Partisan Tools for Survival: the Instrument of Illusion

Many who know Jewish partisan stories also know that victory was not only about physical resistance—mining railroad tracks or killing German soldiers—it was also about spiritual and intellectual resistance. One such model of mind over matter is the power of resourcefulness; partisan stories often feature the instrument of illusion saving the day.

Ben Kamm

Many partisans recall the tactical trickery they used to defeat enemies. Ben Kamm’s unit would strategically place Soviet parachutes (used to drop supplies) in an area away from camp, wait for Germans to bomb the parachutes, and cut the German airplanes down with machine guns. Likewise, Jack Kakis’ partisan unit developed oft-used deceptive strategies, and for him it was all in the details. He recalls their method for mining the roads, “You put the mines underneath [a piece of rubber] and you make some truck marks on top of the soil.” When the Germans surveyed the roads, they assumed it was as safe for them as for the last truck that supposedly drove by.

Abe Asner on a horse

Sometimes ingenuity was purely off the cuff: prior to approaching a group of Lithuanians and their machine gun in the forest, Abe Asner realized he and his outnumbered companions had to devise a plan so they would not be massacred. That's when Abe saw a natural hill within the Lithuanians' view and had a brilliantly simple idea. The seven partisans walked all around the hill several times, which gave the Lithuanians the impression that a great number of partisan soldiers were surveying the area. The Lithuanians quickly abandoned their plan and ran away.

Bernard Musmand's survival was dependent on pretending to be something he was not. Hiding in an all boys' Catholic school in France, Bernard had to play a part he knew very little about. The first day, got a hold of a Bible and spent half the night studying in the bathroom. He explained: “I became such a good Catholic that the priest at one time asked me if I want to go to the seminary, Catholic seminary.”

In Bernard Druskin’s case, however, reasons for deception could also err on the side of recreation:

“You know we used to give the dynamite to the peasants? For booze, in exchange for booze. We used to tell them that's soap. They didn't know what is. Mylo, mylo, mylo — that was soap, used to tell them it was soap.”

Wherever illusion came from—pre-existing resources, extemporaneous action, or pre-planned strategies—many partisans speak of these ephemeral instances of trickery as possessing the power to turn the tables in the fight for survival.

This Month in Jewish Partisan History: Revolt in Sobibor Extermination Camp

Those who escaped from the Sobibor Extermination Camp in Poland furnished detailed-first hand accounts of their revolt. Their stories will be a legacy for all who lived and died in the gates and for the events that happened in October of 1943. A small town on the eastern edge of Poland, Sobibor was the locale for an extermination camp. Outside the camp, a 100-meter long road that the Germans called Himmelstrasse (Road to Heaven) led the way to the gas chambers, where approximately 250,000 Jews and Soviet POWs were executed.

On September 23, 1943, Alexander Pechersky, a Lieutenant Quatermaster of the Red Army arrived at Sobibor and was chosen for labor. When Solomon Leitman explained to him that in this small plot of land hundreds of thousands of Jewish women, children and men were murdered, he thought of escape, initially wondering, “Should I leave the rest of the prisoners to be tortured and murdered?” He then writes in his memoir, “I rejected this thought.” Pechersky became a figure of authority when he stood up to a German guard at the camp. That’s when people began to approach Pechersky with ideas for an escape plan.

Leon Feldhendler had been leading discussions for an escape, but was unable to come up with a suitable plan, as the camp perimeter was planted with mines. Pechersky and Feldhendler realized that if they could kill the SS officers while other Soviet POWS raided the arsenal, they could take the camp and escape through the gates.

On October 14, 1943, participants led by Pechersky and Feldhendler covertly killed 11 SS personnel with knives and axes; they covered the blood with sawdust. However, an SS guard who had left the camp and returned early discovered one of the bodies and began to shoot at prisoners. At the sound of gunshots, Perchersky cried out for the others to begin their revolt. Some prisoners had obtained hand grenades and guns, others rushed out of their workshops to escape, some who were unaware of the revolt chose not to leave. All who stayed were executed.

