Albert Wisner Public Library to show 'Defiance' April 9 in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day

WARWICK — In observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Albert Wisner Public Library will present the film "Defiance as its "Monday Afternoon at the Movies" presentation on April 9 at 1 p.m.
The film is based on Nechama Tec's 1993 book "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans," an account of the Bielski partisans, a group led by Belarusian Jewish brothers who saved and recruited Jews in Belarus during the Second World War.
Three brothersLinda Dubin will introduce the movie and give a short history of the Holocaust and the story of the Bielski brothers.
There are many movies about the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust but there are few stories about the Jews who fought the Nazi and survived.
The movie is about three courageous brothers - Tuvia,Asael and Zus Bielski - who grew up on their family farm in Belarus, a region bordering on Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine.
"Defiance" It is a true story of three heroes of the Holocaust who were able to fight a successful guerilla war and save 1,200 Jewish people.
In the early part of World War II while Concentration and Extermination camps were being set up about two million Jewish people were shot and buried in mass graves in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. The Nazi called these mass shootings "Aktions."
The Bielski brothers witnessed their parents and two of their brothers taken from their farm by the Nazis and shot along with several thousand Jewish people from the neighboring villages.
Instead of running away, hiding or giving in to despair, the brothers decided to fight back. They fought the Nazis and at the same time hid 1,200 Jews for two and a half years by building "a village in the woods" in a remote part of Belarus.
In 1944 when the Germans were retreating toward Berlin, 1,200 Jewish women, children and the aged emerged alive from the "village in the woods" in Belarus.
Two books, then the movieFor more than 60 years the true story of the Bielski Brothers was unknown.
Two books, "Defiance" by Nechama Tec (1993) and "The Bielski Brothers" by Peter Duffy (2003), told the story of the Bielski brothers but the story was still unknown until the movie "Defiance" was released in December 2008.