Revised january 30, 2009 a tangled web

. Stalin did not shy away from making such charges openly in his dealings with Western leaders. In an outburst at the Tehran Conference in 1943, the man who approved the Katyn massacre hurled accusation after accusation at the London Poles, calling them cowards, Hitler’s accomplices, and murderers. See Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor. The Kościuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 296. Curiously, the term “White Poles” was also borrowed by Nazi German propaganda. The relentless repetition of this hateful propaganda doubtless had a considerable effect on how Soviet-Jewsh partisans came to view Polish partisans. Today, the term “White Poles” retains currency only in Holocaust historiography. The anti-Polish propaganda renewed in 1943 was in fact a continuation of the anti-Polish campaign that became widespread at the time of the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939. For a description of that campaign, see Ewa M. Thompson, Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenpoint Press, 2000), 163–81; Ewa M. Thompson, “Nationalist Propaganda in the Soviet Russian Press, 1939–1941,” Slavic Review, vol. 50, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 385–99. In spite of all this Soviet agitation, intensive efforts on the part of the Germans, starting in 1943, to win over the Poles to the “anti-Bolshevik front” met with a complete fiasco. See Czesław Brzoza and Andrzej Sowa, Historia Polski 1918–1945 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2006), 609–10, 639–40.

3 Actually, this is part of a long litany of charges often hurled at Poles. In his introduction to a Holocaust memoir cited in this book, Howard L. Adelson, professor of history at the City University of New York, writes: “It was not by chance that the inhuman Nazi murderers chose Poland as the charnel house for European Jewry. With forethought they recognized that within Poland the neighbors of the Jews would assist in the slaughter … Even the Home Army, the Armja Krajova [sic], which was supposedly struggling against the Nazis, pursued the slaughter of the Jews with greater vigor than the war against the German conquerors. The local peasantry displayed an atavistic savagery that is unequalled in the annals of human history. Jews died while their neighbors exulted in their suffering.” See Samuel Gruber, as told to Gertrude Hirschler, I Chose Life (New York: Shengold, 1978), 6.

4 See his introduction to Isaac Kowalski, comp. and ed., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945 (Brooklyn, New York: Jewish Combatants Publishers House, 1984–1991), vol. 1 (1984), 27. The charge that the Home Army did not accept Jews into its ranks was dealt with earlier in this essay; the reference to Jewish ghetto fighters from Warsaw who perished in Wyszków forest is dealt with in Part Three of this book. The above anthology contains even stronger anti-Polish statements such as Moshe Kahanowitz’s diatribe found in vol. 3 (1986), at pp. 26–27 and 38, which alleges that “the majority” of Poland’s Christian population “willingly collaborated with the Germans in the extermination of the Jews. Many of them indeed, exceeded even the Germans in their bloodlust and their insensate hatred of Jews. … The ‘good friends’, who for a time agreed to help the Jews to hide, sooner or later murdered them in cold blood after first robbing them of whatever possessions they had. … The ‘A.K.’ refused to accept Jews in its ranks. Moreover one of its objectives was to exterminate the Jewish survivors who had sought refuge in the forests, in the villages and in other hideouts. … The hatred of the Poles for the Jews by far exceeded that of any other Eastern European nation. Most Poles welcomed Hitler’s anti-Jewish campaign … In that region of the forests in which the ‘A.K.’ operated not a single Jewish fugitive from the Ghettoes remained alive.” (This is a reprint of his article, “Why no Separate Jewish Partisan Movement Was Established During World War II,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 1 (1957): 153–67; see pp. 153–54, 165.) See also Krakowski, The War of the Doomed, passim; Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews During World War Two (New York: Holocaust Library, 1986), 120–34, 216–20.

5 Lester Eckman and Chaim Lazar, The Jewish Resistance: The History of the Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White Russia during the Nazi Occupation 1949–1945 (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1977), 10. The authors fail to notice that the major thrust of the Home Army’s activities—such as the 63-day Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 in which 200,000 Poles perished—was directed against the Germans, and that many Belorussians (and some Jews) joined the ranks of the same Home Army that was allegedly murdering them off. These authors’ opinion about Poles in general conforms wholly to their view of the Home Army: “the Poles who lived in White Russia … ambushed every Jew who remained alive.” Ibid., 84.

