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For an understanding of the Jewish participation in the Soviet Partisan Movement (“Partisanka”), it is necessary first of all to present a general picture of the rise and nature of the Movement, its organization, methods of fighting, armament and vicissitudes.

During the retreat of the Red Army after the debacle they suffered at the hands of the Germans during the summer of 1941, many Soviet soldiers with their equipment found themselves cut-off in the trackless forests of White Russia and the Ukraine, without any possibility of re-joining their units. Apart from these, the Soviet authorities had purposefully left behind a number of people in order to organize the underground in the hinterland against the invaders.

To the forests there came also thousands of Soviet soldiers who had succeeded in avoiding captivity by the Germans as well as Jews who had escaped the slaughter that was organized by the Germans in the western regions of the U.S.S.R.

From all sides, young people flocked to the forests to join the partisans. These had lived in danger of being sent to forced labour camps in Germany. In addition, there were villagers in the partisan regions whom the Germans regarded as partisans and who were always exterminated whenever these regions were besieged, and of course Jews from the ghettoes who had lost their families. All these were in search of protection and the possibility of fighting and avenging themselves against the Nazi butchers. They all joined the ranks of the “avengers” in the forest.

And so the individual partisans were transformed into a popular mass movement which established close ties with Moscow. The Central Partisans Headquarters in Moscow expedited help to the combatants in the hinterland, parachuting radio receivers, broadcasting stations and trained broadcasters, small printing shops for the publication of propaganda material, groups of parachutists, organizers and commanders, and most important of all, abundant quantities of modern automatic weapons, explosives and mines of various types.

The Partisan Movement reached its peak towards the end of 1943. Apart from the cities where the Germans had consolidated their positions, the greater

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Majority of the occupied Soviet region was one vast partisan area in which the partisans reigned supreme and held the Germans in terror. The Germans, who had occupied almost the whole of Europe and who had to maintain a difficult struggle on the Eastern Front, did not have sufficient forces to garrison all localities so as to maintain order and were forced from time-to-time to undertake special operations against the partisans in one particular area, with the help of police forces and regular army personnel removed from the Front. Under these conditions, and in the vast area of the U.S.S.R. under German occupation, the partisans could not be exterminated.

The Partisan Movement in the hinterland was directed and guided by the Partisan Headquarters in Moscow with the aid of the military commands in the various republics.

Geo-topographical features, the inherent traits of the Russians and the cruelty of the invaders contributed in no small measure to the success and victory of the Partisan Movement.

An important role in Partisan strategy was played by diversion tactics – the principle being: “hit and run” fighting. Life behind the enemy lines forced the partisans to take various precautionary measures so as to prevent surprise attacks on their bases. Towards that end, the partisans were assisted by special liaisons among the village population who used to convey to them information about German movements and about spies and collaborators.

Mention must be made of the Polish Partisanka (the “White Poles”), which held sways over the settlements west of the River Nieman, populated mainly by Poles. They announced that they were fighting both the Germans and the Soviets. Aware, however, that the Germans would finally be defeated, they regards the Soviets who might come in their stead as the main enemy and declared a holy war on the Soviet Partisanka which was active in the region that had belonged to Poland before 1939. In particular, they vented their wrath on the remnants of the Jews. Hundreds of Jews who had found a hiding place among the gentiles or who were wandering in the forests were murdered by the “White Poles”.

In the Western Ukraine (Southern Polesia, Volhynia and Eastern Galicia) there held sway a “Green” Partisanka composed of Ukrainian Nationalists. Having been disillusioned of German promises to set up an independent Ukraine, the Ukrainians deserted their police units with their arms and fled to the forests. There they set up a Nationalist Fascist Partisanka which they named Banders and Bulba. They directed their attacks against the Soviet

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Partisanka which they regarded as the most dangerous enemy of their dream of independent Ukraine. In particular, they marked out the Jews who had found shelter in the homes of peasants or in surrounding forests and exterminated them. For the Jews in these regions, these partisans proved more dangerous and more horrible than the Germans themselves. Thousands of Jews – men, women, children and the aged, who had sought shelter and refuge from the German butchers in the forests and in villages, were cruelly murdered at their hands.

