Holocaust survivors Fruma Gulkowich Berger and Murray "Motke" Berger, two resistance fighters, husband and wife, write in poetry and prose of their experiences. Their sons offer a loving introduction and a prologue, but the heart of their story is a memoir of pain and anguish, defiance, determinaton and resistance, which gives ample testimony not only to courage and to bravery, but a unique type of courage born of despair and desperation. A powerful work.
Michael Berenbaum
Professor Jewish Studies
American Jewish University, Los Angeles, CA
A rare work that combines both compelling narrative and beautiful poetry and prose, this important book offers profound insight into a distant era about the intersection of two lives. The poem, “I Am the Last,” left me with shivers, the phrase “I am the last to remember where my house was, the last to remember those I loved so well,” deeply moved me. Although I’ve looked at the famous Bielski photograph of Fruma Gulkowich Berger so many times, I never realized this person with a machine gun in her lap was in fact a woman, whose words would one day move and inspire me. The collection of written work by the editors at the end makes it even more of a treasure.
Mitch Braff, Executive Director
Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation
San Francisco, CA
With Courage Shall We Fight presents a most fascinating and compelling account of Murray and Fruma Berger’s incredible experience during the Holocaust as part of the Bielski partisans resistance group. This wonderful memoir of poetry combined with a well written narrative history serves as an excellent resource for educators to use as a primary document when teaching the Holocaust.
Resistance in the Holocaust took many forms but this collection of such heartfelt and sincere poetry is a form of spiritual resistance that is one of a kind. Truly a touching memoir and a must read for anyone who is a serious student of the Holocaust and Resistance.
Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff, Director
University of Miami Holocaust Teacher Institute and
Education Co-Chair of The Holocaust Memorial: Miami Beach, Florida
Copyright © 2010 by Ralph S. Berger & Albert S. Berger
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Royalties from the sales of this book will benefit the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Published by:
ComteQ Publishing
A division of ComteQ Communications, LLC
101 N. Washington Ave. • Suite 1B
Margate, New Jersey 08402
609-487-9000 • Fax 609-487-9099
Email: publisher@ComteQpublishing.com
Website: www.ComteQpublishing.com
ISBN 978-1-935232-20-9
ISBN: 9781935232643
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929504
Book and cover design by Rob Huberman
Cover photo: Partisans after the war - Kibbutz Tulda, Romania, 1945.
Murray Berger, center first row, Fruma Berger, third row center.
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to Sam Pogorelsky, for whom the compilation of this book was a labor of love.
Special thanks go to Esther Crystal for editing the manuscript, Dr. Michael Berenbaum and Bonnie Gurewitsch for their review and constructive comments, Prof. Larry Gillig, the late Dr. Percy Matenko, Zelik Bedell, Sam Pogorelsky, Sheryl Kohl and Pearl Rochelson for translating the Yiddish poems, Shoshana Rosenblum for doing the Yiddish typing, Patricia Bartels for proofreading, and Phil and Dorota Feinzeig for their help in finding the Novogrudek area map.
Foreward
The Bielski Brigade: A Brief History
Map
The Testimony of Fruma Gulkowich Berger - In Her Own Words
The Testimony of Murray Berger – In His Own Words
The Poetry of Fruma Gulkowich Berger
“Tears and Poems of a Jewish Woman”
“A Jew from the Forests”
Afterword: In the Words of their Children - Ralph S. Berger and Albert S. Berger
The Story of Two Lives - A Photo Album
Endnotes
Sources
Glossary
Tell your children of it and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation….Joel 1:3
With courage shall we fight, a line from one of our mother’s poems, “Jewish Partisans,” is a fitting title for the memoir of Murray “Motke” and Frances “Fruma” Gulkowich Berger’s incredible story of survival. Miraculously, first individually and then together as fighters in the Bielski Brigade, they escaped from the Nazis and certain death and literally fought back, saving not only their own lives but those of others as well.
Those fortunate enough to have known our parents understood that their history was more than a story of survival during the Holocaust, of enduring the hardships of displaced persons, and of establishing themselves in a new country where they had arrived nearly broke and barely speaking the language. Theirs was a love story.
Our parents did not just have a marriage. They had a romance that lasted for over fifty years. We recently listened to a radio interview that our parents gave in 1986. We pictured Dad smiling slyly as he told the interviewer, Norman Lester, how he “found” his wife “in the woods.” Mom spoke of how love “can blossom” under even the most adverse circumstances. The love, respect and admiration they had for each other helped to sustain them and to overcome numerous hardships for the rest of their lives. We find it difficult to understand how two individuals who experienced such loss and witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust could still be such warm, giving people.
There wasn’t a day in our lives when we did not feel our parents’ love. And it wasn’t reserved just for us. Close friends and extended family members were also included. Visitors to our parents’ house always felt at home.
It is our hope that this memoir will teach future generations about courage in the face of adversity and that the experiences of our parents—and those of other Holocaust martyrs and survivors—must never be forgotten.
Ralph S. Berger and Albert S. Berger
The Holocaust impacted the lives of all European Jews. But Polish Jews, in particular, suffered more than most since they were in an especially vulnerable region. Situated between Russia and Germany, Poland had been an area of contention between the two countries for many years.
At the end of WWI, Russia had received more than half of Poland as compensation for its losses. During the early portion of WWII, Russia and Germany were allies. This situation changed radically in the summer of 1941 when Germany attacked and badly defeated Russia, resulting in Germany regaining the half of Poland that had been in Russian hands.