6 Kahn, No Time To Mourn, 119. What “special status” the Home Army enjoyed with the Germans is nowhere explained.

7 Chaim Lazar, Destruction and Resistance (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1985), 166.

8 See, for example, Eliach, There Once Was a World, 629, 746 n.1. A careful examination of the documents found in Bundesarchiv Koblenz file R 6/369, fol. 1–25, especially the memorandum of SS-Sturmbannführer (Dr.) Horst Wulff, the Gebietskommissar of the Wilno region, dated January 18, 1944, contradicts Eliach’s claims about and interpretation of that document. In fact, Wulff complains of incessant Polish attacks on German and Lithuanian outposts and states that “nothing concrete was agreed to with the Polish bands.” He also makes it abundantly clear that, even for the Germans, an agreement of a political nature was never contemplated. This was a purely tactical and temporary arrangement at best.

9 Zdzisław A. Siemaszko, “Rozmowy z Wehrmachtem w Wilnie: Luty 1944,” Zeszyty Historyczne (Paris), no. 69 (1984): 81–121; Józef Świda, “Wyjaśnienia dotyczące okresu 1943/1944 roku,” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 73 (1985): 74–80; Zygmunt Szczęsny Brzozowski, Litwa–Wilno, 1910–1945 (Paris: Spotkania, 1987), 150–55; Krzysztof Tarka, Komendant Wilk: Z dziejów Wileńskiej Armii Krajowej (Warsaw: Volumen, 1990), 66–70; Jerzy Turonek, Białoruś pod okupacją niemiecką (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1993), 203–208; Michael Foedrowitz, “W poszukiwaniu ‘modus vivendi’: Kontakty i rozmowy pomiędzy okupantami a okupowanymi dotyczące porozumienia niemiecko-polskiego w czasie II wojny światowej,” Mars: Problematyka i historia wojskowości, vol. 2 (1994): 165–80; Jarosław Wołkonowski, “Wileńskie rozmowy niemiecko-polskie w lutym 1944 roku,” Mars, vol. 2 (1994): 181–202; Zdzisław A. Siemaszko, “Wileńska AK a Niemcy,” Zeszyty Historyczne (Paris), no. 110 (1994): 198–222; J. Zdzisław Szyłejko, “Współpraca wileńskiej AK z Niemcami—rzeczywistość czy fikcja?” Zeszyty Historyczne, no. 112 (1995): 233–36; Jarosław Wołkonowski, “Rozmowy niemiecko-polskie w świetle nowych dokumentów niemieckich,” and Henryk Piskunowicz, “Działalność zbrojna Armii Krajowej w pierwszej połowie 1944 roku na Wileńszczyźnie,” in Wołkonowski, ed., Sympozjum historyczne “Rok 1944 na Wileńszczyźnie,” 95–122, 156–57; Jarosław Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński Związku Walki Zbrojnej Armii Krajowej w latach 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Adiutor, 1996), 160–61, 171–84, 250; Kazimierz Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej: “NÓW”—Nowogródzki Okręg Armii Krajowej (Warsaw: Pax, 1997), 173–89; Banasikowski, Na zew Ziemi Wileńskiej, 102–114; Zygmunt Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody: Polsko-sowiecka wojna partyzancka na Nowogródczyźnie 1943–1944 (Warsaw: Rytm, 1999), 173–82; Longin Tomaszewski, Wileńszczyzna lat wojny i okupacji 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Rytm, 1999), 321–23; Tomasz Strzembosz, Rzeczpospolita podziemna: Społeczeństwo polskie a państwo podziemne 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Krupski i S-ka, 2000), 100–103. See also Bernhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front: Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weißrußland 1941–1944 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, Schriften des Bundesarchivs 53, 1998), 285–86; Bernhard Chiari, “Reichsführer-SS—Kein Pakt mit Slaven: Deutsch-polnische Kontakte im Wilna-Gebeit 1944,” Osteuropa-Archiv, vol. 50, no. 4 (April 2000): A133–53; Bernhard Chiari, “Kriegslist oder Bündnis mit dem Feind?: Deutsch-polnische Kontakte 1943/44,” in Bernhard Chiari, ed., with Jerzy Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee: Geschichte und Mythos der Armia Krajowa seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (München: R. Oldenbourg, 2003), 497–527. Chiari, however, completely ignores the Soviet factor in his assessment of Polish contacts with the Germans; he does not appreciate that the Soviets repeatedly rejected Polish overtures and then turned on the Polish partisans. For a critique of Chiari’s treatment of this topic see Stanisława Lewandowska, “Wileńskie rozmowy niemiecko-polskie w lutym 1944 r.,” Dzieje Najnowsze, no. 2 (2002): 101–45. Some of the discussion on this topic is summarized in English in Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust, 88–90.