One of the main sources of supply for the hundreds of thousands of combatants in the hinterland was the estates which, until the outbreak of the war, had belonged to Polish landowners and under the Soviet regime were Kolkhozes. Attacks would be made on the storehouses in which the Germans had hidden away food and other goods. The most important supplier for the large partisan army in the forests was, however, the various peasant holdings. Life in the forests behind enemy lines and under constant danger, turned out to be a life without rule or order. Drunkenness and orgies became concomitants of partisan life. However, the Jewish fighters in the forests were sober and never drank to excess like their non-Jewish comrades.

The idea of underground organizations did not arise immediately after the establishment of the ghettoes because the Jews had not yet realized that they were facing extermination. It was only after German acts of slaughter among the Jewish population had become general occurrences that their eyes were opened and it began to dawn on them that the ghettoes set up by the German had one main objective, namely, to make it easier for them to carry out their plans of pillage, exile and mass murder.

The youth movements of the Zionist organizations doubtlessly played an important role in directing the Jewish youth to the underground and in establishing ceiling organizations for various underground bodies active in the ghettoes. However, the Jewish Underground Movement as a whole was the creation of the Jewish masses and so embraced all Jewish factions.

One of the greatest difficulties experienced by the underground was the acquisition of arms and many members in the underground organizations lost their lives in their endeavours to acquire weapons. The major portion of the arms of the underground organizations, however, was not purchased. Jewish young men and women who were engaged in the “Booty Stores” (Beute-Lager') in various military units, in the German police or in private German homes used to run danger in “purloining” arms of all kinds.

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As a result of surprise liquidation actions in the ghettoes, many lost their lives before they succeeded in escaping. However, a large number of the members of the organizations and with them many who were not organized, fled from the ghettoes before and during liquidation. Not all those who fled succeeded in reaching shelter. Many were killed or were caught during flight. Very many, however, succeeded in reaching the forests and, sooner or later, in joining partisan units or camps set up for Jewish families. These the Germans could not yet lead to extermination pits. It was against these remnants that regular German forces had to wage war which continued incessantly until liberation.

In some forests, these Jewish groups organized themselves into independent fighting units but they did not last for very long. The Soviet Partisan Headquarters was not very pleased with the existence of these units. The reason for its opposition was that the existence of an independent Jewish battalion would serve only to emphasize the viciousness of German propaganda among the non-Jewish population, to the effect that the Partisan Movement was but a Jewish creation. The opposition had still another, more general, political reason.
In the territory of any of the Soviet Republics, only such partisan units could arise as took the name of the republic in whose territory they were fighting. Since the Jews did not constitute a territorial entity in Soviet Russia, it was, therefore, impossible for them to maintain national units of their own. These reasons led to the speedy end of the independent Jewish combatant units. According to instructions, the commanders and fighters of these units were dispersed among non-Jewish units.

The Jews who had fled to the forests from their destroyed townlets encountered an inimical attitude on the part of the peasants in the surrounding villages as well as on the part of the combatant partisans.

The most dangerous prejudice under which they had to labour was that the Jews were “cowards”, that they did not want to fight and that they had come to the forests only in order to save their skins. The main factor in this anti-Semitic attitude in the forests was the human material that composed the Soviet partisan ranks. In the years 1942-1943, large masses from labour camps and particularly prisoner-of-war who had been poisoned by German anti-Semitic propaganda had come to the forests. In each region and “Fuscha” (Virgin Forests) there were partisan units infamous for their anti-Semitism. There were units among whom anti-Semitism reigned to such a degree that the Jews had no alternative but to flee to some more distant region or to other units despite the fact that such a step often endangered their lives.

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Many Jews were killed by the partisans for the sake of robbery especially of their arms. Any Jew who reached the forests properly clothed or armed immediately aroused the desire of the anti-Semitic partisans for his top boots, his clothing or his weapon. In addition to fighting the German enemy, therefore, the Jewish partisans had to maintain a constant struggle also against his comrades-in-arms – the anti-Semitic partisans.

As mentioned already, many Jewish families escaped from the ghettoes during the slaughter in Jewish town-lets. Upon reaching the forests, these Jews would dig underground hideouts for themselves in which they would remain during the daytime and in order that they might not be seen by casual passers-by. At night, they would steal out to the villages in order to obtain food, clothing, etc. These people were constantly in mortal danger. Mostly, they were unarmed and at the mercy of the peasants at whose doors they knocked, or of the non-Jewish partisans whom they used to come across during the night along the forest paths or on the roads to or from the villages.

