Jan. 16, 2009 - National Post - response to article "Time Does Not Heal All Wounds"

 

The charge that the Bielski partisans were involved in the killing of 128 Polish civilians in the town of Naliboki in 1943 did not originate with Polish “nationalists”, as this article suggests, but with members of the Bielski group. In her memoir, published in Israel in 1980, Sulia Rubin wrote that her husband Boris and Israel Kesler took part in this massacre. The Rubins appeared together in a 1993 documentary film “The Bielsky Brothers” where the claim was repeated.

The brutality of the provision-gathering raids in the countryside, which was the principle activity of the Bielski forest group, is not a Polish invention either. Members of that group left abundant accounts attesting to that fact. Zvi Bielski, the son of Zus Bielski, one of the three Bielski brothers, stated: “The Bielskis, if they had to, would wipe out an entire village … these guys were vicious killers when they had to be.”

The hostility of the farmers who lived through those ordeals was only to be expected.

A little less racist-tinged polemics, and a little more research, please.

 

Canadian Polish Congress

Toronto District