Panomorenko company. However, a few months later the SS murdered Don’s mother and brother – along with the entire village – after having learned that a mother of a partisan was living there.

Filled with the need for vengeance, the boys dynamited railroads and ambushed German convoys, killing soldiers and building a reputation for valor. They also supplied the group with food by taking it from the local population and smuggling it back into the camps. As the war progressed and the German army was beaten back from the Russian interior, the Soviets began to airdrop short wave radios, weapons, and other much-needed supplies to the partisans in White Russia. The partisans were even able to evacuate their wounded behind enemy lines. Finally, when the Soviet army liberated the area, they enjoyed their hard won victory as the Germans beat a hasty westward retreat.

As was the case with most partisans, the Felson brothers were assimilated into the Soviet army, but soon became separated when Don was discharged after he developed an ulcer. Stan continued to fight in the Soviet Army, but soon reunited with Don when they met back in Glubokie, where they both made plans to flee westward. Staying clear of the Soviet army, they escaped through Poland to American-occupied Germany, where they ended up at a DP camp.

Back during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, Don’s great-uncle Saul was stationed at the front; afterwards, he managed to cross the Pacific and settle down in San Francisco. The two brothers hoped to join him there. From the DP camp, the brothers used their network of family and friends to secure visas to the United States. They arrived in San Francisco in 1947 and went to work for Saul’s contracting business. Not long after, Don met and married his wife. Their three sons took over the family business after Don passed away in 2002.

For more on Don – including 9 video clips of him reflecting upon his time as a partisan – visit his bio page on the JPEF website.

Jewish partisan Charles Bedzow Fought with the Bielski Brigade

Charles Bedzow was born Chonon Bedzowski on September 28, 1924 in the town of Lida, located in present-day Belarus. Once the Germans occupied Lida, Charles and his family were stuffed into an overcrowded, disease ridden ghetto within the town. He and his family suffered under the constant threat of starvation in the gradually worsening conditions. In the spring of 1942, he watched as his fellow townspeople were methodically slaughtered, but by a miracle, his immediate family was spared.

Fortunately, partisan leader Tuvia Bielski was a family friend to the Bedzowski family as the two families had been close before the war. After the occupation, Tuvia sent a message to the Bedzowski family – the message urged them to escape the liquidation of the ghetto by fleeing into the nearby woods, where the Bielskis had set up camp after the liquidation of their own village. Charles escaped to the woods and joined the Bielski Brigade. Because the Bielski camp allowed refugees regardless of their age or gender, Charles was joined by his mother, Chasia, his older sister Leah, younger sister Sonia, and younger brother Benny. Almost the entire family survived the Holocaust – an extreme rarity.

The Bedzowski family’s escape into the woods was complex and extremely dangerous. They traversed the treacherous landscape, crawled under fences and walked through the woods for two days, exhausted. Charles reported his thoughts upon arriving at the Bielski camp: “This must be one of the few places in all of Europe where Jews can move in total freedom.”

Despite the fact that like many partisans, Charles was only 17 when he entered the Bielski Brigade, he was quickly entrusted with dangerous work. His missions included the gathering of supplies for the group, scouting, sabotaging German efforts, and participating in ambushes. One such ambush occurred on January 28, 1944. A group of Bielski partisans went to a local village, pretending to be drunk. Their raucous noise alerted the locals, who notified the Germans nearby. 150 partisans lay in wait for the Germans, and they killed 26 policemen and eight Nazi officers during the ambush.

Unfortunately, the Bedzowski family’s participation in the partisan movement was not without a price. On one of her missions to bring medicine and Jews to the brigade from a nearby ghetto, Charles’s sister, Sonia, was caught by enemy forces and sent to the Treblinka death camp, where she died.

Following the war, the remaining members of the Bedzowski family wound up in a displaced persons camp in Torino, Italy. Charles married a fellow partisan from Poland, Sara Golcman, in 1946. In 1949 he and his family emigrated to Montreal, Canada, where he started a successful international real estate firm. Charles and Sara had three children; his surviving brother and sister went on to raise families of their own, and his mother, Chasia, not only survived the war, but went on to live with Charles until her death in 2000.
Charles was JPEF’s Honorary International Chairman. His story is featured in We Fought Back, an anthology of partisan stories from Scholastic publishing. Visit www.jewishpartisans.org for more about Charles Bedzow, including three videos of him reflecting on his time as a partisan. Visit jewishpartisans.org/defiance to see JPEF’s short documentary films and educational materials on the Bielski partisans.

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