When he was 27, Moshe Reznik joined up with the Bielski Partisans, Jewish underground fighters who risked life and limb to save other Jews and frustrate Nazis in Belarus (then a Soviet republic) as portrayed in the film "Defiance."
According to his own account, Reznik quickly became a leader in the organization and, in the end, was the only fighting member of his group to survive the war.
He went on to live in Jaffa, Israel, work in a government printing office and to tell his story to a second cousin from Pittsburgh, Alan Reznik, who developed a close relationship with the ex-fighter when he lived in Israel in 1959 and again in 1967.
"Moshe was a very modest man, mild-mannered and respected by everybody," said Alan Reznik.
"He was kind of shy about his past. Some people knew by word of mouth, but he didn't advertise it. If you didn't know, you'd never guess he was a partisan extraordinaire."
Moshe Reznik died in Israel in 1991, but his cousin provided an account the late fighter wrote after the war, describing the partisans' activities. His story, translated from the Yiddish by O. Delatycki, follows:
In 1942, after my whole family was slaughtered, I escaped to the forest and joined a detachment of partisans under the command of Bielski. I was assigned to the group Red Reconnaissance. After several trials by fire I was given as a reward a pistol, a short rifle, and I was made leader of a group of scouts.
Our Jewish detachment was the first organized partisan force in our district and was the first to conduct diversionary actions against the German army. This caused considerable astonishment in all surrounding towns. The Germans offered a prize of 10,000 marks for anyone who would capture Bielski dead or alive.
The detachment made it its aim, by the order of Commander Bielski, to take revenge on the local farmers if one member of their family was a policeman or helped the Germans to conduct a slaughter, if he robbed or murdered. And seeking revenge we would find the guilty anywhere, even in a concealed hole.
As the Russian partisan movement had become better organized, it was decided to reorganize our detachment ... the elderly family men and the unarmed were sent to the rear, with Bielski as the commander. The young who were in a physical condition to carry arms and fight were attached to a Russian unit. The attachment would be commanded by Jews.
Zisl Bielski was nominated commander of the Jewish reconnaissance and I became the commander of a platoon of scouts. ... Because of the special tasks of my investigations, I endeavored to win the confidence and friendship of the local villagers by helping them, whenever help was needed, such as lending them horses for field work, distribution of food and protecting them from irresponsible partisans. We made, in time, real good friends who risked their lives to bring us important news from town.
The reconnaissance of our detachment was praised by the gentile partisans because of our high morals and bravery. My reports were valued by the staff of the brigade. When the Red Army returned to our district the whole unit was incorporated into the army. I was the only survivor. All others fell fighting the enemy.
According to Alan Reznik, his cousin lost both brothers in the war -- Yitzhak in the Holocaust and Avraham fighting for Berlin with the Soviets -- in addition to both parents, his wife and child. But the entire family of Moshe's second wife, Bila, survived.
The couple lived in Italy after the war, emigrated to Israel in 1950 and raised their three children there. In 1955, Tuvia Bielski -- depicted in the film by Daniel Craig -- came to Moshe for help remembering what transpired in the forest for his unpublished memoir, "Yerushalayim in Vald," or "Jerusalem in the Forest: Memoirs of the Stormy Days of the Partisans in the Forest of Western White Russia during World War II."
Years later, author-scholar Nechama Tec rescued the Bielski brothers and that whole chapter of history from obscurity in her 1993 book, "Defiance," the basis of the new film.
Bila Reznik, now 82, still resides in the couple's apartment in Jaffa. Her Pittsburgh relatives last visited in 2008.
(Sally Kalson can be reached at skalson(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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