10 The German military made overtures both to individual unit commanders of the Nowogródek District of the Home Army, about which there is more later, and to the command of the Wilno District of the Home Army, in the wake of treacherous assaults on the Poles by Soviet partisans. After meeting with the Germans in Wilno in February 1944, and relaying the information back to the high command in Warsaw, the Wilno District command categorically rejected the German proposals. Internal German reports about these negotiations, however, did not accurately reflect their content, though they certainly did not indicate, as Soviet and Jewish sources suggest, that the Germans actually reached any formal agreement with the Poles. See, for example, Siemaszko, “Rozmowy z Wehrmachtem w Wilnie: Luty 1944,” Zeszyty Historyczne (Paris), no. 69 (1984): 81–121; Lewandowska, “Wileńskie rozmowy niemiecko-polskie w lutym 1944 r.,” Dzieje Najnowsze, no. 2 (2002): 101–45, especially 122 ff. It is noteworthy that a Volksdeutsch who was captured by a Polish partisan unit, from which he managed to escape, reported that their activities were directed at both the Germans and Soviets, with no mention of Jews. See Lewandowska, “Wileńskie rozmowy niemiecko-polskie w lutym 1944 r.,” Dzieje Najnowsze, no. 2 (2002): 117. After their overtures were rebuffed by the Poles, in retaliation the Germans deployed collaborationist Lithuanian “defence forces” under the command of General Povilas Plechavičius in an unsuccessful attempt to rid the Wilno area of Home Army units. See Siemaszko, “Rozmowy z Wehrmachtem w Wilnie: Luty 1944,” Zeszyty Historyczne (Paris), no. 69 (1984): 108–11; Lewandowska, “Wileńskie rozmowy niemiecko-polskie w lutym 1944 r.,” Dzieje Najnowsze, no. 2 (2002): 136–38.

11 T. [Tadeusz] Bor-Komorowski, The Secret Army, 1^st U.S. ed. (Nashville: Battery Press, 1984), 374–75, 380–81, 383, 386–87. This first English edition of this book was: Tadeusz Komorowski, The Secret Army (London: Gollancz, 1951).

12 Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 28.

