Study Guide 2A
Living and Surviving as a Partisan
“It was a full-time job to stay alive.” —Eta Wrobel, Jewish partisan
For many Jewish partisans, escape from the
ghetto or camp meant leaving one’s family and
entering a dangerous, war-torn world, where food,
shelter and clothing were scarce or non-existent.
Those who escaped often had no idea where they
would go. Every day that they lived as Jewish
partisans was a day in which they had to find
food, keep warm, avoid injury or illness, evade
detection or capture, and resist the Nazis in
whatever way they could. But how did they do it?
What did the partisans eat? Where did they sleep?
How did they endure the harsh winters and
survive illnesses and injuries? There are many
different answers to these questions, just as there
are many different partisan experiences.
In some instances, Jews were harassed, attacked
or murdered by other partisans, who, although
resisting the Nazis, shared their anti-Semitic
beliefs. Occasionally, all-Jewish partisan groups
were formed in response to the terrible
devastation of their families in addition to the
tremendous and widespread anti-Semitism found
in other partisan groups.
The Trees, the Sky, the Pine
Needle Ground
Because of the constant threat of discovery by the
Nazis or their collaborators, partisan groups were
always on the move, never calling one place
"home" for long. While some partisan groups
found shelter in barns and abandoned houses,
many others took refuge in the forests. The labor
involved in creating shelter for everyone in the
group was considerable. Some partisan groups
numbered in the hundreds, and a few in the
thousands.
In Poland, Mira Shelub was seventeen when the
Germans liquidated the ghetto of Zdzieciol where
Shelub and her family were living. At the
insistence of her father, she and her sister escaped
to the forest to join the partisans. "We slept on
the ground, under a big cover. The trees, the sky,
the pine needle ground were our summer home.
An underground hut was our winter home."
(1) Volunteers at an open-air
museum in Bryansk, Russia, recreated this zemlyanka, a dugout
that served as a winter home for
many Jewish partisans.
Between 20,000 to 30,000 Jews escaped ghettos,
villages and towns to become Jewish partisans.*
Most of these Jews fought against the Nazis as
part of larger, non-Jewish groups. In Eastern
Europe, most Jews joined Russian or Polish
partisan units, where Jews made up approximately
ten percent of the larger group. In France, Jews
joined the Maquis, a French resistance group
made up of Jews and non-Jews. In both Italy and
Greece, Jews hid in the mountains and carried out
raids against the Nazis as part predominantly
non-Jewish partisan groups.
* Ainsztein, Reuben, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied
Europe (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974).
These underground bunkers were called
zemlyankas, a Russian word meaning "dugout."
Zemlyankas were sleeping spaces, four to eight
feet deep, dug from the earth by the partisans.
They took many forms—some even held small
stoves for heating—but all were thoroughly
camouflaged to hide the partisans from the
German army and their collaborators. Eta Wrobel,
a Polish Jewish partisan, recalls her group’s
zemlyankas: "There were ten people to a bunker.
We removed the earth and carried it many
kilometers away. Then we would steal the doors
to a barn, to make the door. We even moved trees
onto the top. If anyone saw us, we had to move
and start again."
While many Jewish partisans had their camps in
forests, still others occupied whatever buildings
they could find—by luck, or by force. French
Jewish partisan Bernard Musmond belonged to a
unit that occupied an abandoned country
farmhouse in the Haute region of southern
France. He remembers: "It had no door, no
windows. We had bags of straw
to sleep on, and we slept in our
clothes."
(2) Frans Gerritsen (standing) poses
next to a zemlyanka built in
Westerbork, Drenthe, The Netherlands.
Source: Beit Lohamei Haghettaot,
USHMM.
(3) Following page: Sonia and Isaac
Orbuch. Source: Jewish Partisan
Educational Foundation Archives.
As commander of an all-Jewish
group of partisans, Frank
Blaichman did not want his men
sleeping outside. While it was
risky to approach farms in
search of shelter, there were
many benefits to doing so.
Farmers provided hot meals to
the partisans, as well as a roof
over their heads. To reduce the
risk of his entire group being
captured, Blaichman placed
guards outside of the village in
preparation for a possible
German attack. Many locals
were sympathetic to the
partisans—others were not.
