Summer Reading.....
The movie, Defiance is based on Nechama Tec's Defiance - The Bielski Partisans. Make no mistake, the devastating terror and heart-stopping danger is very real, but the story telling was much improved by the Hollywood script writers. Having said that, Tec has none-the-less done the world a huge favor in putting together the interviews, research, and chronology of the Bielski partisans. Led by the Bielski brothers, this Belorussian Jewish group became part of the Soviet resistance against the Nazi aggression. While there were many Russian, Polish, and other resistance groups, few were Jewish, and virtually none of them other than the Bielski group welcomed unarmed men, women, children, young or old. Even less than that accepted unarmed Jews. From 1942 through 1944 (until the Soviet liberation) the Bielski partisan group created a community that lived deep in the forests and swamps of Belorussia and kept more than 1,200 Jews alive. "Liberating" food from local peasants, cooperating with armed Soviet partisan groups by sending fighters and providing services (like gun repair and tailoring), the Bielski partisans represented one of the largest rescues of Jews by Jews in World War II.
The history is important, no doubt. Tec's book, however, reads like a college paper. Comparing and incorporating differing perspectives (some collected from survivors) and different attitudes is always difficult and Tec has the intellectual honesty not to judge, but the result is a very academic treatment of the situation - little emotion, little tension. This is a telling, not a novel. It sets the historical record straight and gives an appropriate recognition to some people who sought no honors and no glory, but deserve a tremendous amount of both.
Tuvia Bielski was interviewed by the author some weeks before he died. He sought no fame and no aggrandizement. I doubt seriously that he looked much like Daniel Craig. Perhaps the times make the man, but after reading this historical record you will have no doubt that, in this case, the man also make the times.
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