During the so-called “quiet” days, life in these Jewish family camps was a sort of continuation of life in the Jewish town- lets. However, the lot of these family camp inmates was bitter indeed during German sieges or searches of the forests. The combat units, if they avoided engaging the invading forces, would speedily retreat in utmost secrecy from their bases to safer places. Not so the inmates of the Jewish family camps. In most cases, they were not informed by the fighting units of what was about to take place and the results were almost always tragic. Being left to their fate without any protection whatever and without arms, they would be attacked by the Germans who sowed death among the aged, the women and children who were unable even in the thick forests to flee for shelter.

There was not one form or type of partisan fighting in which the Jews failed to take an active part or to distinguish themselves. The Jewish partisans were very loyal to the aims of the war against those who massacred their people. They found particular satisfaction in initiating and in implementing acts of sabotage and of vengeance in the small towns of their birth against the collaborators and the “garrisons” who took a hand in the massacre of their Jewish fellow townsmen. The Jewish partisans in the Russian units volunteered for the most daring operations involving greatest danger with a view to avenging themselves upon the enemy, as well as to prove their own intrepidity and so dispel the prejudiced opinion of the non-Jews that the Jews were cowards.

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Since there were hardly any physicians among the Russian partisans, it was only the Jewish doctor that supplied medical aid. Partisan headquarters sent emissaries to the ghettoes in order to enlist the services of physicians for the forests. Jewish young women speedily learned to be nurses and provided medical aid and encouragement to the sick and wounded partisans.

Jewish artisans served with all partisan battalions. As is well known, the Jews constituted the majority of the artisans in Poland and in Russia. When these partisan battalions had need of shoemakers, tailors, locksmiths, technicians, typesetters, etc., they looked for them in the family camps in the vicinity and admitted them to the battalions without arms and without age limits.

In addition, the overwhelming majority of the interpreters for the interrogation of German prisoners, for translations from the German press and for the decipherment of German documents found on the persons of the prisoners, were Jews.

The number of Jewish young women participating in the underground organizations in the ghettoes was very large. In order to establish contacts with the outside world, Jewish young women of “Aryan” appearance, equipped with false identity cards and disguised as need required, used to be sent out.

Jewish women working with military personnel used to run the danger of stealing arms and parts of weapons and transferring them, by themselves, to the underground.

Upon reaching the forests, these women were faced with difficult living conditions. Their place was generally in the family camps but they suffered together with all those found unfit for battle. Nonetheless, many young Jewish women were absorbed in the combatant units, who generally refrained from admitting women, and in particular Jewish women, to their ranks.

The Jewish partisan never for a single moment forgot his brethren pining in the ghettoes or in the labour camps. Groups of Jewish partisans sometimes covered hundreds of kilometres in order to reach the ghetto and to try an extricate members of their families, comrades and friends, or Jews in general.

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It is worthy of mention that many young Jews preferred to remain in the family camps and lead their sorry life for the sole reason of being able to come to their aid.

The number of collaborators, who extended great assistance to the Germans in all acts against the Jews, was very large. Little wonder, therefore, that whenever the Jewish partisans went out for operations against the Germans, they never forgot to wreak vengeance on those who collaborated in the mass slaughter of Jews. And even after this was expressly forbidden by order from higher up, they used to carry out acts of vengeance of their own accord. Considerable benefit accrued from this. The life of the wandering Jew in the villages was no longer regarded as cheap. The Jews succeeded in intimidating the gentiles with the result that many Jews were saved and so were able to remain alive until the end of the war.

The present work covers the regions of Russia within the frontiers of June 22, 1941, the date of the German invasion of Russia. The main material relates to the activities of those who raised the standard of revolt in the ghettoes and of the Jewish partisans in the areas which, before the outbreak of World War II (Sept. 9^th, 1939), belonged to Poland and Lithuania.

The volume now published includes chapters on: a) The Ghetto fighters who lost their lives while on underground missions within or outside their own areas; b) Partisans who fell in action; c) Combatants shot by accident or on purpose by their comrades-in-arms, or who died a natural death in the forests; d) Partisans who were shot by order of the “Special Department” (Osobi Otdel) for infringement of “War Regulations” (found asleep while on guard, loss of arms, cowardice, pillage of population, carelessness in the implementation of assignments, etc.); e) Former partisans who had enlisted in, or who were conscript to the Red Army on liberation and who fell in fighting against the enemy; f) Partisans who fell in the Israel War of Liberation and g) Partisans who died an early death after liberation.