- Living in the Soviet Republic of Belorussia during World War II, Tuvia, Asael and Zus Bielski saved more than twelve-hundred of their fellow Jews from perishing in the Holocaust, yet their story has largely gone untold. The Bielski's built an elaborate village in the woods, from which they rescued Jews and mounted guerilla attacks against the Nazis. Their forest haven included a gun workshop, a ba
Daniel Craig (James Bond: Quantum of Solace) stars as Tuvia Bielski, an ordinary citizen turned hero, in this action-packed epic of family, honor, vengeance and salvation.
Defiance is a riveting adventure that showcases the extraordinary true story of the Bielski brothers, simple farmers â€"outnumbered and outgunned- who turned a group of war refugees into powerful freedom fighters. Tuvia, along with his unyielding brother, Zus (Liev Schreiber,
X-Men Origins: Wolverine), motivate! hundreds of civilians to join their ranks against the Nazi regime. Their “Inspirational storyâ€* is a true testament to the human spirit.
- David Densby, The New YorkerThree ferociously committed actors fill the roles of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who escaped into the forests of Eastern Europe during the Second World War. Daniel Craig (taking a break from 007 duty) is Tuvia, the leader of a group of refugees who eventually number over a thousand; Liev Schreiber is Zus, the antagonistic warrior; and Jamie Bell is Asael, a peacemaker no less devoted to the survival of the community. The three performers give life to director Edward Zwick's account of this little-known chapter of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust, which otherwise plays more like a history lesson than a full-blooded movie. The film's best achievement is its strong location work, in Lithuania--as the community makes its home in the forest, the landscape becomes an important player in th! e drama at hand, and the changing of the seasons is charted wi! th bone- chilling detail. Schreiber manages to get a little wry humor into this otherwise sober enterprise, and Daniel Craig creates an unusual character: a sort of anti-Bond, a hero whose body is all too fallible and whose decision-making is sometimes hesitant or morally compromised. It's a rare hero in a World War II movie that tends to withdraw from scenes rather than stride into them, but that's what Craig does. More than likely, the movie's main achievement will be sending the curious to read the histories of the Bielski brothers and why they matter in the chronicles of the Holocaust.
--Robert Horton Stills from Defiance (Click for larger image) DEFIANCE - Blu-Ray MovieThree ferociously committed actors fill the roles of the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who escaped into the forests of Eastern Europe during the Second World War. Daniel Craig (taking a break from 007 duty) is Tuvia, the leader of a group of refugees who eventually number over a thousand; Liev Schreiber is Zus, the antag! onistic warrior; and Jamie Bell is Asael, a peacemaker no less devoted to the survival of the community. The three performers give life to director Edward Zwick's account of this little-known chapter of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust, which otherwise plays more like a history lesson than a full-blooded movie. The film's best achievement is its strong location work, in Lithuania--as the community makes its home in the forest, the landscape becomes an important player in the drama at hand, and the changing of the seasons is charted with bone-chilling detail. Schreiber manages to get a little wry humor into this otherwise sober enterprise, and Daniel Craig creates an unusual character: a sort of anti-Bond, a hero whose body is all too fallible and whose decision-making is sometimes hesitant or morally compromised. It's a rare hero in a World War II movie that tends to withdraw from scenes rather than stride into them, but that's what Craig does. More than likely, the movie! 's main achievement will be sending the curious to read the hi! stories of the Bielski brothers and why they matter in the chronicles of the Holocaust.
--Robert Horton Stills from Defiance (Click for larger image) An out-of work merchant seaman single-handedly tames a powerful street gang ("The Souls") that has been terrorizing his neighborhood on New York City's Lower East Side.
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Nechama Tec tells the story of the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. Arguing that the success of the Bielski partisans, as the rescue organization came to be known, would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski. Tec brings to light the untold story of Bielski's struggle as a partisan who! lost his parents, wife, and two brothers to the Nazis, yet never wavered in his conviction that it was more important to save one Jew than to kill twenty Germans. She shows how, under Bielski's guidance, the partisans smuggled Jews out of heavily guarded ghettos, scouted the roads for fugitives, and led retaliatory raids against Belorussian peasants who collaborated with the Nazis.
Herself a Holocaust survivor, Nechama Tec here draws on wide-ranging research and never before published interviews with surviving partisans--including Tuvia Bielski himself--to reconstruct here the poignant and unforgettable story of those who chose to fight.
The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims, but in fact many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. In
Defiance, Nechama Tec offers a riveting history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--t! he largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War! II. Tec reveals that this extraordinary community included both men and women, some with weapons, but mostly unarmed, ranging from infants to the elderly. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them.