Blaichman remembers: "We
walked in, and said ‘Good
evening, we would like to have shelter’… We said
‘please,’ and they treated us like human beings…
They assumed that if they didn’t, we would punish
them." A large number of villagers, however, were
against the Nazis and supported Frank's group
enthusiastically, giving them food and shelter.
The Search for Food
No matter what type of group they belonged to,
all partisans shared one daily concern: food. The
availability of food depended on many factors,
including the proximity of the partisans to
sympathetic villagers willing to help, and the
relative wealth of the area. In Greece, most of the
population opposed the Nazi occupation, so
villagers often helped partisans. Partisan groups
also varied greatly in size, from two dozen to
three thousand. Some large and highly organized
partisan groups received food regularly from
nearby villagers or farmers sympathetic to their
cause, but even this steady supply was scant.
Greek-born Jewish partisan Jack Kakis fought the
Nazis from a mountain hideout near Mt. Olympus.
After destroying a German compound with
explosives during the night, Kakis’s unit would
return the next morning, seeking food and other
supplies. But they had to be careful of what they
found. "The cans were written with German
letters. We thought it was food, and we were
eating it. It was medicine for lice."
In Poland things were different. Jewish partisan
Mira Shelub recalls, "The friendly Polish peasants
provided food for us, and the unfriendly Polish
peasants also provided food for us. When they
made food for the Germans, we took the food and
left a receipt. The receipt said, ‘The partisans were
here.’" Frank Blaichman’s group once attempted to
buy food in a Polish grocery. They were chased
away with pitchforks and knives, "like we were
bandits," recalls Blaichman. A few months later,
after his group acquired weapons, they entered
the same store. The owner said, "Gentlemen, how
can I help you?" and when they tried to pay for
their purchases, the owner refused, insisting on
giving them everything free.
As the war went on, information about the
success of partisan missions reached friendly ears,
and some partisan groups received much-needed
supplies. The Soviet government airdropped
ammunition, counterfeit money, and occasionally
vodka and chocolate, to the Russian and Polish
partisans fighting in Eastern Europe. Similarly, the
British government aided the Greek and Italian
partisans. But for most partisans, provisions were
frequently scarce, and patrols were regularly sent
to search for food. While villages and farms held
the potential for vital nourishment, they also held
the potential for capture, or death. Jewish
partisans seeking food faced a terrible dilemma
every day: a unit sent to a village to buy, beg or
steal food might not return. While hiding in an
abandoned farmhouse near the Mediterranean,
French Jewish partisan Bernard Musmond was
helped by a Catholic priest who brought bread,
water and sausages. The priest also told Bernard
and his fellow partisans to eat the grapes from a
nearby vineyard. Musmond recalls, "I couldn’t look
at grapes for many years after the war."
The division of labor in partisan groups meant
that some people would gather food, others
would cook, some would stand guard, and others
would go on missions. Most partisan groups had
pots, pans and stoves, and some groups even dug
cellars to store meat. Everyone had a job, and
each person contributed to the success of the
group. Every talent or skill—baking, making
salami, sewing, fixing shoes—was utilized to
increase the group’s chances for survival.
Field Medicine
Many Jewish partisans were active in an ongoing
battle to save other Jews and to sabotage the
Nazis by mining roads and railways, dynamiting
Nazi-controlled power plants and factories and
disrupting communications. These missions of
resistance, most often carried out at night, were
extremely dangerous, and many Jewish partisans
lost their lives. For those who were wounded on a
mission, and for those who fell ill while struggling
to survive and avoid capture, medical care was
often severely limited.
As part of a large group of Russian partisans,
Polish-Jewish partisan Sonia Orbuch worked daily
alongside the camp doctors, caring for the sick
and injured fighters. "My mother cooked for the
wounded, and I did whatever I could for them—
bring them food, give them medicine, change
bandages. We had to wash out the bandages.
When someone got better, we took their
bandages and washed them, to use again."
Orbuch also recalls the doctors searching the
forest floor for herbs to make medicines, to
supplement what medical supplies could be found
in nearby villages. There were no means of
sterilization. "If we had some real medicine, it
would be saved, in case of emergency."