After having suffered years of Russian anti-Semitism, the Polish Jews who lived in this territory now became prime targets of the Nazi anti-Jewish measures and the Final Solution.i Jewish areas were declared ghettos and the Jews in them were effectively trapped. Faced with the choice of certain annihilation by the Nazis if they stayed in the ghetto, some Jews took their chances and escaped into the forests to join the partisans.
The forests around Russian-Poland (Belorussia) had been the site of a Russian partisan movement ever since Russia’s rout by Germany. Thousands of Russian soldiers—former POWs, deserters and Belorussian men—escaped to the forests.ii This development was useful to the Soviet government, which saw it as an opportunity to mobilize their ex-soldiers in the forest to fight the Germans from within. Specially trained units were sent by the Soviet Central Committee of the Communist Party to initiate and support guerilla activities against German troops in the area.
Jewish ghetto runaways thought that the Russian partisans would give them protection, but this was not usually the case. While some Jews who fled into the forests were absorbed into the Russian partisan units, often, even armed Jewish men weren’t permitted to join the Russian otriads (units).iii There were a number of reasons for this—deeply entrenched Russian anti-Semitism and the intrinsically different aims of the two groups. For the Russian partisans, the ultimate purpose of conducting guerilla activities was to defeat the Germans. For the Jewish partisans, the ultimate purpose was twofold—to survive and to help other Jews survive.iv
Some Jews who fled to the Naliboki forest of Western Belorussia created their own Jewish partisan unit, known as the Bielski detachment. The Bielski detachment was founded by the Bielski brothers—Tuvia, Alexander Zisel “Zus” and Asael—who had managed to flee to the forest after their parents and other family members were killed in the ghetto massacres in December of 1941. Along with 14 other men who had also escaped from the Novogrudek ghetto (including Murray Berger and Ben-Zion Gulkowich) they formed the nucleus of this new partisan combat group, with Tuvia Bielski as its commander.
While the Bielski detachment was originally conceived as a separate Jewish partisan unit and functioned as such until the last quarter of 1942, by 1943 the Bielski Brigade was participating in joint military ventures with the Russian partisans. By then, the Bielski Brigade had gained legitimacy within the Russian partisan movement and additionally, the Soviet partisan movement had adopted a more liberal recruitment policy thereby allowing more Jewish participation.v
The Bielski otriad was nominally under the command of General Platon (Vasily Yehimovich Chernyshev) but was never fully absorbed into the Soviet partisan movement because the Bielski Brigade wanted to retain its integrity. Eventually, the Soviet partisan leaders split the group into two units, one named Ordzhonikidze in which Zus was head of reconnaissance, and one named Kalinin led by Tuvia. Bielski fighters from both units killed a total of 381 enemy fighters, sometimes during joint actions with Soviet groups. The main purpose of the Bielski Brigade, however, was to give protection to Jewish fugitives. Hundreds of men, women, and children eventually found their way to the Bielski camp.
The group followed the established pattern of other partisan units. The Bielski partisans lived in ziemlankas (underground dugouts). After dark, they would venture into the village to get food from the local peasants. They could not stay in one area for any great length of time as they needed to collect food from the different farms in the area and also needed to avoid being reported to the Germans.
Bielski partisans made forays into the Novogrudek ghetto to rescue others, to check on relatives, and to gather weapons. There were differing opinions among the partisans over recruitment.vi Tuvia consistently wanted to expand the group. He stated that he “would rather save one old Jewish woman than kill ten German soldiers.” Other Jewish partisans saw their purpose as exacting revenge from the Germans by killing as many as possible. In spite of the enormous dangers, they managed to do both. The Bielski detachment grew into a forest community of more than 1200 and distinguished itself as the most massive rescue operation of Jews by Jews.
The Bielski partisan group existed until the summer of 1944, when the Soviet counteroffensive began in Belorussia and the area was liberated.vii
A map of the area where Murray and Fruma Berger lived and fought.
Before the War
Iwas born Fruma Gulkowich in Lublin, Poland in 1918. When I was very small, my parents moved the family to the town of Korelitz, which was located in the Polish county of Novogrudek in the Eastern part of Poland (Belorussia). The town had about 1500 Jews. The older generation maintained a pious Jewish life; the younger generation was more active in cultural groups and the Zionist movement.
My father was in business—different ones at different times—and my mother helped him out. We had a house and a big garden where we grew vegetables of all kinds. We had our own cow and a horse for transportation.
We were four sisters and one brother. We spoke Yiddish in the house, Russian in the street and Polish in school. My father was very religious and we kept all the traditions. I had Christian friends in school but most of my friends were Jewish.
There was anti-Semitism when I was growing up. Boys threw stones at us and beat us up. Then in the 1930s, the anti-Semitism got worse. Gentiles from the area would break windows and call us all kinds of names. Closer to 1939, they stopped buying from Jewish stores altogether.
My sisters and I were active in the Zionist movement. I belonged to the Halutz and Shomer Hatza’ir youth groups. We wanted to emigrate from Poland. All the youth wanted to go to Palestine. One of my sisters was already making “hachshara”—preparation for going to Palestine. At that time, it was impossible to get a certificate to go to Palestine; because of the British Mandate they were restricting immigration. My sister waited six to eight months for a certificate to go. She wanted to join a kibbutz. But by then it was too late.
We felt that if we couldn’t emigrate to Palestine, we would try to go to South Africa because my mother had three sisters there. I had a visa to go there but then the war broke out and the door was closed. I remained with my family in Korelitz.