Synopses & Reviews
The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims, but in fact many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. In Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II.
Tec reveals that this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons, but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis.
Herself a Holocaust survivor, Nechama Tec here draws on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself--to reconstruct here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight.
The saga of the Bielskipartisans is one of the most elevating and inspiring stories in the chronicle of death and despair that is the Holocaust.... Defiance is an accomplished and startling work of Holocaust documentation.
--Los Angeles Times
Powerful and meticulous. This story is like almost no other.
--Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic
Review
"Excellent."--David Denby, The New Yorker
Review
and#8220;Pioneering. . . . [We Are Here] will reach out to . . . all those who care about not replaying in this new century the disasters of the century that has just ended.and#8221;and#8212;Michael Steinlauf, author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust
Review
and#8220;This eloquent book can help us to reach out, open our hearts, and rediscover one another in a spirit of mutual understanding.and#8221;and#8212;Hon. Valdas Adamkus, former president of Lithuania
Review
and#8220;A most captivating read. Cassedy offers an extraordinary perspective, human and moving, to concerns that often are hidden by tired clichand#233;s, sentimentality, or anger. A rare document.and#8221;and#8212;Samuel Bak, survivor of the Vilna ghetto and author of Painted in Words
Review
"Uncovering this history with an intimate, personal and investigative approach, Cassedy explores how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews, are confronting their marred past and moving onward."and#8212;Jerusalem Post
Review
"All answers are tentative. All questions are crucial. Cassedy's quest is brilliantly balanced, totally engaging, and constantly penetrating."and#8212;Philip K. Jason, Jewish Book World
Review
"Ellen Cassedy's We Are Here challenges us to think again about what it means to remember the Holocaust in the present. . . . The struggle Cassedy so eloquently engages in to resist the logic of competing memory may be only that much more urgent today than when she was there."and#8212;Laura Levitt, H Net
Synopsis
The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims, but in fact many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. In
Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II.
Tec reveals that this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons, but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis.
Herself a Holocaust survivor, Nechama Tec here draws on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself--to reconstruct here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight.
Synopsis
A holocaust survivor tells of the largest armed rescue of Jews by Jews during World War II. Tec describes an extraordinary hidden forest community of 1,200 Jews who were led by peasant-turned-partisan Tuvia Bielski.
Synopsis
Ellen Cassedyand#8217;s longing to recover the Yiddish sheand#8217;d lost with her motherand#8217;s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the and#8220;Jerusalem of the North.and#8221; As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after heand#8217;d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nationand#8212;how do successor generations, moral beingsand#8212;overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in
We Are Here, one womanand#8217;s exploration of Lithuaniaand#8217;s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own familyand#8217;s place in it.
Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to and#8220;speak to a Jewand#8221; before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupationand#8212;Cassedy finds that itand#8217;s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.
About the Author
Nechama Tec is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, Stamford. She is the author of six books, including
In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen, the winner of the 1990 Christopher Award,
When Light Pierced the Darkness, and
Dry Tears, a memoir of her experiences during the years of the Nazi occupation of Poland.