invisible city: a jerusalem in the forest?
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Invisible city: a Jerusalem in the forest?Mary Ann Steane aa University of Cambridge, Department of Architecture , Cambridge, UKPublished online: 26 Mar 2007.
To cite this article: Mary Ann Steane (2007) Invisible city: a Jerusalem in the forest?, The Journal ofArchitecture, 12:1, 37-56, DOI: 10.1080/13602360701218227
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Invisible city: a Jerusalem in theforest?
Mary Ann Steane University of Cambridge, Department of
Architecture, Cambridge, UK
The Bielski partisans are perhaps the most famous of the ‘Forest Jews’ of Belarus, Jews who
engaged in active resistance to the Germans in the years between 1941 and 1944 from their
hide-outs in the forest. When they escaped to ‘partisan country’ Jews had to adjust to an
entirely new physical and social environment. Persecuted by one of the most technologically
advanced armies in the world, and forced by circumstances to join the Soviet-led, commu-
nist, anti-religious partisan movement, the Bielski group faced numerous social and cultural
dilemmas in establishing the living conditions that ensured their survival. The extreme cold
of the Russian winter made circumstances extremely harsh, ‘living like animals’1 according
to one partisan, although in time life improved sufficiently for many in the Bielski detach-
ment to believe that their final camp had acquired the status of a small town or shtetl. If,
however, such military camps have often recalled more established urban settlements,
this question requires clarification in the Bielski case, and is the principal focus of this
paper. In its examination of the dwellings and settlements constructed by the Bielski
group, and how they evolved over time, the study underlines the minimum dimensions
of culture that arise in near-survival conditions.
Introduction
On June 22nd, 1941, the Germans launched an attack
on Russia of an unprecedented scale and speed along
a front of more than a thousand miles, setting in train
one of the most brutal campaigns of the Second
World War (Fig. 1). The main political aim of Oper-
ation Barbarossa was the overthrow of Stalin and
the Bolshevik regime, but the invasion had other
explicitly racist goals. The three million men and
3,400 tanks that crossed the frontier between
Greater Germany and the Soviet Union advanced
rapidly towards Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev and
Stalingrad, accompanied by the four infamous
Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads whose task
was to liquidate all ‘enemies of the Reich’. Jews2
became the primary victims of the invaders’ savage
racist policies, while Slavs, who were considered
only slightly more tolerable, also suffered appalling
treatment at their hands. Large numbers of Slavs
were deported or killed during the German occu-
pation as a result of brutal ‘scorched earth’ policies,
but the Jews were persecuted without mercy:
rounded up, imprisoned in ghettoes or forced
labour camps, shipped off to extermination camps
or massacred on the spot. Escape to the forest
offered their only hope of survival. Although many
found it impossible to imagine abandoning their
families and living outside ‘the bounds of civilisation’,
others could see that life in the forest offered not only
the possibility of survival but also the chance to
engage in active resistance to the Germans.3 In this
overall contest between a barbaric civilisation and a
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# 2007 The Journal of Architecture 1360–2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360701218227
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people with an ancient culture, the Jews had no
choice but to stick together, to ‘look after their
own’.4 Finding themselves in a war ecology to
which they had to adapt, they were hunted like
animals; and, initially at least, had to live like
animals; subject to aerial surveillance, yet equipped
with wirelesses they collaborated in a partisan move-
ment whose chain of command stretched all the way
back to Moscow.5
This study looks at a particular situation—that of a
culturally distinct group of strangers suddenly forced
to survive in very reduced and severe circumstances
in an ecology bracketed between a world war and
the northern Russian forest. Its analysis of wilderness
living conditions focuses on the largest and best
documented of the Jewish forest communities in
Belarus, the Bielski partisans, and seeks to examine
the role of architecture and the significance of
spatial articulation in establishing the group as a
working community. Visibility is one of the pre-
eminent criteria of architectural communication,
amplified by the emphasis on remarkable drawings,
exquisite photography and the presentation of
architecture in the media. By contrast the Bielski
settlements had as their first priority the requirement
of invisibility and therefore offer an opportunity to
understand the minimum living and working con-
ditions in which the practice and symbolism of
‘city’ can be effective. The three distinct phases
that mark the growth and development of the com-
munity will each be considered in turn, prior to a
more extended discussion of the status of the
‘town’ created in the third phase, and the degree
to which its order should be considered pragmatic,
political or symbolic. The principal sources for this
study are histories of the Bielski partisans (N. Tec,
1993) and (P. Duffy, 2003); autobiographical
accounts of life with the Bielski partisans (T. Bielski
and others, 1946), (S. Amarant, 1963), (D. Cohen
and J. Kagan, 1998); a documentary television
programme on their survival strategies (R. Mears,
2000); and interviews conducted by the author
with Jack Kagan, a member of the Bielski group (J.
