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Leah Johnson will tell her story of a Belarusian forest and a handful of refugees fighting for their lives at an Evening of Courage and Defiance, hosted by Chabad on Tuesday June 4, at 7:00 p.m. at the JCC Community Hall on the Dell Jewish Community Campus. For more information or to register online, visit the Defiance Evening microsite.
Johnson was sixteen when the Germans stormed her small Belarusian hometown and set it on fire. While the family was sitting shiva for her father, she and her family were forced to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Initially taken in by a series of gentile farmers, the family ended up trapped in a barb-wired ghetto. Johnson remembers sneaking under the barbed wire at night in search of food for her mother and siblings, fear of death ever present. She and her family soon got word of Hitler’s master plan to annihilate the Jewish people.
Then one day, a gentile man brought a note advising her mother to come the forest and join a partisan group led by brothers Tuvia, Asael and Zus Bielski. In contrast to other partisan groups, the Bielskis were not motivated only by revenge. Their goal was the preservation of Jewish life, to save the victims of the Nazi onslaught. As such, they accepted any refugee that could make it to their forest hideout - not only able-bodied fighters.
By 1941, they had created a village in a dense Polish forest they had known since childhood - a village that eventually sheltered more than 1,200 Jews. With the help of others who sought refuge from the Nazis, the partisan band built communal kitchens, living quarters, schools, synagogues, a bakery and a theater company. As the Germans searched for the partisans, the group collected weapons and explosives and destroyed German targets until the region was liberated by the Russian army in July 1944.
As a member of the Bielski Brigade, Johnson went on food-finding missions and served guard duty. The Bielski brothers were the subject of “Defiance,” a 2008 film starring Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski that told the story of how the brothers transformed persecution and violence into honor and salvation. The partisans orchestrated one of the largest rescues of Jews by Jews during World War II, and there are approximately 20,000 descendants of the men, women and children who survived because of their sacrifices.
When: Tuesday, June 4 at 7:00 pm
Where: Dell Jewish Community Center, 7300 Hart Lane
Admission: $15 pay online or via mail, $20 pay at the door
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