About

Tuvia Bielski (1906-1987)

When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union (USSR) in June 1941, Tuvia and his family were living in Belarus. He and this three brothers, Zus, Aron and Asael had witnessed their parents and two younger siblings being taken away to be murdered. Being intimately familiar with the nearby Naliboki Forest from their childhood, the four brothers fled and hid there for safety.

While it was not their original plan, they soon decided that if they and other Jews were to survive, they needed to form an armed partisan resistance and create a community in the forest made up of any Jews wishing to participate, young and old. They offered freedom to Jews trapped in the ghetto by joining their community in the forest. The brothers and their comrades became known as the Bielski Brigade.

By the summer of 1943, with Tuvia in command, the community had expanded greatly. They had a medical clinic, schools, soap factory, dairy, tannery, butchers, tailors and even a group of musicians performing concerts.

The Bielski Brigade was successful in sabotaging activities of the German army. They punished local Nazi collaborators and frequently joined with Soviet partisan groups to destroy German facilities. They burned fields of grain to deny their use by the German army. They conducted local raids for food to meet their own needs while being sure that the farmers were not deprived of enough for their own families.

By the end of the war, the community had grown to over 1,200 of whom most survived, owing to Tuvia’s effective leadership Tuvia found his way first to Israel and later to the United States, where he lived until the age of 81.