Read the Foreword
Writer and director Edward Zwick reveals the challenges and personal significance of making a film adaptation of Nechama Tec's Defiance. Among his extensive film credits, Zwick is best known for his direction of Blood Diamond and The Last Samaurai.
An inevitable rite of passage in any Jewish child’s informal initiation to adulthood is to study, with grim fascination, the grainy, ou! t-of-focus images of hollow-eyed survivors in striped pajamas, the amateur photos of corpses piled high in freshly dug pits, or possibly the 16 mm handheld GI footage of living skeletons clinging to barbed wire during the liberation of the camps. Such grisly iconography of passivity and victimization was, during my childhood, and probably is still today, not only an article of faith, but also a source of secret shame. As an assimilated suburban kid growing up in the Midwest, I had thrilled to World War II stories about John Kennedy and PT 109 (Cliff Robertson in the movie version), the leatherneck marines at Guadalcanal (John Wayne), the flying fortresses over Germany (Gregory Peck), and so many more. In feeble contrast, Jewish heroes were the ancient biblical warriors evoked by uninspired Sunday school teachers--Bar Kochba and Judah Macabee wielding spears and jawbones, or young David with his little slingshot.
So when my friend and collaborator, Clay Frohman, came! to me with a book called Defiance, I was skeptical. ! "Not ano ther Holocaust movie," I said. What was to be accomplished, I asked myself, in telling yet another story of familiar and unspeakable horror, especially when an entire canon of literature, not to mention films both documentary and fiction, have already dramatized it in the most exacting and harrowing detail? What’s more, the greatest historians and philosophers of our time have devoted entire careers to plumbing the roots and magnitude of its evil. What could I possibly add?
But Clay was insistent. Here, he said, was something fresh and utterly provocative. And so, somewhat grudgingly, I plunged into Nechama’s Tec’s remarkable book and found myself deeply moved. That was ten years ago. And the feelings I had upon that first reading have only grown stronger with time. To read of the Bielski brothers and their fight to create a safe haven in the midst of a hell-on-earth evokes in me something utterly primitive and deeply personal, a roiling wave of fear, awe, humi! lity, and admiration. And outrage, too--that such a story was not better known.
Here, clutching captured Schmeisser submachine guns and "potatomasher" grenades, were Jewish fighters whose deeds were as stirring and brave as any I had ever encountered. And what’s more, it was all true. In an age when the term "hero" has been so overused as to become meaningless, the Bielskis remind us that real heroism is not the stuff of comic books. Rather, it is a set of decisions, sometimes impulsive, often made by simple men of whom nothing of the sort could ever have been expected. Their story is not simply one of courage or fortitude in the face of adversity; it includes any number of daunting moral decisions--whether to seek vengeance or to rescue, how to re-create a sense of community among those who have lost everything, how to maintain hope when all seems forsaken. Read more
Edward Zwick
Santa Monica, Calif., 2008
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Studi! o: Param ount Home Video Release Date: 08/02/2011 Rating: RLiving in the Soviet Republic of Belorussia during World War II, Tuvia, Asael and Zus Bielski saved more than twelve-hundred of their fellow Jews from perishing in the Holocaust, yet their story has largely gone untold. The Bielski's built an elaborate village in the woods, from which they rescued Jews and mounted guerilla attacks against the Nazis. Their forest haven included a gun workshop, a bakery, a synagogue, a communal bath and even a theater company. Containing interviews with Bielski Brigade survivors in the United States, Israel and Great Britain, we proudly pay tribute to three of the greatest unsung heroes of the Holocaust.The true story behind Edward Zwick's
Defiance is laid out in this brisk, straight-to-the-point account of the Bielski brothers, the leaders of a large, organized Jewish resistance effort during World War II. Escaped Jews from the ghettoes of Eastern Europe joined together in the woods u! nder the leadership of Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski, and for over two years they created their own hidden society of approximately 1200 people. This History Channel installment gathers together survivors of the partisan movement to tell stories, some of which are incredibly moving, such as the escape of Mike Stoll and his sister Bella from a train headed to a concentration camp. Another survivor recalls escaping the horror of the ghetto and coming upon the Bielskis in their forest enclave, where Jews were no longer under the heel of the enemy: "The whole camp was… something of a dream." The documentary's brevity means we don't get much depth on how the Bielski partisans actually survived from day to day, although a couple of the interviewees are frank about what they had to do to keep going. But this is balanced by the value of actually hearing the voices and seeing the faces of those who were there; when one woman sings a song of the camp, the decades suddenly collapse.! As a companion piece to
Defiance, it suggests the Zwic! k film w as faithful to the facts, and to this story of heroism under terrible circumstances.
--Robert Horton