Out of 550 prisoners of Sobibor, 300 made it out of the prison gates; though many, including Leon Feldhendler, were caught by German soldiers and local collaborators. Within days of the revolt, Heinrich Himmler ordered the camp closed, razed, and planted over with trees. After the war was over, only 53 Sobibor prisoners had survived. Pechersky and other survivors joined up with partisan brigades, including an all-Jewish otriad called Yehiel’s Group, and continued to sabotage the Germans. Others who survived were able to, in their own way, bring their perpetrators to justice. Thomas Blatt interviewed former German guard at Sobibor, Karl Frenzel, and contributed to the book, Escape from Sobibor, which gives various personal accounts of the events. Finally, Esther Raab, Thomas Blatt, Chaim Engel, Regina Zielinski, and Kurt Thomas gave these amazing interviews to USC Shoah Foundation, here.

For more information on the story of Sobibor and its participants, see these articles:

• Sobibor - The Forgotten Revolt
• Sobibor @ the USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia
• Esther Raab - Sobibor Death Camp Survivor

Partisan Tools for Survival: Friendly Locals

The world of a partisan, and especially a Jewish partisan, was a treacherous, restless, stressful world. They braved the most unendurable conditions—extreme cold, hunger, fatigue—and survived through the will to fight and persevere. Sometimes they received food, shelter, supplies, information, and medical attention from nearby communities. However, Jewish partisans could not fully trust the often anti-Semitic locals, though their services were necessary. Preventative measures were therefore taken: food and supplies were acquired at gunpoint or with some cunning and often improvised deception. Frank Blaichman recalls, “We had information that a farmer had hidden weapons. We made up a story to tell him that we were Russian paratroopers and we needed the weapons. We had our men far away with broken pitchforks that looked like a gun with a bayonet in the background, so to the farmer he looked like he was dealing with the real thing.” Even medical care was forcefully taken when sympathetic doctors were not available.

Norman Salsitz

Wounded in battle, Norman Salsitz needed surgical attention but did not trust the local doctors, so he took a hand grenade with him and informed the surgeon that if anything went wrong, everybody in the room would be killed. Brenda Senders explains the necessity of using this type of force, “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. Survival was at stake.”

However, locals who empathized with Jewish partisans or simply shared the same feeling of opposition toward German occupation were a great asset to partisan survival. Leon Idas found that there were local villagers who were friendly and freely informed partisan troops of German movements, and would even escort disguised partisans to the city hospitals to get them aid. Harry Burger found that locals offered up their barns to shelter and care for traveling partisans. Burger and Idas, however, lived and fought in southern Europe, where there was less anti-Semitism. In Poland, Sonia Orbuch did not encounter many sympathetic locals; although, she owes much of her survival to one citizen by the name of Tichon Martinetz who was instrumental in connecting her with the Russian partisans and also supplied the brigade with food in the bitter winter of ’42. Frank Blaichman spent much time with farmers who hid him and his comrades, cooked meals for them, even washed their clothes. “The locals were anti-Semitic, but they were not killers,” Frank Blaichman explained. “When they saw that we took care of German collaborators they were more willing to help us. Without their help we would have never survived.”

Frank Blaichman

According to partisans such as Blaichman, local allies could make all the difference in regards to survival. Even though unsympathetic locals could be tricked or forced at gunpoint to concede services and supplies, not all of survival relies on physical needs. After being chased by locals “like an animal”, when Blaichman found friendly households which sheltered and fed him there was a sense of hope. He said, “They treated us like human beings.”

People Who Resisted – Dith Pran: photojournalist, refugee and survivor of the Cambodian Genocide

Dith Pran: Survivor, Advocate, Photojournalist

In the 1970s, Dith Pran was witnessing his country’s violent dissolution. Cambodia lapsed into civil war, stirred up by the struggles in Vietnam that spread over national borders. Pran sent his wife, Ser Moeun Dith, and four children to the United States, but he stayed to help report on Cambodia’s civil war, believing that in order to save lives, other nations had to understand Cambodia’s state of desperation. He worked as an essential guide, note-taker, and photographer for New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, who explained in an interview, “[Pran’s] mission with me in Cambodia was to tell the world what suffering his people were going through in a war that was never necessary.” Schanberg later wrote an article about Cambodia and Pran, which was turned into the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields.

In 1975, Pran unwillingly became a pawn in the radical social engineering experiment of Pol Pot, who sought to turn Cambodia into a purely agrarian society devoid of Western influence. Pot’s trigger-happy followers, the Khmer Rouge, gained control of Phnom Penh, forcing all residents out of the capital city and into a collective farm. At the forced labor camp, Pran spent four and a half years harvesting twelve hours a day with a spoonful of rice for sustenance. He did all that he could to survive, while witnessing and enduring arbitrary brutality.

