Revised january 30, 2009 a tangled web

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413 Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, Part 1 (Brooklyn, New York: Neturei Karta of U.S.A., 1977), 33–34. Similar charges have also been levelled against Tuvia Bielski, who some say refused to accept a a group of refugees with pregnant women, children, and old people from the Nowogródek ghetto in November 1942, and dispatched them to Lipiczany forest where most of the soon perished in a German raid. See Tec, Defiance, 89–90.

414 Testimony of Beniamin (Benjamin) Brest, dated July 8, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2531.

415 Testimony of Abram Mieszczański, dated June 10, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), no. 301/2536.

416 Brysk, Amidst the Shadows of Trees, 64.

417 Levine, Fugitives of the Forest, 116.

418 Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry, 288–91.

419 Benjamin Bender, Glimpses Through Holocaust and Liberation (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1995), 96–97.

420 Smolar, The Minsk Ghetto, 129.

421 Piotr Głuchowski and Marcin Kowalski, “Wymazany Aron Bell,” Gazeta Wyborcza, Duży Format, June 16, 2008.

422 Piotr Głuchowski and Marcin Kowalski, “Wymazany Aron Bell,” Gazeta Wyborcza, Duży Format, June 16, 2008.

423 Nirenstein, A Tower from the Enemy, 352–54.

424 Józef Marchwiński, W puszczy nad Niemnem: Wspomnienia z walk partyzanckich na Białorusi w latach 1942–1944, typescript, Archives of the Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny in Warsaw, sygnatura III/63/91, 153. See also Leon Kalewski, “Kresowe (po)rachunki.” Nasza Polska (Warsaw), March 15, 2000. For a hagiographic account of Józef Marchwiński’s activities see Gutman and Bender, eds., The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, vol. 4, Poland, Part 1, 489–90. For further confirmation of some elements of these accounts see Tec, Defiance, 93, 111, 137, 139–41, 163; Tec, “Reflections on Resistance and Gender,” in Roth and Maxwell, eds., Remembering for the Future, vol. 1, 564; Tec, Resilience and Courage, 300, 319. Lola Hudes Bell (Bielski), who married Tuvia Bielski’s first cousin, Yehuda Bielski, recalled: “I had to endure the indignity of having to hand over my underwear—a very scare and needed article of clothing—to the Bielski leaders before they allowed me into their camp. It was a very large and well organized camp with a powerful hierarchy. … Everyone knew their place.” See Y.E. Bell, “They Went To ‘Build a Jewish Country’,” based on the memoir One Came Back, in the words of Lola Hudes Bell as told to Y.E. Bell and L.N. Bell, The Jewish Press, May 13, 2008. Lola’s husband Yehuda lamented, “They gave the women’s underwear they collected to their wives and girlfriends. This was so ugly and low.” See Leslie Bell, “The Cousins Bielski,” The Jewish Press, November 19, 2008. According to that article, Tuvia Bielski was allegedly involved in Yehuda Bielski’s sister’s death—her head was bashed in with a rock, but this incident was hushed up. Bielski’s propensity for violence has been noted by his biographers. In a dispute with a Belorussian neighbour over some land while still a teenager, Bielski recalled: “When he came closer I reached for my scythe and with it hit his. He lost his balance, landing on his back. When he was on the ground, I began to hit him with my hands. Four farmhands came to look. They stood there amused, laughing at the man’s misfortune. That day I gave him such a beating that we did not see him for two weeks.” See Tec, Defiance, 8. (2) When serving in the Polish army, Bielski “asked a cook if he could have a schmeer of chicken fat for his bread, the man responded: ‘Get out of here, you scabby Jew.’ Without a moment’s thought, Tuvia grabbed the man with his right hand and pummeled him with his left. He shoved him against a table and grabbed a large knife—which, despite his anger, he refrained from using. Instead, he picked up a chair and smashed it across the cook’s face.” See Duffy, The Bielski Brothers, 15–16.

425 Benedykt Szymański, Oddział ten nie miał dobrego konta…, typescript, Archives of the Wojskowy Instytut Wojskowy in Warsaw, sygnatura III/63/45, 59. See also Kalewski, “Kresowe (po)rachunki,” Nasza Polska (Warsaw), March 15, 2000. Szymański was an assumed name; his actual surname was Scherman.

426 Lyn Smith, ed., Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust (London: Ebury Press/Random House, 2005), 205.

