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The Bielski Partisans’ Reunion has been held in Novogrudok and Naliboki in Belarus with 120 participants from around the world.

Eli Rabinowitz reports: “Prior to that, I participated in an educators seminar at the International School of Holocaust Education at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which segued perfectly into this commemoration. I was the sole Australian on this particular Yad Vashem course amongst 19 Americans!

The participants of the Bielski Reunion gathered in Forest Jerusalem in Belarus to commemorate arguably, the most notable group of Upstanders from the Holocaust. This was depicted in the 2008 movie Defiance featuring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.

Only one Bielski survives – Aron Bell – 93 years old.

Wikipedia has published: “The Bielski partisans were a unit of Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought the German occupiers and their collaborators around Nowogródek (Navahrudak) and Lida (now in western Belarus) in German-occupied Poland. The partisan unit was named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who organized and led the organization.

The Bielski partisans spent more than two years living in the forest. By the end of the war they numbered as many as 1,236 members, most of which were non-combatants, including children and the elderly. The Bielski partisans are seen by many Jews as heroes for having led as many refugees as they did away from the perils of war and the Holocaust.^[1]However, as their relations with the non-Jewish population were strained and occasionally violent, their wartime record has been the subject of some controversy in Poland.”