13 Krajewski, Na Ziemi Nowogródzkiej, 204.

14 Home Army forces initiated the attack on Wilno on the night of July 6–7, 1944, but had to retreat in the face of overwhelming German forces. The Soviet Army launched another assault later that day (July 7), supported by the Home Army underground in the city, and the Germans were driven from the city by July 13, after heavy fighting. Some 500 Poles fell in battle. Tadeusz Piotrowski is mistaken when he suggests that it was for some hidden motives that only a third of the available AK forces fought with the Soviets to liberate Wilno. See Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust, 89–90. Rather, it was because the attack was advanced by one day (from July 7 to July 6, 1944), that almost half of the Polish forces did not arrive in time. See Roman Korab-Żebryk, Operacja wileńska AK (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1985), 202. On the battle for Wilno see Tomaszewski, Wileńszczyzna lat wojny i okupacji 1939–1945, 476–95; Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński Związku Walki Zbrojnej Armii Krajowej w latach 1939–1945, 267; Strzembosz, Rzeczpospolita podziemna, 272; Stanisława Lewandowska, Życie codzienne Wilna w latach II wojny światowej (Warsaw: Neriton and Bellona, 2001), 322–25. The editor of the official anthology of the Jewish partisans, however, presents an entirely different (and skewed) version of these events: “the city was recaptured by the combined efforts of the Jewish partisans and the Soviet army” (sic, in that order). See Isaac Kowalski, ed., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 4 (1991), 434. Yitzhak Arad provides a somewhat different assessment: “The great offensive by the Soviet armed forces began on June 23, 1944, and within weeks, they covered 220 miles and reached the entrance to Vilna. The Vilna partisans joined the Soviet army units. Soviet forces cut off Vilna on July 7 and 8, 1944. … Jewish partisans from Rudniki forests followed the Soviet Army into the city.” See Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 460. (Afterwards, Yitzhak Arad joined the NKVD and was active in combattinng the anti-Communist Lithuanian underground. He was dismissed from its ranks for his undisciplined behaviour. See Piotr Zychowicz, “Wybory Icchaka Arada,” Rzeczpospolita, July 12, 2008.) Kowalski is also perplexed that, after the liberation of Wilno, “Polish partisans within the city still went around with guns on their shoulders. Nothing was done about them. Like the others, they were shortly after ordered to demobilize and the majority obeyed.” See Kowalski, A Secret Press in Nazi Europe, 349. Because of the intervention of a Jew who worked for the Soviet high command, Jewish partisans were excused from serving in the Red Army on its perilous advance into East Prussia. They were allowed to remain in Wilno where they were presented with Medals of Valour, the highest honour in the Red Army. See Rich Cohen, The Avengers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 154. According to Isaac Kowalski, the partisans of the almost exclusively Jewish “Nekamah” (“Vengeance” of “Revenge”) unit were appointed to various important economic posts in the city. See Kowalski, A Secret Press in Nazi Europe, 386.

15 The Soviets apprehended 6,800 Polish Home Army fighters by stealth and disarmed them, executing hundreds. See Jarosław Wołkonowski, Okręg Wileński Związku Walki Zbrojnej Armii Krajowej w latach 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Adiutor, 1996), 266–83; Henryk Piskunowicz, “Działalność zbrojna Armii Krajowej na Wileńszczyźnie w latach 1942–1944,” in Zygmunt Boradyn, Andrzej Chmielarz, and Henryk Piskunowicz, eds., Armia Krajowa na Nowogródczyźnie i Wileńszczyźnie (1941–1945) (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, 1997), 70.

16 The story has been retold brilliantly in Norman Davies, Rising ’44: ‘The Battle for Warsaw’ (London: Macmillan, 2003).

17 Boradyn, ed., Armia Krajowa na Nowogródczyźnie i Wileńszczyźnie (1942–1944) w świetle dokumentów sowieckich, 15 (information from the chief of the intelligence department of the Belorussian Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, dated December 21, 1942).