Kagan, August, 2004/ September, 2005/December,
2006).
The wartime forest ecology of Belarus
In the physically harsh and socially complex6 ecology
of the Russian forest, Jewish survival and partisan
warfare both required invisibility.7 Because this
invisibility depended in part on cover, in part on
mobility, and in part on the sharing of information,
a small-scale well-equipped group of young men
38
Invisible city: a
Jerusalem in the forest?
Mary Ann Steane
Figure 1. Routes taken
by the invading German
forces across Belarus in
July and August,1941.
(Based on the map
published on the House
of the Wannsee
Conference Memorial
and Educational Site,
www.ghwk.de/engl/
catalog/cateng5.htm,
updated February,
2005.)
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formed the ideal partisan unit; and as the Soviets
were undoubtedly aware, a large mixed Jewish par-
tisan group was almost by definition a contradiction
in terms. Such a group was vulnerable because it
needed protection and had neither the mobility
nor, because of German persecution and wide-
spread anti-semitism amongst the gentile popu-
lation, as great a field of invisibility as other
occupants of the forest. In other words as it grew
larger its situation became more precarious
because it became more difficult to protect and to
hide. Identifying the niche such a group could
occupy in this ecology and understanding the con-
ditions of settlement that would allow it to do so
became a primary survival issue. As I will argue
here, beyond combating the harsh physical con-
ditions presented by the cold of winter (Fig. 2) and
the almost trackless wilderness, the way in which
the forest architecture of the Jewish partisans
evolved over time reflects a constant concern for
invisibility and a growing interest in how they
could forge themselves into an effective component
of the Soviet war machine.
Winter, 1941– Summer, 1942
Following the first mass execution of Jews in the
Novogrudek area in late 1941, the Bielski brothers
and their immediate families were among the first
to flee into the woods (Fig. 3). Born and raised in
Stankevich, a hamlet at the margins of the forest,
the brothers were familiar with its potential
dangers and confident they possessed the bush-
craft skills to survive its hostile environment.8 By
May, 1942 they composed a group of twenty led
by the eldest of the brothers, Tuvia. At this point sur-
vival depended on the ability to move to escape
detection, but since numbers were small this was
relatively easy, and for much of the time the group
lived on the edge of the forest without permanent
habitation, eating meals outside and sleeping in
simple shelters under the trees. When the weather
became desperately cold the group was small
enough to be given refuge in safe houses provided
by friends in the local gentile peasant community.9
The temporary ‘kennel-like’ huts or succot (singu-
lar, succah) used by the partisans in warmer months
were relatively easy to construct and could trap body
heat in a minimal air space (Fig. 4a). Made out of
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Figure 2. Average daily
maximum, minimum
and lowest recorded
temperatures, Vilnius,
Lithuania. Vilnius, at a
latitude of 548 N, is
about 66 miles north of
Novogrudek and has a
similar climate. Source
of climate data: E.A.