Other partisan groups had limited access to
doctors and used methods of field first aid to help
their wounded, turning to village doctors only in
the case of serious injury. In an emergency, Jewish
partisans took great risks to save their lives.
Jewish partisan Norman Salsitz did not have
access to a friendly medical doctor, and after a
shootout with Nazi collaborators, he fled to the
house of a sympathetic veterinarian. The vet
helped Salsitz to the best of his ability, but told
him he needed to see a medical doctor. Faced
with the possibility of infection and death, Salsitz
went to the house of the only available physician,
an anti-Semite. Pretending to be a non-Jew, he
had the doctor treat his wound, but when the
doctor asked him to drop his pants for an
injection, Salsitz made a swift decision. He knew
that if the doctor noticed that he was
circumcised, his identity as a Jew would be
revealed. Salsitz pulled the pin from a grenade
and told the doctor that if he didn't cooperate, he
would explode the grenade.
More Information
on the Jewish
Partisans
Some sympathetic doctors did all that was in
their power to help the partisans, at the risk of
their own lives. As a child, Eta Wrobel was a
tenacious and strong-willed tomboy. A natural
leader, she later organized a group of young
people that escaped from the ghetto to a nearby
forest. During one of her missions of resistance
against the Nazis, Wrobel was shot in the leg. The
bullet remained in her leg for months, causing
pain and swelling. "I went to a Polish doctor who
was friendly to us. I would go when his wife was
not there, because he said he didn’t trust her. He
told me how to take it out. He gave me the
supplies, and I removed it myself. It hurt, but I did
it. What choice did I have?"
Defiance
by Nachama Tec
Fire from Stone
In some areas, the warmer climate of summer
allowed many Jewish partisans living in the forest
to sleep above ground, covered by a shelter of
branches or by a tarp of canvas or in a tent. In
winter, however, this was impossible. Many
partisans living in the forests
built zemlyankas, where they
slept tightly packed for
warmth. With the lack of
nourishing food and no reliable
supply of warm clothes, the
cold became an ever-present
enemy.
In northern Europe, the winter
of 1942 was the coldest in that
century. Temperatures dropped
to –20 degrees Fahrenheit over
large areas of Poland and the
Soviet Union. This
unprecedented weather slowed
Hitler’s progress as inadequate
The Jewish Partisan
Educational Foundation
recommends these
resources for further
information.
Books
The Defiant
by Shalom Yoran
Uncle Misha’s Partisans
by Yuri Suhl
Films
Come and See, a film
about Russian partisans.
Available for rental in some
independent video stores,
and available in VHS and
DVD through Amazon.com.
The Partisans of Vilna,
a film by Aviva Kempner.
Available for rental in VHS,
in some independent video
stores.
Resistance: Untold Stories
of the Jewish Partisans,
available for purchase
through PBS.org. Future
screening on PBS stations
planned in the near future.
Web Sites
www.jewishpartisans.org
http://www.ushmm.org/
outreach/jpart.html
For more information
please contact:
Jewish Partisan
Educational Foundation
285 Clinton Park,
San Francisco, CA 94103
415-861-2525 (tel)
415-861-1467 (fax)
[email protected]
clothing and supplies, in combination with
malfunctioning equipment, caused delays for the
German army. But for Jewish partisans living in
the forests, the cold was more than an
inconvenience—it had the potential to be fatal.
Hiding in the forest before joining his partisan
group, Russian partisan Daniel Katz ran between
five and seven miles each night to keep from
freezing to death.
Although temperatures in Greece and Italy were
not as bitterly cold as in northern and eastern
Europe, the partisans there also battled for
warmth. High in the Aphrodite Mountains near
Olympus, Greek-Jewish partisan Jack Kakis and his
unit benefited from the unique knowledge of local
shepherds whom Kakis had recruited to his
partisan group. "They said, ‘We’ll make you warm.’
‘How are you going to make us warm?’ I asked
them. They took two rocks, which had phosphorus
in them. They took some moss from a tree. They
hit the rocks together and made a spark, which
caught the moss. In a few minutes, we had a nice
fire, and we were warm." Like many other partisan
groups, Kakis’s group learned vital skills from local
residents in order to survive.