18 “Jewish Units in the Soviet Partisan Movement: Selected Documents,” Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 23 (1993): 400–11, here at p. 408. According to that document, which was co-authored by Tuvia Bielski, the detachment commissar and its chief-of-staff Malbin, read in conjunction with Bielski’s postwar memoir reproduced, in part, in Albert Nirenstein, A Tower from the Enemy: Contributions to a History of Jewish Resistance in Poland (New York: The Orion Press, 1959), 352–72, and in Meyer Barkai, The Fighting Ghettos (Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1962), 241–64, the following chronology—which is at times unclear—emerges. The Bielski group formed and, fearing annihilation, “affiliated” with the Soviet partisans sometime in the summer of 1942. Initially, they were an autonomous unit named after Marshal Georgii Zhukov, led by Tuvia Bielski; however, they were soon subordinated to Viktor Panchenkov, a local Soviet partisan commander. Tuvia’s brother Asael was second in command, and his brother Zus was in charge of reconnaissance (or “razvedka” in Russian). In mid-1943, about 50 young men were transferred to Russian detachments. Around September 1943, Bielski’s group became part of the Kirov Brigade. The armed partisans formed the Ordzhonikidze unit or detachment (otriad) and were placed under a Russian commander and a Russian commissar, with Zus Bielski remaining as head of reconnaissance. Tuvia Bielski was appointed commander of the family group which officially became the Kalinin detachment. Asael Bielski joined the headquarters of the Kirov Brigade, but later returned to the Bielski group and was reappointed as an assistant to the commander and commander of the fighting forces. See also Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 43, 106, 126–27, 131. According to the sequence established by Peter Duffy, based largely on Tec’s biography Defiance, around January 1943, the Bielski group became part of the Lenin Brigade, which was subordinate to the leadership of the Baranowicze Branch of the Central Staff of the Partisan Movement, headed by Vasilii Chernyshev, whose nom de guerre was Major General Platon. The group was then known as the Second Company of the October detachment (previously Unit 96), under the command of Panchenkov. In June 1943, the detachment received a new name, Ordzhonikidze, and the Lenin Brigade, which was headed by Fedor (Fiodor) Sinichkin and included Bielski’s group, was transformed into the Kirov Brigade. Sinichkin was succeeded by Sergei Vasiliev as brigade commander in August 1943, and the Bielski non-combatant detachment, which was severed from the much smaller combatant group, became the Kalinin detachment. About half the combatants (around 100 partisans), however, made their way to the non-combatant group. Early in 1944 the Kalinin detachment was removed from the brigade structure and made an “independent” detachment that reported directly to General Sokolov (i.e., Efim Gapeev), the commander of the Lida Concentration of the Soviet partisans. The combatant group, Ordzhonikidze—formally under the command of Captain Lushenko, but in fact led by Zus Bielski—counted 117 partisans (including 9 Gentiles) on the eve of 1943. It engaged in more “economic missions” (i.e. raids on peasants) than “face-to-face confrontations with the Germans or local police.” See Peter Duffy, The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews, and Built a Village in the Forest (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 91, 126–28, 169, 188–89, 190–91, 209–210, 227–28. From the fall of 1943 to 1944, the Ordzhonikidze unit is said to have participated in 37 combat missions (some of them joint) and mined railway lines west and northwest of Nowogródek. Ibid., 208, 265. Soviet sources culled by Polish historians give the following, somewhat different, sequence: Bielski’s family group was removed from the Ordzhonikidze detachment of the Kirov Brigade in November 1943. As of January 3, 1944, the Bielski detachment was removed from the Kirov Brigade and reported directly to Sokolov, who was Platon’s second in command; however, the Ordzhonikidze detachment remained in the Kirov Brigade. On May 6, 1944, the Bielski detachment became the Kalinin detachment. The Baranowicze Concentration had two Jewish “family” units: Bielski’s (Ordzhonikidze, later Kalinin) and Zorin’s (Unit 106). At the end of April 1944, the former consisted of 941 persons (of whom 162 were armed), and the latter had 562 persons (of whom 73 were armed). Thus the vast majority of the membership of these groups was made of of non-fighters. See Boradyn, Niemen–rzeka niezgody, 84. By July 1944, the final tally for Bielski’s group was 991, with the Ordzhonikidze detachment accounting for 149 members. See Duffy, The Bielski Brothers, 259. Only a very small number of the armed partisans fell in combat with the Germans. Tuvia Bielski hastily disbanded his force to make it difficult for his fighters to be conscripted into the Red Army and soon left for central Poland with his brother Zus. He then moved on to Palestine before emigrating to the United States. Ibid., 264, 266. The youngest Bielski brother, Aharon Bielski, who was only about 11 or 12 when he escaped to Naliboki forest. His participation and impact on the life of the Bielski group was, in the assessment of Nechama Tec, “minimal, almost nonexistent.” See Tec, Defiance, 217. Aharon also settled in the United States after the war and changed his name to Aron Bell. He became the vice president of a synagogue in Palm Beach, Florida. In October 2007, Aron Bell, along with his wife, was charged with kidnapping and scheming to defraud their Polish Catholic neighbour Janina Zaniewska, a 93-year-old Polish woman who herself had survived Nazi imprisonment during the war, of about $250,000 in life savings. After emptying her bank account, they allegedly secreted the woman in a nursing home in Poland. See David Rogers, “Out on Bail in Kidnap Case, Bells Attend New Synagogue of Palm Beach Service,” Palm Beach Daily News, October 20, 2007. In a plea deal, the Bells agreed to repay the money in exchange for having the charges dropped, on the condition they not violate any laws within 18 months and have no contact with the victim. See Michael Kaiser, “Aron, Henryka Bell Make Deal in Palm Beach Case: To Pay Restitution to Janina Zaniewska,” Palm Beach Daily News, February 2, 2008.

