A few days ago, Sweetheart Vivienne and I watched the 2008 film Defiance. Directed by Edward Zwick and starring Daniel Craig, it’s based on a true story: After the Nazis invade eastern Europe, the Jewish Bielski brothers survive the slaughter and hide in the Belarussian woods. Soon they’re joined by many other Jews who are also escaping and hiding from the Nazis. The eldest Bielski brother, Tuvia, kills the local men who murdered the brothers’ father. Then while Tuvia leads the forest community, his younger brother Zus leaves the camp and joins a band of Russians fighting the Germans. ‘Defiance’, complains Zus, ‘is something the Jews are not good at. They are only good at dying’. And Tuvia proclaims: ‘Our revenge is to live. Every day of freedom is like an act of faith.’ Remarkably the community survives in the forests for three years. After the war, Tuvia and Zus migrate to the US where they operate a trucking company for decades. I don’t know how they managed to adjust to a normal life; but doing so was their ultimate revenge. The IMDb website calls Defiance a ‘very entertaining, exciting, suspenseful, and inspirational film about a tough topic: the Holocaust’. I agree 100%. Apparently the descendants of the Bielski Otriad now number over 10,000. Long live the defiant Jew.
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