At this time Cambodians were murdered for minor infractions against the regime’s doctrinaire policies; the Khmer Rouge were responsible for an estimated 2 million Cambodian deaths. Pran deemed the mass graves of Cambodians, killed by starvation, disease, guns, and pick axes, as “The Killing Fields.”

A 1974 photo by Mr. Dith of shells being fired at a village northwest of Phnom Penh. Photo: Dith Pran/The New York Times

In 1979 the Khmer Rouge lost power and Pran escaped 60 miles past the killing fields — the overwhelming evidence of genocide — and through landmine-dotted terrain to the Thai border. Soon thereafter, he reunited with his family in San Francisco.

Having survived atrocity, Pran immediately began to devote his time to helping fellow Cambodians who had suffered under the Khmer Rouge. In New York City, he founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project to educate people on the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. He spoke also of his efforts to aid Cambodia: “The Khmer Rouge has brought Cambodia back to year zero and that's why I'm trying to bring the Khmer Rouge leaders to the World Court. Like one of my heroes, Elie Wiesel, who alerts the world to the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, I try to awaken the world to the Holocaust of Cambodia, for all tragedies have universal implications.”

Dith Pran died on March 30, 2008, having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just three months earlier. Executive Editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, explained after Mr. Dith’s death, “To all of us who have worked as foreign reporters in frightening places, Pran reminds us of a special category of journalistic heroism — the local partner, the stringer, the interpreter, the driver, the fixer, who knows the ropes, who makes your work possible, who often becomes your friend, who may save your life, who shares little of the glory, and who risks so much more than you do.”

This Month in Jewish Partisan History: Partisan Attack on Dereczyn, Poland (Belarus), August 1942

On the night of July 24, 1942, the ghetto of Dereczyn was liquidated; between 3,000 and 4,000 Jews were murdered and placed in a mass grave.

Before the Germans swept Dereczyn, some 250 Jews evaded execution and fled into the forests. They were assisted by another survivor, 33-year old Dr. Yehezkel Atlas who had fled from Kozlowszczyzna, in the Slonim district of western Belarus, where he saw his sister and parents murdered. He was the physician of a partisan group commanded by Pavel Bulak and Boris Bulat, and he brought the refugees from Dereczyn to the two Soviet commanders. There was already a partisan fighting group of Soviet and Polish soldiers, but Atlas announced his intention to form an all-Jewish unit, to give the survivors of Dereczyn vengeance for their murdered families.

Yehezkel Atlas
Copyright © 2011 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' And Heroes' Remembrance Authority

Bulak dismissed him, insisting Jews were not fighters, and in any case they did not have weapons to prove themselves. Furthermore, Bulak did not want Atlas, although he was a skilled tactician, to be a partisan leader; he was essential as a physician. Dr. Atlas was adamant and convinced Bulak enough that the commander sent the Jewish men to prove their merit on a dangerous operation — half-expecting failure. When Atlas and the others returned with newly attained arms, Bulak allocated forces for an all-Jewish partisan unit.

One Jewish partisan who came from Dereczyn, Gertrude Boyarski, described her choice to join the fighting unit under Bulak instead of the family camp:

“Sitting and hiding behind my mother's skirts didn’t feel right, I figured in the fighting unit I could get vengeance, I could do something good.”

On August 10, 1942, Dr. Yehezkel Atlas received permission to attack the Germans at Dereczyn. Under the authority of Bulak and Bulat, Atlas led 300 partisans in an armed attack on the German garrisons. They successful took control of the town, capturing 44 German policemen and killing almost 20 in the struggle. After raiding the supplies, the Jewish partisans now all had high Russian boots, leather knapsacks, shirts, and a number of small, good-quality arms and ammunition. Atlas ordered the 44 captured German policemen atop the mass grave outside Dereczyn, where they were lined up and executed.

After the operation, Atlas told his unit:

“We must not settle down and take things easy…Our struggle only began with the defeat of the Germans at Dereczyn. Your lives came to an end in the slaughter of the 24th of July. Every additional day of life is not yours, but belongs to your murdered families. You must avenge them.”

Dereczyn Synagogue, Copyright © 2008-10. Museum of Family History.

