Jessica Bielski and her mother, Roz Moskowitz Bielski, in front of a Defiance movie poster in their West Orange home.
Photo by Robert Wiener
David Bielski said he tries “to live my life to be just like my daddy, which is almost impossible. He cast a giant shadow.”
Photo by Robert Wiener
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December 25, 2008
She was only two years old when he died, but more than a decade later, Jessica Bielski speaks with pride about her grandfather — a pride enhanced by a Hollywood movie that celebrates his World War II exploits.
His name was Alexander Zeisal Bielski; along with his brothers Tuvia and Asael, he helped save some 1,200 Jews from the Nazi slaughter.
In Defiance, a film set to open next month, actor Liev Schreiber plays Alexander, nicknamed “Zus,” in a bit of casting that adds to Jessica’s enthusiasm.
“Throughout my life, people would tell me, ‘Your grandfather saved lots of people’s lives. He is such a hero. You should be so proud.’ I never really understood what they meant until I read the books,” Jessica said as she sat in the living room of her West Orange home.
“But there are only so many books you can read. Then you see the movie, and it becomes so much more real.”
Together with her mother, Roz Moskowitz-Bielski, she has seen Defiance twice at private screenings. Her family connection confers a special status upon her with her 10th-grade classmates at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, where she has been learning about the Holocaust for as long as she can remember.
“I know about the partisans and all these different movements. I knew that my grandfather and his two brothers did something like Schindler’s List. The whole thing really interested me,” she said.
So Jessica began to research the heroism that is her rich family legacy. It began in 1941, after the Nazis killed the brothers’ parents and other Bielski relatives. The brothers fled their village in what is now Belarus.
They hid in the Naliboki forest and organized a band of guerilla fighters that came to be called the “Bielski Brigade.” Unlike other groups in the anti-Nazi resistance, the Bielskis recruited women and children, regardless of their health or ability to fight. They managed to rescue endangered Jews and wage war against German and Polish forces as they fought to stay alive.
After the war, the brothers moved to Palestine, then to New York, where the family became owners of a taxicab fleet. Zus died in 1995 at the age of 83.
“He was a big, gregarious bear of a guy. He was kind and sweet,” said Roz Moscowitz-Bielski, who was married to his son David for nine years. Together they had two daughters, Jessica and her 19-year-old sister Rachel, a student at Pace University in New York.
Portraying two of the Bielski brothers in Defiance are Daniel Craig, left, as Tuvia and Liev Schreiber as Zus.
“I liked him very much,” said Moscowitz-Bielski of her father-in-law. “He was pretty humble.”
David Bielski was born 59 years ago in Ramat Gan. His family moved from Israel to Brooklyn when he was eight, he told NJJN, “because my parents didn’t want any more wars. Their whole life was a war, and they didn’t want their children involved in that.”
David lives in Orange.
“My daddy and his brothers were giants,” he said. “Whatever they said went. Nobody dared to confront them.”
Rescuer’s impulse
Along with their families and some of the people they helped to save in Europe, the brothers reestablished a close community in Brooklyn. But two continents and decades away from the woods of Belarus, they still bore the traumas of wartime.
“They weren’t typical Jews,” said Zus’ son. “They were bears. My father looked very scary.”
Still, “he was the nicest guy, as long as you didn’t rub him the wrong way. They didn’t choose to be killers. They were forced into it.”
Jessica Bielski as an infant, flanked by her grandfather Zus and grandmother Sonia.
Photo courtesy Jessica Bielski
Not surprisingly, said an admiring David, Zus and his brothers embraced life in a big way after finding safety in America.
“Their whole lives were a party. Every weekend, people would come over. There would be drinking and eating and loving each other — friendship like I never saw anywhere,” said David.
Now retired, David devotes much of his time to rescuing stray and endangered dogs and cats, a rescuer’s impulse he said he inherited from his father.
“You’ve got to understand the influence my daddy had on my life,” David said tearfully. “Even in the prime of my life I couldn’t measure up to him. I always tried to, but I never could.”
At 15, his daughter Jessica feels her grandfather’s influence in another way.
“I am really interested in the Holocaust. I would love to be a teacher,” she said. “It is really important that this kind of history doesn’t repeat itself — this mass destruction of humankind. But it shows that Hitler did not win. It should never be a memory that fades. It should always be in our minds. It is scary. It is happening today.”
Defiance, directed by Edward Zwick, opens on Dec. 31 at selected theaters and in nationwide release in mid-January. In addition to Liev Schreiber as Zus, it stars Daniel Craig — the current James Bond — as Tuvia and Jamie Bell as Asael.
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