19 Nirenstein, A Tower from the Enemy, 365–66.

20 Tec, Defiance, 114–16.

21 Anatol Wertheim, “Żydowska partyzantka na Białorusi,” Zeszyty Historyczne (Paris), no. 86 (1988): 150. Wertheim, who hailed from Warsaw, wrote in glowing terms about the warm and hospitable reception he and two other Jews received at the Polish partisan base in Derewno (Derewna) under Lieutenant Miłaszewski’s command. Ibid., 137–40. Wertheim served as aide-de-camp for the Soviet-Jewish partisan leader Semen Zorin. Zorin, who hailed from Minsk, fought as a Communist partisan in the Civil War in 1919–1920. When the Germans occupied Minsk, Zorin lived in the ghetto. In late 1941, he escaped to the forests in the Staroe Selo area, about 30 kilometres southwest of Minsk, where he joined up with a newly formed group of Communist partisans. Because of constant clashes between the Jewish and non-Jewish members, Zorin formed a detachment made up of Jewish escapees from the ghettos (Unit 106 of the Iwieniec Regional Central Command), commonly known as the Zorin unit. After successive attacks by the Germans and Belorussian police, the unit transferred its base to Naliboki forest, in proximity to the bases of many Soviet partisan groups. Anatol, the leader of a Jewish partisan unit which also maintained a Jewish civilian or “family” camp housing up to 800 persons. About 100 men served in the combat unit whose principal activity was foraging for food and other provisions among the local population. See Shalom Cholawski, “Zorin, Shalom,” in Israel Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan, 1990), vol. 4: 1739–40. It is not clear whether members of the Zorin unit took part in the massacre of about 130 Poles in the village of Naliboki in May 1943.

22 Account of Henryk Werakso, in Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust (Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 175–77. The testimony of Kacper Miłaszewski is found in Eugeniusz Wawrzyniak, ed., Ze wspomnień żołnierzy AK Okręgu Nowogródek (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Związków Zawodowych, 1988), 191–216.

23 Wiktor Noskowski, “Czy Yaffa Eliach przeprosi Polaków?” Myśl Polska, July 20–27, 1997.

24 Shalom Cholawsky, The Jews of Bielorussia during World War II (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998), 139. With regard to the connections with the Polish underground, Cheina Rabinovich offers the following elucidation: “In Vishnevo [Wiszniew] and nearby areas … in the forest there were Polish youths who started underground activities against the Germans. They communicated with the Judenrat in the ghetto. They would come secretly and bring news from the radio, ans sometimes even some pamphlets from the Polish underground. They even talked with us about weapons that they would bring to the ghetto. Everyone discussed the idea that on the day of annihilation (we all realized that such a day will soon arrive) we should have explosives and to use them so that some might be able to escape to the forest. After some long discussion, a decision was made to nix the plan, since everyone was too scared and maybe still had some hope that they would somehow survive.” See Cheina Rabinovich, “Vishnevo during the Second World War,” in Hayyim Abramson, ed., Vishneva, ke-fi she-hayetah ve-enenah od: Sefer zikaron (Tel Aviv: Wiszniew Society in Israel, 1972), 107 ff.; English translation: Wiszniew, As It Was and Is No More: Memorial Book, posted on the Internet at: