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

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

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

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

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

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

Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish Partisan Experience and the Rebirth of Contemporary Jewish Life

This year we celebrate the “New Year for Trees” on January 21st. Tu B’Shevat is an agricultural holiday celebrated on the 15th of Shevat on the Jewish calendar. In contemporary times we most closely associate the holiday with eating fruit and planting new trees, but it holds tremendous significance in the history of the Jewish partisans.

Partisans in the Forest

The trees were indispensable allies of the Jewish partisans. The vast forests and swamps covering most of the Eastern front became home to countless partisan groups, providing them with dense coverage — shielding their escape and harboring them in relative safety. The forest canopy protected large numbers of people from detection by aircraft, allowing groups like the Bielski brigade to harbor greater numbers of people, including children and the elderly. The forest was an essential infrastructure for the cohabitation of thousands. “No forests – no partisans,” asserted Faye Schulman, Jewish partisan photographer.


Partisans often had intimate knowledge of the forests in their area and were able to leverage that in their war effort against the Nazis, as in the case of Norman Salsitz and the Bielskis. The terrain was well suited for camouflage and deception: “In the forest, ten partisans seemed like a hundred to those on the outside,” remembers one partisan.

During the notoriously harsh winters of Eastern Europe, the forest provided firewood and the raw materials for shelter — little underground huts called ‘zemlyankas’ — where the partisans would huddle together to escape the cold and avoid detection. “Without the forest, we could not survive.” said Norman Salsitz in his interview with JPEF. And indeed, the very memories of escape and freedom for many partisans — including Mira Shelub and Jeff Gradow — are inextricably linked to the woods, where they ran to hide, and the trees that gave them cover from the pursuant bullets of the Nazis.

Studying about Tu B’Shevat in the classroom, and discussing the importance of trees in Jewish tradition, presents an ideal opportunity for educators to focus on Jewish pride and introduce students to the Jewish partisans. Guidelines and lesson plan ideas for incorporating the Jewish partisans into the study of Tu B’shevat are found in JPEF’s downloadable study guides for Strengthening Jewish Pride and Living and Surviving in the Partisans.

Today, Tu B’shevat represents the broader shape of contemporary Jewish renewal. It is one of the clearest examples of the rebirth of rooted Jewish life after the Shoah. The charred site of a forest fire slowly gives birth to new growth and now, more than 70 years later, a new forest stands in its place. Each of the elements of that forest grew from seeds that survived the fire; yet the forest itself has its own unique characteristics.

Women's History Month Resources

Schulman, Faye, Sarah Silberstein Swartz

A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust

Second Story Press, 1995.

Essie Shor and Andrea Zakin

Essie: The True Story of a Teenage Fighter in the Bielski Partisans

Mindfulness Publishing, 2009.

Sonia Shainwald Orbuch and Fred Rosenbaum

Here, There Are No Sarahs

RDR Books, February 23, 2009.

Eta Wrobel

My Life, My Way, the Extraordinary Memoir of a Jewish Partisan in WWII Poland

The Wordsmithy, LLC, 2006.

Frank Blaichman 

Rather Die Fighting

Arcade Publishing, 2009.

Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, the First Complete Edition

“Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh”

Vitka Kempner “Crossroads of Life.” Yalkut Moreshet 43–44 (August 1987):171–176; 

Vitka Kempner “The Memory of the Shoah and its Lesson.”

Vladka Meed,  “Jewish Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.” Dimensions, Vol. 7 No. 2; 1993.

JPEF short films and study guides

Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust

Study Guide and DVD- Women and the Holocaust: “Courage and Compassion"

Pictures of Resistance

“A partisan came in and said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said to myself, ‘My family was murdered. I am in the partisans. I’m alone. I won’t be living here anymore. The Nazis occupied my father’s house that he built himself.’ And I said to the partisan, ‘Burn it!’”
– Faye Schulman.

When interviewed by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF) at her current day home in Toronto, Canada, Faye Schulman, the only known Jewish partisan photographer, shared this story behind her photograph of her charred family home. Almost every one of Faye’s photographs and personal captions in the traveling photography exhibit, Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman, move me to tears. The tears, however, do not come only from a deep feeling of sadness for the tragic losses of the Holocaust, but from a stirring sense of pride, as well, for the bravery of those who resisted.

Due to her photographic skills, Faigel “Faye” Lazebnik Schulman was one of only 27 who were spared when the Germans liquidated the Lenin ghetto on August 14, 1942 and killed 1,850 Jews. They forced Faye to develop and print photos of their aggressions, including the picture of her parents’ mass grave. When ordered to train a young Russian apprentice in photography, Faye realized that she would soon become “useless” to the occupiers, and that they would kill her too. Thus, she escaped to the woods, but not before protecting the lasting proof of their atrocities. She hid the photos of the Lenin ghetto massacre in the middle of a box of unexposed photographic paper and told the young apprentice, who knew little about photography, that she must never expose the box to the sun. Later, as a member of a Russian partisan brigade, Faye came back on a mission and recovered both the photos and the camera that she would carry with her throughout her two and a half years in the woods – and to this day.

It was not easy to become a partisan, especially for Jewish women. Though she had no training whatsoever, the fact that her brother-in-law had been a doctor won Faye acceptance into the Molotova Shish Bridage’s Detachment as a nurse. Luckily for her, there was a great need amongst the partisans for nurses and doctors. Faye explained, “The main part of being a partisan was not the killing but keeping the wounded alive, bringing the wounded back to life so they could continue fighting and bring the war to an end.”

Faye volunteered often to go on dangerous raids in order to replenish her photographic supplies. With her camera, she captured experiences that most of us have never and, hopefully, will never even be able to fathom. Her photos range from images of Jewish partisans being buried next to Russian partisans and honored for their brave deeds to defeat a common enemy to that of a young girl whom Faye saved. Some of the pictures are quite serene and artistic. For example, the one of Faye in a canoe with a man in partisan uniform. Were it not for Faye’s narration of the photograph included in the caption, one would never know that Faye and the man were about to embark on a dangerous mission from which the man would not return.

You must see her photographs yourself, for my words cannot do the images justice. Thirty of Faye’s exquisite photographs are displayed in Pictures of Resistance: The Wartime Photographs of Jewish Partisan Faye Schulman, which was produced by JPEF and curated by the well-known Jill Vexler, Ph.D. It is currently on exhibit at the Dallas Holocaust Museum until November 26. To learn how to bring the exhibit to your community, visit www.jewishpartisans.org/exhibit or e-mail exhibit@jewishpartisans.org.

There are no other known Jewish partisan photographers. When I learned that Faye had to bury her camera and come back for it alone, develop the pictures under a blanket in the night, and lug her pictures with her while running from the Nazis, it was no wonder that she was perhaps the only one to capture the partisans’ experiences on film. In the woods, surrounded by enemies, during unforgiving winters, partisans struggled just to survive, let alone steal chemicals on raids to take pictures! Without her determination, the world would never have seen these images.

As she said, “I want people to know that there was resistance. Jewish people didn’t go like sheep to the slaughter. If they had the slightest opportunity to fight back, they did and took revenge. Many lost their lives heroically. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”

– Lisa Block

JPEF Short Films, Great Resources in Classrooms

Partisan women have always been an incredible aspect of Jewish partisan history. Besides fighting the Germans, women had to put up with sexism and sexual violence in their own groups. JPEF has important resources on these fascinating women including a printable guide and two short films:

"A Partisan Returns: The Legacy of Two Sisters" chronicles former Bielski partisan Lisa Reibel’s journey back to her home in Belarus for the first time after nearly 65 years. Hear first-hand how her story of escape, struggle, and success continues to influence her family today.

"Everyday the Impossible: Jewish Women in the Partisans" relates how Jewish women partisans overcame the unique dangers they faced both as women and as Jews to become part of the vital infrastructure of partisan movements throughout the World War II. JPEF also developed a study guide “Women in the Partisans” to accompany the film, which is narrated by Tovah Feldshuh.

Earlier this year, the United Nations Outreach Division promoted the JPEF study guide "Women in the Partisans" to coincide with the film, Daring to Resist, at 30 U.N. Information Centers around the world. The film profiles three young Jewish women during the Holocaust--including Faye Schulman, Jewish partisan photographer--who found unexpected ways to fight back against the Germans. JPEF features Schulman's remarkable photographs in our traveling exhibit, "Pictures of Resistance."

Click here to learn more about the 11 Jewish women partisans on the JPEF website, download study guides, and watch short films emphasizing the unique role that women played in partisan groups during the Holocaust.

Live Webcast of the International Day of Commemoration to honor the victims of the Holocaust

Watch a live webcast as the United Nations honors the courage of women during the Holocaust, which continues to inspire and empower women today.

The theme of the Memorial Ceremony: “Women and the Holocaust: Courage and Compassion” on the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration to honour the victims of the Holocaust. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will deliver opening remarks. Statements will also be made by H.E. Mr. Joseph Deiss, President of the 65th Session of the General Assembly, H.E. Mr. Ehud Barak, Minister of Defence of the State of Israel, and H.E. Ambassador Rosemary A. DiCarlo, U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. The keynote speech will be delivered by Professor Lenore Weitzman, Professor Emeritus, George Mason University and Mrs. Nesse Godin, Holocaust Survivor (Lithuania) will share her testimony.

JPEF worked closely with the UN to promote its materials including the study guide, Jewish Women in the Partisans. The UN sent the study guide to over thirty United Nations Information Centers (UNICs) around the globe to be used for local programming in conjunction with the documentary film Daring to Resist, which profiles three young Jewish women during the Holocaust--including Faye Schulman Jewish partisan photographer.

When: 10:00AM EST (7:00AM PST)
Channel: 3
http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast/>

Explore all of the resources of JPEF to learn more about Jewish women partisans.

Click here to download the study guide Women and the Holocaust - Courage and Compassion

Interview with Jewish partisan and photographer Faye Schulman

JPEF: You must have many days of personal reflection and remembrance. How is Yom HaShoah v’HaGevurah different?

Schulman: This is the day when most people remember the Shoah. For me, it is not that different than any other day because I think about it all the time. Every day is Yom HaShoah.

JPEF: What lessons would you like to share with young people today?

Schulman: That there was a resistance and Jews did not go like lambs to the slaughter. Jews resisted—they fought back!

JPEF: What do you think is important about Yom HaShoah v’HaGevurah?

Schulman: I think it is important for future generations, not those of past generations who remember it quite clearly. As I said already, for me one day is not any different than the other—it is my responsibility to remember it and speak about what happened every day.

To learn more about Faye and the photography exhibit, please visit

Faye Schulman's biography and Pictures of Resistance

Photo source: A Partisan's Memoir, Second Story Press, p. 139