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Resistance fighters and Holocaust
victims #i
NEW YORK - In July 1942, a
young Jewish Resistance fighter
smuggled a letter penned in her
own blood out of a Gestapo com
pound near the Polish town of
Vilna.
“I am going to die,” wrote Liza
Magun, a courier for the then-
fledgling United Partisan
Organisation of the Vilna ghetto.
“Keep.the organization alive"
Her name became a symbol of
courage and inspiration for
thousands of Jewish partisans
throggnbut Eastern Europe dur
ing the war.
“I will always remember her
name as long as I live,” said Mor
ton Shames, one of a dozen sur
viving members of the under
ground movement who met
recently with students at the
City University of New York
who are studying the Holocaust.
About 60 students and faculty
members watched as Shames’
wife, Lucy, a laboratory techni
cian at the college who organized
the reunion, showed slides of the
Resistance members in their
youth and of the Jewish com
munity inside the barbed-wire
fences of the Vilna ghetto.
“This is my life, this is all my
life,” Mrs. Shames repeated
tearfully as each new slide
appeared.
“I will have nightmares for
the next few weeks,” said Berle
Druskenik, “but all of this must
be put on the record. All of us
are going to die soon.”
Druskenik was one of the
founders of the United Partisan
Organization, which started
with three members of Vilna and
grew to more than 125,000 par
tisans across Europe by the end
of the war.
“Everyone has to know that
not only did six million die in the
concentration camps, but that
thousands of other Jews fought
actively against the Germans,”
Druskenik said.
Although historians have
recorded the resistance of Jews
in several European cities, es
pecially the Warsaw ghetto up
rising of April 1943, relatively
little is known about the scope of
the Resistance movement.
“It all started in Vilna,” said
Shlomo Kowarski, a medical
researcher at Columbia Univer
sity who was a young college
student at the start of World
War II. "As early as 1942, we
saw the Ponare wards of Vilna,
in which thousands of Jews were
dragged out of the city and kill-i ?
ed in mass graveyards. Wtf
couldn’t deny what was happen
ing. We saw it.” , ..
At the height of the
resistance, 400 people were
organized into fighting bat
talions in the woods Sround
Vilna. Farther to the north,
around what is today the Rus-,
sian city of Novogorod, an even
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Nazism
had at least three locks on it. The
old lady was convinced that the
Nazis were still at large,” a Red
Cross spokesman said.
A Polish man recoiled from all
strangers, muttering “Gestapo,
Gestapo,” in a fearful reference
to Nazi secret police who helped
operate the wartime concentra
tion camps.
The man now is visited by Red
Cross workers.
Another Polish man claimed
the Nazis infested his house in
Britain with rats. He has been
moved to a rest home.
The spokesman said these
cases came to light in a Red
Cross campaign to trace World
War II expatriates.
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A group of Jewish partisans of the ‘Szysz’ detachment,
‘Molotov’ company, photographed in October 1943, near Drogi.
Seven of the partisans are on horseback.
larger band of fighters, led by
Tuvia Beisky, kept several thou
sand heavily armed German
soldiers from participating in
battles on the Russian front.
Beisky, who, at the age of 70 is
still a bearish man, had more
than 1,250 fighters scattered
throughout the Siberian woods.
They were responsible for the
destruction of power stations,
railroad terminals and food
supplies along the Russian-
Polish border.
Once, during a midnight raid,
the entire area’s grain supply
for the winter — several thou
sand tons of wheat — were burn
ed in a tremendous bonfire.
"Russian bombers flying
overhead saw the flames,”
Beisky said, “and bombed the
entire area.”
The Germans thought
“Belsky’s Brigade" had ties to
the Russian Army and, as a
result, kept out of some of the
wooded areas.
“If they only knew how few we
were — no shelter, no foods, no
weapons at first except for little
knives in our hands,” Beisky
said, “they could have wiped us
ail out.”
Meanwhile, survivors of Ger
man concentration camps and
other World War II refugees
who fled to Britain are haunted
30 years later by the horrors of
war, the British Red Cross
reported recently.
’ In a report on the 50,000 war
time refugees bow entering old
age in Britain, the Red Cross
told of a Czech woman who lived
with the body of her dead hus
band for five months because
she did not know whom to con
tact in her adopted country.
A locksmith brought to light
the case of an elderly Russian
refugee who kept having locks
fitted to her doors. “Every door
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DEAR HAPPY, Somebody stole my bus-
bend. And left a not-so-good imitation in his place.
The man I married 12 years ago was “Mr. Spar
kle. ” The man I see spending every waking week
end hour in front of the TV or behind a newspaper,
is “Mr. Yawn. ”
Where’s the fun and excitement I remember?
Should I hint around about budding a swimming
pool—or taking a crube? There must be something
I can do. But what is it?
BORED TO TEARS AND THEN SOME
’■ . . v M4.W U vV*- d ,»
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The Marriott Hotel at Perimeter Center has
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f.S-
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7 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE July 29, 1977