427 See, for example, Sutin, Jack and Rochelle, 89 (hostility toward a female newcomer), 111–12 (a 17-year-old girl persuaded her 40-year-old mother, whom she considered to be a burden, to drink poison), 116 (theft of hidden jewelry), 166 (theft of gold coins); Frances Dworecki, Autobiography (Internet: http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Lida-District/fd-toc.htm, 2002), chapter 2 (Bella Golembiewski was killed by a fellow member of the Bielski partisans who wanted her leather coat); Sołomian-Łoc, Getto i gwiazdy, 107 (hostility toward a female newcomer), 110–11 (theft of food and clothing among different forest groups). Sołomian-Łoc (Solomian Lotz) eventually joined up with a Soviet partisan group with a very unfavourable attitude toward Jews, whom they robbed (ibid., 103–104) and murdered (ibid., 106), and toward women, whom they called “bed fixtures” (ibid., 113–14). She was subsequently transferred to a Polish Communist unit where she worked as a nurse and was treated with respect, albeit with suspicion because she had come from a Soviet unit (ibid., 119). Another memoir, by a Jew who joined a partisan unit in Volhynia commanded by Polish Communist Józef Sobiesiak (“Maks”), who took in many Jewish fighters and extended protection to a Jewish civilian camp, also contrasts the humane treatment accorded to Jews in this Polish formation with the anti-Semitism rampant in the ranks and leadership of Soviet detachments in the area. See Joseph Pell and Fred Rosenbaum, Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California (Berkeley, California: Western Jewish History Enter of the Judah L. Magnes Museum and RDR Books, 2004), 65–107, especially 85–86, 96.

428 See, for example, Rubin, Against the Tide, 111, 128, 136, 137.

429 Ibid., 114, 119, 121, 148–49, 152; Tec, Resilience and Courage, 316–17.

430 Account of David Plotnik in Boneh, ed., History of the Jews of Pinsk, Part Two, Chapter 5.

431 Account of Fani Solomian Lotz in ibid., idem.

432 The following examples from the Wilno region are representative. In Olkieniki, where many Jews played on the local soccer team, “Relations between the Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors were generally correct. Friendly relations developed with some of the peasants in the nearby villages.” See Spector, Lost Jewish Worlds, 232. In Marcinkańce, a small town near the Lithuanian border, which was inhabited mostly by Poles and Jews, “By and large, the economic life of the Jews was prosperous. … The attitude of the Christian population towards their Jewish neighbors was friendly.” See L. Koniuchowsky, “The Liquidation of the Jews of Marcinkonis: A Collective Report,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 8 (1953): 206, 208. In Oszmiana, “Jewish farms and villages were scattered like tiny islands in the sea of the native peasants. Yet between the two communities there were good neighbourly relations, there was even friendliness towards each other.” See Moshea Becker (Ra’Anana), “Jewish Farmers in Oshmana”, in M. Gelbart, ed, Sefer Zikaron le-kehilat Oshmana (Tel Aviv: Oshmaner Organization and the Oshmaner Society in the U.S.A., 1969), 22; Internet English translation: . Leon Berkowicz, who hails from Baranowicze and was the son of a “successful businessman … well respected in the timber industry,” recalls: “I attended a Polish government [high] school and although social contact was almost non-existent, nobody was handicapped because of his origin or his religion. The Jewish boys excelled academically, but if they were usually first in maths and science they were nearly always last in sports. Physical education was a low priority in Jewish upbringing. Somehow, I was an exception and … the sports-master always gave me top marks. … I was very proud when the captain from the 78^th Polish infantry regiment asked me to join their soccer team and play for them in Wilno … I had two Christian friends at school … Our relationship was based on mutual respect and understanding. On a few occasions I went to their homes and they came to mine; I had the impression that the parents of both sides raised their eyebrows.” See Berk, Destined to Live, 3–4. The notion that Christian-based anti-Semitism was the determinative factor governing relations between Poles and Jews must be dismissed as an unfounded generalization—one that omits other important components of the equation. Traditional Jewish religious and ethnic-based attitudes toward Poles were also often imbued with bigotry and hostility, no less so than Polish Christian attitudes. See The Story of Two Shtetls, Brańsk and Ejszyszki (Toronto and Chicago: The Polish Educational Foundation in North America, 1998), Part One, 182–89, and also Mark Paul’s much expanded study Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles, Internet: