Alexander Zeisal Bielski - Biography

Alexander Zeisal 'Zus' Bielski (19 October 1912 – 18 August 1995) was a leader of the Bielski partisans that rescued approximately 1,200 Jews from Nazi execution in Belarus during World War II.

Biography

Alexander "Zus" Bielski was born approximately 1912. He grew up in the only Polish Jewish family in Stankiewicze, a small village in Eastern Poland (now Western Belarus) located between towns of Lida and Navahrudak (both housed Jewish ghettoes during World War II.) He was the son of David and Beila Bielski, who had twelve children: ten boys and two girls. With his brothers, he formed the Bielski partisans. The group hid in the forests of Belarus throughout World War II, led by the Bielskis. Zus, along with his brothers Tuvia, Aron, and Asael, managed to save 1,236 Jews. Although he left the partisans for the Red Army for a few months, he returned to save his brothers and the innocent Jews from the Germans. Today, those who were saved have over 10,000 offspring. His first wife, Cyrl Borowski, and infant daughter were murdered by the Nazis. One of those rescued was eighteen-year-old Sonia Boldo, whom he would later marry.

After the war, he initially moved to Israel, but left to move to New York in 1956. There, he operated a taxi fleet and a trucking company with his brother Tuvia Bielski. He died of cardiac arrest in Brooklyn at age 83. He was survived by his wife Sonia, sons David, Jay, and Zvi, and six grandchildren, Matthew, Danielle, Elan, Rebecca, Rachel and Jessica. Matt Bielski and Elan Bielski served in the elite Israeli Paratroopers.

Legacy

Bielski was portrayed by Liev Schreiber in the 2008 film Defiance, which has been criticised by an online Polish news agency, www.rp.pl, due to its alleged omission of the alleged involvement of the Bielski group in a massacre of Polish civilians conducted by Soviet-aligned partisans in Naliboki. The Bielski partisan group was the subject of an official inquiry by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance's Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation after witnesses testified that Bielski partisans were among the perpetrators of the Naliboki massacre; however, the investigation found no conclusive evidence linking the Bielski group to the crime.