I wrote an exam last night and to reward myself, I decided I would do no further studying for the rest of the evening. I thought I would watch at least one of the DVDs that came in my information package from RJCO. The one I watched was all about the Jewish partisans and it was provided by this organisation, the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. I will be adding their link to the Educational links on the sidebar as well.
This is yet another layer of the Holocaust that I do not remember previously hearing about. These Jewish men and women were guerilla fighters, who fought back against the Germans any way they could; they sabotaged deliveries, bombed trains, stole the Nazis’ food, etc. There were fighters from Greece, Poland, and Italy interviewed on the DVD. It was really interesting to hear from actual survivors who were Partisans.
The DVD was split into sections about different aspects of life as a Partisan. One of the sections was about how they got food: some took it by force, some by stealing, and others, particularly those in Italy, had an easier time because of sympathetic citizens who were not anti-Semitic. There was another section on shelter: some of them built underground huts in the woods, some slept in the snow, or in barns. Many of them had inadequate clothing for the conditions, which sometimes reached 30 or 40 below. They could only move when it was stormy, or dark, moonless nights, the winter, rain, dark was their friend. When there was fresh snow, they had to walk in many different directions to hide their tracks and keep themselves hidden from the Nazis. One gentleman remembers how his hands would freeze to the gun some days.
They talked about the lack of medicine or medical care, one lady remembered removing a bullet from her own leg with a knife and doing the same for others. Many of the Partisans died from gangarene because of the conditions and lack of penicillin (until the Russians started bringing them some later in the war). They had no choice but to treat themselves with rusty instruments, which resulted in many deaths.
The Russians have actual footage of the Partisans and that was really interesting to see near the end of the DVD. If you are interested in learning more (or seeing the actual videos that are on the DVD), go to this section of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation site. All of the videos I have discussed are available there.
