Published by The Freeman Center
The Maccabean Online
Political Analysis and Commentary
on Israeli and Jewish Affairs
"For Zion's sake I shall not hold my peace, And for Jerusalem's sake I shall not rest."
JAMES BOND, JABOTINSKY AND THE HOLOCAUST
By Moshe Phillips, AFSI
A new motion picture in which James Bond fights
Nazis during the Holocaust is scheduled for release this Chanukah
season. Well, not exactly. Daniel Craig is the British actor who stars
in the new blockbuster James Bond movie Quantum of Solace.
Craig will play another character in 2008 and unlike Bond, this
character is based on a real life hero. Craig plays Tuvia Bielski in
the movie Defiance. Bielski and his brothers, Zus and
Asael, led the Jewish effort that rescued 1,200 fellow Jews from the
Nazis and started a partisan brigade that battled the German Wehrmacht.
Zus Bielski is portrayed by Liev Schreiber.
The movie is based on Nechama Tec’s 1993 book, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. An additional work, 2003’s The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews
was written by Peter Duffy. Duffy’s book did much to bring the heroism
of the Bielski brothers to the wider audience that they so rightly
deserve.
Tuvia Bielski (1906-1987) was the leader of the partisan group known as the Bielski Partisans. The group was situated in the Naliboki forest in the border area between Belarus and Poland. The Bielski group rescued Jews from the ghettos and brought them to a forest sanctuary where they created a society based on surviving the war, fighting the Nazis and preserving the Jewish way of life. And they succeeded. There was simply no other similar group during the Holocaust that has such success.
Tuvia Bielski (1906-1987) was the leader of the partisan group known as the Bielski Partisans. The group was situated in the Naliboki forest in the border area between Belarus and Poland. The Bielski group rescued Jews from the ghettos and brought them to a forest sanctuary where they created a society based on surviving the war, fighting the Nazis and preserving the Jewish way of life. And they succeeded. There was simply no other similar group during the Holocaust that has such success.
The Bielski Brothers story is worth telling - they
fought back, saved other Jews, survived and sought revenge. Their story
should become one of the stories that people think of when they recall
the Holocaust.
Defiance offers an opportunity to correct the
history of the Holocaust by remembering the contributions made by the
Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky and his Betar student movement.
Jabotinsky molded and commanded Betar from its
inception in 1923 through his death in 1940. The political enemies of
Jabotinsky and his movement have worked since the 1930s to delegitimize
them. First lies and slander were hurled at them. Later the Leftists
made every effort to write them out of history, so their views, and the
views of their ideological heirs, would seem less valid. The Jabotinsky
Zionists introduced an authentically Jewish worldview to Zionism. Many
of the fighting heroes of the Holocaust embraced the new ideology.
Peter Duffy writes that Zus Bielski attended Betar meetings before the
war. The man the Bielskis entrusted with the role of chief of staff of
their partisan group was a former Polish army officer and Betar veteran
named Layzer Malbin. Malbin and Zus commanded the fighting units while
Tuvia ran the camp and made political decisions. In Defiance Malbin is
played by Mark Feuerstein who is perhaps best known for the NBC sitcom
Good Morning, Miami.
There are other well known Betar trained men who
fought the Nazis and led underground fighters during the war, and these
heroes must be remembered too.
The most famous Jewish leader of armed resistance
was Mordechai Anielwicz commander of the ZOB (Jewish Fighting
Organization) during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Anielwicz
received paramilitary training in Betar as a young teenager and left
Betar before the war. The ZOB had a Socialist orientation and Betar as
an organization did not participate in it.
The Jewish Military Organization, (ZZW) was the
other armed resistance group in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The ZZW was led
and manned by Betar members and their allies. Betar’s fighters in the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were largely written out of history by the Left.
Moshe Arens, Israel’s former defense minister and a Betar alum,
recently wrote a yet to be published book on Betar’s heroic battle
against the S.S. in the ghetto. Articles by Arens about the ZZW were
published in Yad Vashem Studies, Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post and
have helped to create a far more accurate account of the ZZW’s
participation in the Uprising.
In the Vilna Ghetto, Betar leader Joseph Glazman
was deputy commander of the United Partisan Organization, the only
armed Jewish resistance group in that ghetto.
Professor Daniel J. Elazar (1934-1999) was a
scholar of the Jewish political tradition. In the May 15, 1981 edition
of the journal Sh’ma Elazar remarked about Jabotinsky’s legacy writing:
“Would there be serious public commemoration of the
100th birthday of Zev Jabotinsky had it not been for the fact that the
Likud won the election in Israel in 1977? Not likely. For thirty years
and more, Jabotinsky was one of those non-persons in Israel and the
Jewish world… The ruling Labour Party made him a non-person for the
same reasons that it portrayed Menachem Begin and his supporters as
uncivilized fascists — it is easier to beat the opposition by painting
it as irrelevant, intolerable and non-existent, until it is too strong
to be dismissed.”
Defiance offers an opportunity to remind today’s
Jews about Jabotinsky’s vital contribution to Jewish Thought. His words
and ideas animated a generation to resist the Nazis and fight for the
freedom of Israel. The Islamofascists and Iranians are focused on
destroying Israel and the Jewish People in a future Holocaust more
intense than the original. Jabotinsky needs to be remembered.
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Moshe Phillips is a member of
the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For a
Safe Israel - AFSI. The chapter’s website is at: www.phillyafsi.com and
Moshe’s blog can be found at http://phillyafsi.blogtownhall.com.