Pearce and C.G. Smith,
World Weather Guide
(Oxford, Helicon
Publishing Ltd, 2000),
p. 220.
Figure 3. Map of
Novogrudek and
surrounding forests.
(Based on P. Duffy,
Brothers in Arms, 2003:
see bibliography.)
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woven tree branches and triangular in form, their
outer insulating layer offered some weather protec-
tion, while on the inside, moss-covered branches,
blankets or fur coats provided insulation from the
ground. Alternatively (Fig. 4b), parachute silk was
sometimes available as a covering for a more tent-
like shelter.10 Otherwise, partisans slept outside
without shelter of any kind, although as winter
approached, they knew they might wake covered
in snow.
Summer, 1942 – Autumn, 1943
Following Tuvia Bielski’s decision actively to
encourage other Jews to escape imprisonment,
from mid-1942 onwards a steady stream of Jewish
fugitives joined the Bielskis in the forest. In this
second phase, the group occupied the less densely
forested areas near Novogrudek and began to
pursue a semi-nomadic existence as an official
partisan detachment.11 Temporary summer camps
in shelters of the kind already described were substi-
tuted in winter with a semi-permanent winter camp
whose key building type is analysed in detail
below.12 Such a winter camp was deliberately
spread out over a relatively wide area13 and,
except for a central kitchen, does not appear to
have had any clear-cut spatial hierarchy, as a scat-
tered settlement offered more opportunities for
escape in the event of an attack.
Along with general instructions for the conduct of
guerilla operations, the Partisan Manual issued by
the Soviet military offered guidance on the building
of suitable winter shelters (Fig. 5).14 Relatively easy
to construct from raw materials readily available
in the forest, the Soviets knew that dugouts,
ziemlanki15 (singular ziemlanka) ensured adequate
protection from the cold. They also knew that they
could be built rapidly enough to allow the com-
pletion of camps for as many as 300 people in as
little as three days.16 Such a dugout was a timber-
framed structure built within a hole in the ground
that could withstand the pressure of the earth
while enabling the completion of a sufficiently
wind-tight envelope to maintain high enough
40
Invisible city: a
Jerusalem in the forest?
Mary Ann Steane
Figure 4: (a) Partisan
kennel-like shelter or
succah; (b) Partisan tent
made from parachute
silk (based on US Army
field Manual, FM3-
05.70 published at
http://www.rk19–
bielefeld-mitte.de/
survival/FM/05.htm.).
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internal temperatures at night. No nails were
available and only relatively simple tools, so the
walls were constructed of 150 cm logs laid horizon-
tally on top of one another, halved at the corners
and held together with barbed wire. Gaps
between the logs were filled with moss, and a
lining of timber planks was sometimes added on
the inside. Because they were underground or
semi-underground, such buildings were readily
camouflaged. Partisan accounts indicate that visitors
had to be guided to them, even from quite close by,
and German reports note admiringly their invisibility
to the naked eye from as close as 30 yards.17
Partisan ziemlanki were constructed in a number of
different forms, vulnerability to attack and local
ground topography dictating which type was
chosen.18 Whenever possible, the goal of invisibility
dictated that rectangular cabins with flat or low-
pitched ceilings were hidden within natural mounds.
In the winter of 1942, the Bielski group constructed
a number of very basic but well-camouflaged
flat-roofed dugouts of this type in their first winter
camp, whose floors were several yards below
ground level and which had to be entered by
ladder.19 Four were in use as sleeping quarters and
one functioned as a primitive hospital.