Larry King, Liev Schreiber and Edward Zwick Join Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation to Honor All Surviving Jewish Partisans with Launch of New PSA

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Hollywood and the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation have joined forces to launch a unique public service announcement campaign about standing up against discrimination by honoring the Jewish partisans – thousands of World War II resistance fighters that fought back against the Nazis and saved thousands of lives. CNN anchor Larry King, actor Liev Schreiber (Salt, X-Men: Origins, Defiance), director Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond, Defiance), Rose Holm, a Jewish partisan, and her granddaughter Elisabeth Holm are all part of JPEF's grassroots initiative to bring together the last surviving partisans and their families at a gala event in New York City on November 7 in their honor. To view our public service announcement, please click: http://youtu.be/9lgqCZ6OsMk.

Larry King, a long time JPEF supporter, said, "The Jewish partisans are an important part of our history, and JPEF does tremendous work to keep their story alive and relevant with an innovative curriculum, short films and fabulous online resources. It is important to bring together as many partisans as we can for this special event on November 7."

The three-part campaign will kick off with a Web PSA designed to help locate these courageous individuals so that they may be re-united and honored with their colleagues at the tribute dinner in November. JPEF will give complimentary tickets to any partisan that wishes to attend the tribute event. The remainder of the PSA campaign will be launched later this fall and into 2012.

"By honoring these brave men and women, JPEF inspires the next generation of leaders to stand up for human rights and social justice," said Mitch Braff, founder and executive director of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. "Our tribute event is a historic link to the people who are a living testament that young people can make a difference – as many of the partisans were teens."

About Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation

Since JPEF's founding in 2000, hundreds of thousands of students in schools all over the world have learned about the history and life lessons of the Jewish partisans through a dynamic curriculum targeted to 7th-12th grade students. The organization makes innovative uses of film, the Web, and an e-learning platform to teach not only the history, but what the partisans want future generations to always remember: Young people can make a difference and we must all stand up to oppression and discrimination. The organization focuses on secular, parochial, and Jewish schools as well as teen youth groups and summer camps. JPEF has been named one of the most innovative Jewish organizations the country for five years by Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies' Slingshot. To find out more about the Jewish partisans and JPEF visit, www.jewishpartisans.org, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

Jewish Partisans: Tools for Survival and Resistance - The Night

The day-to-day lives of the Jewish partisans were extraordinarily difficult. Jewish partisan units had little arms and ammunition to fight with, and when they were not fighting, they were struggling to find food for survival. They slept in the elements and had little to no medical supplies. They also had to worry about local collaborators plotting against them. Yet, the Jewish partisans evaded capture, used their resources to impede German operations, retook ghettos, killed German troops, and saved thousands of Jewish lives during World War II. They were successful for many reasons and developed many instruments for survival. One way in which the partisans had an advantage over their enemies was their use of the cover of night.

Simon Trakinski

Most partisan group activities, especially those outside of the forest, were carried out at night. Jack Kakis used the cover of night as a setting for his factory-bombing operations, Simon Trakinski's partisan group blew up train lines at nighttime, and the Bielskis used the darkness to veil their food gathering missions. Ben Kamm also led operations at nighttime, successfully freeing 600 Jews from the Janow Lubelski labor camp in Poland.

Norman Salsitz

The night was more or less a necessity for the successful conduct of operations — during the day, it was very difficult for partisans to go anywhere outside the forest without being detected. Even clear nights and the moon caused a great deal of anxiety, so the partisans would actually welcome the kinds of difficult, stormy weather they would otherwise wish to avoid. As Norman Salsitz said:

“Who was our biggest enemy? The moon. The moon was our biggest enemy… if there was a moonlit night, we couldn’t move. So the night, the blizzard, heavy snow, heavy rain, this was our friends.”

The partisans also knew that the Germans had no tactical advantage over the partisans in the dark or in poor conditions. Silvio Ortona explains their strategy:

“We defended ourselves and at night, disappeared, because we were in charge at night. Because we had people who knew everything about the region. And they didn’t move at night… because their weapon superiority was no longer applicable.”

For these reasons, nighttime was an important element for the partisans and a powerful one. Abe Asner, who repeatedly frustrated the Germans with his efficiency under the cover of darkness, describes night’s importance to partisans:

“I think, if I would write a book, the title would be, The Night is Our Mother because lots of things we used to do, at night. The night was protecting us… the night was our mother.”

For more information about the Jewish partisans, please visit the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's website.