Defiance

There have been so many Holocaust era films over the years that one would think that the public would have tired of this subject, notwithstanding the fact that the Shoah will always be of immense importance to our Jewish people.

Just this year, we have had "Valkyrie," "The Reader," "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," and several others. As a rabbi and a perennial student of this unfathomable tragedy, I am of two minds. Part of me says: the more films, the better. People need to know. The Shoah must never be forgotten. But there is the other part which says: The Holocaust must not be regarded as a subject of entertainment. Nor should be permit it to be trivialized. It must not become just another genre of films, such as westerns. I remember the first time I went to see "Schindler's List," which I still regard as the most important of all the Shoah films. As gratifying as it was to have this particular story portrayed on the wide screen, I felt distressed that there were many in the audience who continued to munch on their popcorn and slurp their soft drinks, as if this was just another movie. In addition, it is disquieting to me that Hollywood often takes liberties with factual stories, omitting relevant information and fictionalizing events so make them more appealing to audiences. All of these feelings and more came to the fore when I went to see "Defiance." I knew that the story was both authentic and also largely unknown. I also knew that it dealt with an aspect of the Holocaust which has been neglected to the detriment of Jews' self-image, namely that there was significant Jewish resistance, and that there were many Jews who did not simply acquiesce to go as sheep to the slaughter. We essentially know the facts from the scholarly book by Nechama Tec, "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans" (Oxford University Press, 1993), upon which the film is loosely based and from which it takes its name. A professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and a child survivor of the Holocaust, Tec researched the story and interviewed survivors in the late 1980s and early '90s, even though the plot of the film strays from her work in important ways. In particular, the movie is more of a war movie than a factual depiction of how Tuvia Bielski and his brothers maneuvered against myriad challenges and enormous odds to save Jews. The Bielski brothers engaged in violence out of necessity, but the nobility of their enterprise is that they preserved many lives. Tec explains that, like all partisan bands of the time, the Bielski otriad (as official partisan commands were known in Russian) tried to avoid combat -- especially with the Germans -- as much as possible. The first goal of all partisans, overarching their ostensible purpose of armed resistance, was to survive. The Bielskis went further by focusing their efforts on rescuing Jews. By all accounts, the three oldest Bielski brothers were heroic fighters who preserved the lives of 1,200 Jews hiding out from the Nazis in the thick forests of the Belorussian Soviet Republic, now the independent state of Belarus. It is commendable that their incredible story is now told in a movie dramatization, "Defiance," and I do urge you to see it. But the film is not quite the "true story" as advertised, yet I am inclined to forgive the filmmakers for their simplifications, omissions and distortions because they have brought to light an heroic and inspiring story which adds to our very limited understanding of this terrible time. The awesome achievement of the Bielskis to have saved so many innocents is worthy of being recounted, all the more so because the surviving brothers never expected even the slightest acclaim after the war. They came to the United States and quietly made new lives for themselves. Before I conclude, I want to add another thought about the manner in which the Shoah needs to be taught to future generations. Understandably, the overwhelming emphasis has been on the immensity of the destruction, the horrors of the death camps, and the heartless brutality of the Nazis and their collaborators. Not enough attention has been given to the righteous Gentiles who saved many lives, not enough of course, but there were numerous non-Jews who are deserving of an honored place in Jewish history because they knowingly put their own lives at risk to save Jews, and some paid the ultimate price. In addition, there was Jewish resistance, the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto is the most dramatic example, but there are others, and now the story of the Bielski Partisans has become part of that legacy. It is essential that our descendants should know the multiple facets of those most tragic times, both of the devastation and also of the heroic resistance. We need this in order to preserve faith in the human goodness. We need this for our own self-respect.