“We are hiding in the forest and do not plan to submit to the Germans. Bring your wife, a few good men and we will build something together.” – Tuvia Bielski
Have you heard about the Bielski brothers or what they built deep in the forest? Because they managed to pull off a magnificent resistance. The Yad Vashem website tells their story:
After their parents and other relatives were murdered in a massacre of around 5,000 Jews on December 8, 1941, the Bielski brothers fled to the Belarusian forest and set up a partisan unit with Tuvia Bielski as the commander. However, unlike other partisan groups, fighting the enemy was not their highest goal. Their primary objective was to rescue Jews and to offer them shelter and protection in the forest.
And so they established a camp in the woods.
The camp was initially set up for 40 family and friends. But then the decision was made to expand:
We cannot simply hide ourselves. We must do something for our people. We cannot sit in the bushes and wait until the wolf comes for us. We must send people to the ghettos to save Jews.
So they raced toward death, snatched their fellowmen from a maniacal and murderous madman and his henchmen, and lived to tell about it.
They did so by establishing order and discipline. They worked real jobs in the woods and went to school and synagogue. Can you imagine?
“The group organized the skilled workers among the Jewish refugees into workshops, which employed at least 200 people, including cobblers, tailors, carpenters, leather workers, and blacksmiths,” the Holocaust Encyclopedia explains.
In addition, the group established a mill, a bakery, and a laundry. The leadership managed a primitive infirmary, a school for the children, a synagogue, and even a courthouse/jail. Work groups supplied the camp with food and cleared the land where possible for the cultivation of wheat and barley.
“Several dozen underground bunkers were built in the main camp,” The Times of Israel writes. The largest could house about 40 people.”
Toward the war's end, the Bielski group made a mind-boggling escape with over 800 people, all of whom walked silently for 10 days without food through several swamps, carrying babies and the elderly.
“The swamp began several hundred meters from our camp,” one of the Bielski brothers later explained:
It deepened as we progressed. The mud thickened and stuck to us. However, there was no fear of meeting anyone in the swamp. The stronger ones and the ones carrying arms walked last. In some spots we sank up to our navels, though this was not for long distances. We finally crossed, but by supreme effort.
They made it on and off the island and “by the time the Red Army liberated the area in July 1944, the camp had 1,200 members, making it the largest partisan group in the Soviet Union and all of German-occupied territory,” Yad Vashem recounts. “It was one of the largest rescues of Jews by fellow Jews during WWII.”
My husband Chris knew the story having watched the movie “Defiance,” but I learned about the resistance from a podcast called “Rescue.”
After listening to and reading more about it the story, I couldn’t help but wonder who walks for 10 days with that many people and survives. Who lives in the woods, with butcher shops, blacksmiths, and the like, for that long – and then packs up and starts all over again as necessary? Who is willing to rescue their fellow citizens while enveloped by the threat of death?
It seems implausible. And unimaginable. But that’s happens when people unite in order to resist a vicious evil.
Though our circumstances differ from those of the Bielski brothers, we have to do the same thing. Immediately. It’s the only way we can overcome a government that hates us and our way of life – a way of life that too many of our elected officials (yes, even Republicans) wish was dead.
But to do that we need to resist ourselves. Not by abandoning our values, the biblical principles that have long guided us. May it never be!
But here’s what I am saying: Too often, when it comes to politics, we’re the problem. We stand in fear and remain mired in envy, jealous of what someone else’s hard work accomplished. Or worse, we worry about what other people will think, so we never start at all.
But we can’t fully unite – lock, stock, and barrel – to resist the evil that hunts us, as long we refuse to look inward.
But what if we did? What if we dealt with our hearts – so that we could genuinely unite with other like-minded people – to battle our wolves and pull off our own magnificent resistance?
Amie Beth Shaver co-hosts Alabama Unfiltered Radio show daily from 9-12 a.m. on News Talk 93.1 fm WAVC, and 92.5, WXJC. Her column appears every other Saturday at 1819 News. To book Amie Beth for media or speaking engagement's, email amiebeth.shaver@1819News.com.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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