Jewsh Fighters of the Belorussian Forests: Review of Defiance

Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Once again, I'm back with the Polish partisans in WWII. I swear, I have no ulterior motive, I've just been getting pulled back to these same people and lands for the past few years, I'm not sure why.

Then again, maybe this book doesn't count. It depends on who you ask if the land is eastern Poland or western Belorussian (now Belarus, in between part of the Soviet Union). It depends on who you ask what the nationality of the Bielskis was - Polish Jews, Belorussian Jews, Russian partisans, Soviet guerrillas, just Jews?

The story of Tuvia Bielski and his band is harrowing. What else can you expect of a place invaded three times in five years? A place where the choice of language for greeting a stranger could mean the difference between a free meal and a shoot-out? (Incidentally, those language options include Belorussian, Russian, German, Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian).

Part of me was expecting more adventure tales of brave raids and crazy stunts, like a history of the SAS - but Tuvia and company didn't have the luxury of bravery. Instead, the Bielski brothers kept a sanctuary for any and all Jews with just enough violence to keep everyone fed and Soviet authorities off their backs.

The other part of me wanted a primer on building a Robin Hood citadel in the forest. In this I was also denied, but educated on how being mobile in a crisis and preserving people over things or places should be the true priority.

You'll have to excuse me now. I really should be checking the contents of the family's bug-out bags.

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More Heroic Poles: Review of The Polish Officer

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had read one Furst novel before, The Foreign Correspondent. I was happy to find this volume as good as that one.

Furst's style is the most noticeable part of his work. Many scenes feel more like an impressionist painting than a photograph of historical events. A times this works very well, as in a scene describing a duel between a British Beaufighter and German anti-aircraft gunners over a Belgian port. At other times it feels a bit overly lyrical, like the repeated invocation of the blue-painted streetlights of wartime Paris. On at least on occasion, I found myself completely lost as to the meaning of a scene because of Furst's elliptical prose.

I've always been interested in WWII, but for the past few years, I've found myself increasingly drawn to the plight of Poland and her soldiers in the war. This has even gone so far as portraying one such character in a role-playing game. I'm not sure what this says about me, but I now wish I had read about Furst's Captain DeMilja before I had tried to portray a character with much the same background.

Interestingly enough, both my 'Captain Poland' and Furst's Captain DeMilja faced the same literary threat. What end can a hero have when facing such unsurmountable odds as Poland faced throughout WWII? Furst leaves the question unanswered, leaving his character adrift in a hostile world on the borders of Poland, Ukraine, and Byelorussia still fighting what we can only hope is the good fight.

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Hiding in the House Under a Crazy Star - Review of "The Zookeeper's Wife"

Would you take someone into your home to save their life? What if getting caught meant you'd be killed, and so would your whole family?

Anyone who answeres with a quick 'Yes' to this question is a fool.

OK, there are two kinds of fools here. There are those who will would get everyone killed by their quick decsion. Then there are those fools who will do the right thing becasue it is the right thing, and then rearrange their lives to fit that decision.

The Zookeeper's Wife is a harrowing (non-fiction) tale of the an intellectual Polish family who risk everything to hide enemies of Nazi Germany (mostly Jews, but others as well) in Warsaw under occupation. The amazing thing about the book is how light-hearted it comes across. Ackerman has a real skill for conjuring the presence of her title character, Antonina. Even with all the stresses of daily Polish life under German rule, we can feel Antonina's effusive personality flowing through her crazy household.

I think that this story would make a particularly good match to more scholarly histories of the occupation of Warsaw, such as Norman Davies' Rising '44. Neither one is going to make you feel good about humanity (or maybe it will if you see defiance and perseverence as outweighing atrocity), but together they paint a deep picture of the Polish capital under seige, both physical and personal.

And You Thought Your Town Was a Teenage Wasteland

From the way these posts are going, people are going to start assuming I'm a Polish nationalist or something. I swear, it is just the way that things have been distributing themselves. As far as I know, I have no Polish ancestry (the same could not be said of my wife and daughter).

A friend of mine sent me link to a new role-playing game (RPG) called Grey Ranks. The name is a reference to the members of the Polish Boy Scouts who became a very effective underground network and insurgent fighting force in WWII. The game is centered around the Warsaw Rising in 1944. Players take on the role of one of the child-soldiers of the Home Army as they try to take control of the Polish capital, removing the Nazis before the arrival of Soviet troops from the East. What was intended to 4-5 day operation instead stretched for 63 days as the Soviet advance stalled (some say deliberately stopped) outside the city. Help from the Western Allies was also minimal. The Polish Parachute Brigade, who had been training to help in the Uprising, were instead committed to Montgomery's over-reaching Operation Market Garden in Holland.

I haven't gotten a chance to play the new game from Bully Pulpit Games. It looks to have a large touch of soap-opera or anime high-school drama and tension layered on top of the military grimness. The result looks a bit like TFOS meets The Longest Day, only much less cheerful. One of the testimonials from a play-tester said:

"Grey Ranks ... was fun, if you can call driving yourself to madness and serial killing from the sewers of WWII-ravaged Poland after your girlfriend refuses to have your baby aborted, then gets killed fun. Which I do." - Rob Bohl

That sounds a little crass, or bloodthirsty, or something. But it also shows, once again, that these people, were real people. Real people in amazing, horrifying situations, but still just kids.

Could I do what they did? Could my children? I'd like to think they could if they had to. I truly hope they never come close to needing to find out.

Go West, Old Country

I've written here before about the great finds published at Strange Maps. Today's entry covers the controversy over Poland's post-WWII borders. In short, Stalin insisted that the Soviet Union was not going to give up any of the territory it had gained through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the 1939 partition of Poland. To compensate Poland for these loses, and to punish the Germans, the Polish western border was moved to the Oder-Neisse Line.

What Strange Maps has found and shared with us all is a map, marked in Stalin's hand-writing, marking the line along the more eastern "Glatzer Neisse, while the present-day border is composed of the Lausitzer (or Görlitzer) Neisse, 200 km to the west."

The more westerly border was eventually accepted which put Wroclaw (Breslau) fully within Polish territory. This may have helped lessen the loss of Lviv to Soviet Ukraine. An added bonus from Stalin's perspective is that a more westerly border would help keep Poland afraid of Germany and firmly within the Soviet orbit.

Wiki Distractions

It has been too long since I have updated this all. My excuse is that I roped myself into building and maintaining a wiki for the bi-weekly GURPS WWII Supers RPG campaign I am in. I debated linking Doolittle's to that wiki, but most of the other players thought that it would be a boring read for you all.

In summary, it is now April 1943 and I am playing the character of a Polish cavalryman who has been turned into a perfect soldier ala Captain America through the use of a stolen Nazi serum. Now he is fighting the Axis alongside four American superheroes in North Africa, Palestine, Italy, and soon Germany! All in all, quite fun to take my historical knowledge and watch it bump up against the other players' comic-book based assumptions.

Poles Seeking to Settle German WWII Territorial Claims

Sounds like a headline from August 1939.

This time, it is the Poles who are pushing the German government to have its citizens finally renounce property claims from the end of WWII. Ever since Poland was shifted west to accommodate Stalin's larger Soviet Union, German private citizens have maintained claims on the property that they left behind in the now-Polish territory.

Now that Poland and a reunified Germany no longer have issues of larger Cold War politics dominating policy, a newly nationalistic Polish government would like to see these claims renounced. With the exception of ongoing issues with the Kurile Islands, this seems to be one of the few WWII territorial issues still floating around.

It seems like more festering territorial issues of the 21st century were born at Versailles, than at Tehran, Yalta, or Potsdam.