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A review by vermidian
Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec
5.0
To those that know me, the fact that I picked up something historical at all will probably surprise them. I tend to stick to fiction and avoid history because, often, I find historians love the history but the voice they put across when writing about it is dry and impossible for me to read. The very topic of this book and the writing skills of the author made this book a fantastic, though ultimately sobering, read.
This book was about a specific group of Jews fleeing the Nazi's before and during World War II in Poland. More specifically, it follows a group called the Bielski Otriad, which was a group of anti-Germans hiding in the woods for their own safety while Nazis were a threat. While it's very difficult to sum it all up, the story and the way these people survived and saved one another was an amazing read.
While I found the parts about the Aktions in the ghettos to be particularly horrifying (essentially when the Nazis rounded up those in the ghettos deemed disposable and shot them), I think stories like this are important to how we view the world. For instance, as an American child, we spent a semester in College studying the literature and the history of WWII. I also recall doing a project in sixth or seventh grade, I believe, where I had to write a multiple page paper on the treatment of Jews in concentration camps. In case you don't know much about what the Nazis did to the Jews in Concentration camps like Dachau and Auschwitz, trust me, it isn't something your preteen is ready to read about, let alone write a paper about. So, needless to say, I got a little bit more than the standard education on the topic, but not by much. I mean, I read the typical stories like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Night" and "Number the Stars", but I had never heard of the Otriads of Belorussia. All of the stories I had read were of Jews being smuggled and hidden and waiting for salvation, generally by sympathetic white people. As a white American, I suppose that's probably the generalized norm.
So to learn about and read about this group of Jews who took matters into their own hands, saved, and took care of their own was amazing. I went into this book not knowing what to expect and, as much as I am still horrified and saddened that something like this could ever have happened at all, it was so valuable for me to read about another perspective of the war and to learn about what these people did to thrive even under the hardest times imaginable.
I would recommend this to others, but I would definitely warn others that there are descriptions of the Aktions and the deaths of many people. While it doesn't go into graphic detail, the numbers and the situations are disheartening and horrifying and something that must never happen again to anyone of any race.
This book was about a specific group of Jews fleeing the Nazi's before and during World War II in Poland. More specifically, it follows a group called the Bielski Otriad, which was a group of anti-Germans hiding in the woods for their own safety while Nazis were a threat. While it's very difficult to sum it all up, the story and the way these people survived and saved one another was an amazing read.
While I found the parts about the Aktions in the ghettos to be particularly horrifying (essentially when the Nazis rounded up those in the ghettos deemed disposable and shot them), I think stories like this are important to how we view the world. For instance, as an American child, we spent a semester in College studying the literature and the history of WWII. I also recall doing a project in sixth or seventh grade, I believe, where I had to write a multiple page paper on the treatment of Jews in concentration camps. In case you don't know much about what the Nazis did to the Jews in Concentration camps like Dachau and Auschwitz, trust me, it isn't something your preteen is ready to read about, let alone write a paper about. So, needless to say, I got a little bit more than the standard education on the topic, but not by much. I mean, I read the typical stories like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Night" and "Number the Stars", but I had never heard of the Otriads of Belorussia. All of the stories I had read were of Jews being smuggled and hidden and waiting for salvation, generally by sympathetic white people. As a white American, I suppose that's probably the generalized norm.
So to learn about and read about this group of Jews who took matters into their own hands, saved, and took care of their own was amazing. I went into this book not knowing what to expect and, as much as I am still horrified and saddened that something like this could ever have happened at all, it was so valuable for me to read about another perspective of the war and to learn about what these people did to thrive even under the hardest times imaginable.
I would recommend this to others, but I would definitely warn others that there are descriptions of the Aktions and the deaths of many people. While it doesn't go into graphic detail, the numbers and the situations are disheartening and horrifying and something that must never happen again to anyone of any race.