The cold weather created other problems: build a
fire and the smoke might give you away to nearby
village informers or German troops; walk in the
snow and your tracks could be followed back to
your camp. For this reason some smaller partisan
groups stayed in their zemlyankas during winter
storms, knowing their footprints would give away
their location. Jewish partisans also devised many
creative solutions for these problems, like having
each member of a unit return to camp by walking
in a different direction, so their tracks could not
be followed as easily. Some partisans even
mastered the art of walking backward to avoid
being tracked.
Snow or rain combined with nightfall was also an
opportune time for the partisans. The poor
weather would keep collaborators and Nazis
indoors and was a perfect time for partisan acts
of sabotage.
Coats at Gunpoint
Jewish partisans who escaped the ghettos and
camps took with them only what they could carry.
Most fled with little notice and all had to travel
light, leaving every cherished possession behind.
They left with the clothes on their backs and
endured exposure to the elements twenty-four
hours a day until finding or making shelter. As
with food, clothing was always sought after,
always valuable, always needed.
Sonia Orbuch remembers: "I had a pair of boots
that a friend found for me, but they were too
small. We walked many kilometers. My blisters
were as big as a fist. But then, I would put the
boots right back on again." In the freezing winter,
some in the camp had no shoes or boots. Orbuch
remembers her mother helping these people. She
wrapped their feet in strips of cloth and then
coated the cloth with water, so it would freeze
solid.
The partisans wore whatever they could find.
Many saw their clothes reduced to rags by
constant use. All partisans kept an eye out for a
better coat, for heavy boots, or for anything with
fur or the potential to keep out the cold. If nearby
villagers or farmers were not cooperative, the
partisans took the supplies they needed (food,
water, coats, blankets) at gunpoint. Sometimes
clothing came from fellow partisans who died
while fighting. In many cases, a successful
mission would result in a few partisans getting
warm winter coats or boots from the enemy they
had beaten. These Nazi uniforms were doubly
useful for warmth and disguise.
The Jewish partisans spent their days in a perpetual
search for sustenance, for adequate medical
supplies, for locations safe from discovery, and for
clothing to protect them from the cold. In many
cases, non-Jewish partisans could return home to
rest for a few days, but for Jewish partisans there
was no home. Their families were missing, murdered
or captured and their homes were destroyed or
occupied by strangers. The threat of death from
starvation or exposure to the elements was
constant, and every moment held the possibility of
capture by the Nazis or their collaborators. In such
brutal circumstances, many Jewish partisans
perished. But despite these forbidding challenges,
and against incredible odds, many survived and
fought back against the Nazis. "The will to live is
stronger than anything," says Eta Wrobel. The story
of the Jewish partisans, their incredible survival,
their heroic rescue of other Jews, and their defiant
resistance of the Nazis is a testament to the
strength of the human spirit.
THIS STUDY GUIDE WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS DONATION FROM THE ORBUCH FAMILY
Questions &
Exercises
1. The Jewish partisans
struggled daily to survive, and
often this meant making
difficult choices. For instance,
in the face of possible
starvation, many partisans
stole food, or took other
supplies necessary for their
survival, by using guns and
threats. Is breaking the law
ever justified? If so, when?
2. The value of people’s
abilities and skills changed
when they joined partisan
groups. For instance, Jews who
were lawyers, accountants and
businessmen had difficulty
contributing to the group
compared with people who
were farmers or those who
worked in the timber business.
What specific skills do you
possess that would be helpful if
you had to join a partisan
group? What would you need
to learn?
3. Many partisans lived in tight
quarters inside zemlyankas.
Men and women would sleep
head to foot, sometimes thirty
people in one room. What
issues would come up between
people in such tight quarters?
How would you resolve them?
4. Many Jewish partisans
survived because they were
able to obtain help from
strangers when they needed it.
Think of a situation where you
had a problem and needed help
from someone you did not
know well or didn’t know at all.
What methods did you use to
obtain help? What was the
result?
©2003 Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation