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and 30 other Jews, they formed a partisan group. Tuvia was
the commander, Asael was second in command, and Zus was
in charge of reconnaissance. Because they grew up nearby,
the Bielski partisans knew the area and its people intimately.
This served them well in their efforts to elude the Germans
and their collaborators.
The Bielski “Otriad” (partisan unit) was created by and
for Jews. From its inception, Tuvia Bielski insisted that saving
Jewish lives was as important as acts of sabotage. Some
argued that this would compromise the unit’s safety, but Tuvia
strictly upheld the policy of accepting any Jew into the group
regardless of age, gender, or health. Its membership grew to
include women, children, and the elderly. As the Final Solution
gained momentum, the Bielski partisans’ rescue efforts
became more aggressive and innovative.
The unit took in Jews who were hiding in the forest and
punished those who denounced Jews. Those who left Soviet
partisan groups because of antisemitism knew they would find
refuge in the Bielski unit. The Otriad even dispatched members
to the ghettos to help those inside escape and join their
ranks. By cooperating with Soviet partisans in anti-German
operations as well as procuring food, the Bielskis earned some
protection from them.
From 1942 to 1943, the Bielski group moved from place
to place. When, by the end of 1943, the group had grown to
400 people, they established a more permanent base in the
Naliboki forest. Within this dense, swampy forest, the camp
became a small, organized community with schools, a synagogue,
and workshops that enabled economic cooperation
with Soviet partisans. By this time the Germans were actively
searching for the Bieskis, Tuvia especially, but they evaded the
enemy by moving deeper into the forest. While a small number
of the unit perished, the Bielski brothers’ efforts constituted
the largest rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust.
When the Russians liberated the area in 1944, 1,200 Jewish
men, women, and children emerged alive from the family
camp in the forest.
Asael was killed a short time later fighting with the Russians
in the battle of Marienbad, Germany. Tuvia and Zus eventually
settled with their wives and children in New York.
[Beth Cohen (2nd ed.)]
BIELSKO (Ger. Bielitz), town in southwest Poland on the
river Biala opposite *Biala, amalgamated with Biała in 1950 to
form the city of Biała-Bielsko. A community existed in Bielsko
in the first half of the 19th century, which was authorized to
open a prayer hall in 1831 and a cemetery in 1849. It became an
independent community in 1865. The Jewish population numbered
1,977 in 1890 increasing to 3,955 by 1921, and approximately
5,000 in 1939; most were German speaking. According
to the 1921 census, 2,737 declared their nationality as Jewish, of
whom 513 declared Yiddish as their mother tongue. The Jews
in Bielsko took an important part in the city’s commerce and
woolen textile industry. Most of the communal institutions
were maintained jointly with the Biała community. Michael
bielsk Podlaski
Berkowicz, Theodor Herzl’s Hebrew secretary, taught religious
subjects in the secondary school at Bielsko, and attracted many
Jews to Zionism. The Hebrew scholar and bibliophile S.Z.H.
*Halberstam lived in Bielsko and the scholar Saul *Horovitz
officiated as rabbi there from 1888 to 1895.
[Abraham J. Brawer]
Holocaust and Postwar Periods
The approach of the Germans led to mass flight but many had
to return to the city when their escape routes were cut off. The
German army entered the town on Sept. 3, 1939, and immediately
initiated an anti-Jewish reign of terror. On Sept. 4, 1939,
the Nazis burned down both synagogues in Bielsko and the
Ḥ.N. Bialik Jewish cultural home. A few days later the Germans
burned down the two synagogues in nearby Biała, and
its Orthodox Jews were forced to throw the holy books into the
fire. In the summer of 1940 a ghetto was established in Bielsko.
The ghetto was liquidated in June 1942 when the town’s
remaining Jewish population was deported to the death camp
in Auschwitz. Bielsko was amalgamated with *Biała in 1950
to form the city of Bielsko-Biała. After the war a few hundred
Jews settled in Bielsko-Biała. A children’s home for orphans,
survivors of the Holocaust, functioned there for a few years.
The Jewish Cultural Society ran a club until June 1967 when
the Polish government initiated its antisemitic campaign. After
that date almost all the remaining Jews left Poland.
[Stefan Krakowski]
Bibliography: M. Aronsohn, Die israelitische Kultusgemeinde
in Bielitz 1865–1905 (1905). HOLOCAUST PERIOD: J. Kermisz,
“Akcje” i “wysiedlenia” (1946), index; Megillat Polin (1961), 164; T. Berenstein
and A. Rutkowski, in: BżIH, no. 38 (1961), 3–38, passim; Yad
Vashem Archives, 0–3/1251. Add. Bibliography: P. Maser et al.,
Juden in Oberschlesie, I (1922), 87–95.
BIELSK PODLASKI, town in N.E. Poland, Bialystok district.
Jews are mentioned there in 1487 leasing the local customs
house. An organized community existed in Bielsk in the early
16th century and a synagogue was built in 1542. In 1564 a Jewish
tax-collector in the town was condemned to death following
a blood libel. The Jewish population numbered 94 in 1816 and
298 in 1847. With the coming of the railroad, trade and industry
developed and the Jewish population rose to 4,079 in 1897
(54.6% of the total). In 1920 a Jewish school was founded and
the Zionist youth organizations began their educational work
in the town. Between the world wars the economic condition
of the Jews deteriorated as a result of discriminatory government
measures and the generally depressed economy
[Shlomo Netzer (2nd ed.)]
In 1921 Bielsk had 2,392 Jews, but under Soviet rule (1939–41)
its Jewish population increased to 6,000 when large numbers
of refugees arrived from the western parts of Poland occupied
by the Germans. In the summer of 1940 a number of refugees
were exiled to the Soviet interior. In the spring of 1941 young
Jews were drafted into the Soviet Army. When the war broke
out between Germany and the U.S.S.R. (June 22, 1941), groups
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