Summer, 1943 – Summer, 1944
As the Bielski group grew larger (650–700 people),
the danger of discovery increased, and following
several German attacks in May, 1943, it withdrew
to the vast and much denser primaeval forest or
puscha to the north of Novogrudek that lay under
Soviet control (cf Figure 3). To gain entry to the
Nalibocki forest a Soviet password was required,
and to remain, Soviet orders had to be followed,
yet an immediate order that the group should be
separated into fighters and non-fighters was suc-
cessfully challenged by Tuvia Bielski. Although a
split was enforced, the family group he continued
to lead retained sufficient fighters to give it an
acceptable level of protection.20 At the end of a har-
rowing Summer during which the group only nar-
rowly managed to evade another massive German
offensive, a remote site for a permanent camp for
all local forest Jews was subsequently agreed with
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Figure 5: (a) Ziemlanka
buried within mound –
as shown here, less
crude versions of this
type could have a door
and entry passage,
rather than entry
through the roof;
(b) Ziemlanka buried in
the ground with
truncated pitched roof-
form; (c) Ziemlanka
buried in ground with
simple pitched roof-
form. The Bielski
Nalibocki camp
dwellings were of this
last type. Note the
extended flue that
allows soot from the
stove to be distributed
amongst tree branches.
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the Soviets.21 Located in a dense pine and birch
forest about 5 miles from the village of Nalibocki,
it was this camp that would prove to be the catalyst
for the group’s third and final phase of development.
The new camp was very different in character
to those that preceded it. For the first time the build-
ing work it required was planned ahead of time and
supervised from the outset by a trained engineer.22
While one team dug holes, a second prepared
wood for the roofs and a third constructed sleeping
platforms. At the same time other groups were sent
to search through abandoned villages for building
materials, tools and other useful artefacts. The build-
ing programme allowed just seven weeks for con-
struction, and work was completed before the
ground froze in the third week of November, 1943.
Although they differ in places as to detail, all
descriptions of the camp23 indicate that for the
first time the plan had a clear spatial hierarchy, a
contention confirmed in the two drawn reconstruc-
tions verified by survivors (Figs. 6 and 7). Beneath the
forest canopy, a ‘main street’ about 100 yards in
length ran through the middle of the half-buried
settlement. About halfway along this street stood
the two-room bunker which Tuvia Bielski and his
fellow commanders used as their headquarters and
which acted as the nerve centre of the camp. A
room which had maps of the region and an obliga-
tory drawing of Stalin hanging on the wall, chairs
and a table, and later a typewriter and wireless, pro-
vided the most formal setting in the camp for both
the regular meetings that agreed everyone’s duties
and the negotiations with visiting Soviet officers.
Official reports on the camp’s contribution to parti-
san fighting activities were written and dispatched
from here. Outside, a notice-board alerted camp
members to the orders they were expected to
fulfil each day.24 Other important activities were
located at the centre of the camp. To one side of
the headquarters lay the camp clinic, to the other
an open-air ‘place of assembly’ where groups of
fighters met before leaving on partisan missions,
and where the whole community could gather to
hear important announcements or celebrate the
42
Invisible city: a
Jerusalem in the forest?
Mary Ann Steane
Figure 6. Map of the
Bielski Camp in the
Nalibocki forest during
the last phase of its
existence from Autumn,
1943 – Summer, 1944.
Chaja Bielski, the wife
of Asael Bielski,
provided Tec with the
information on which
this diagram is based.
The assembly place and
food distribution areas
are incorrectly shown
here as interior spaces.
Source: N. Tec,
Defiance. The Bielski
Partisans (Oxford,
Oxford University Press,
1993), p. 185.
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main Soviet festivals with other partisan groups.
Nearby stood the school, the camp kitchen and a
large workshop building which provided generously
lit workspace for shoemakers, tailors, seamstresses,
barbers, watchmakers, carpenters, hatmakers and
leatherworkers. The huts occupied by Tuvia Bielski
and his immediate entourage were also sited in
the vicinity of the headquarters.
As already noted, residential dugouts had been
spread over a wide area in the group’s previous
winter camp.25 In contrast, here they were lined
up on both sides of the ‘main street’. Dugouts
housing workshops, production facilities and one
or two shared ‘public’ facilities were situated
further from the centre. These larger scale work-
shops included a sausage factory, a bakery, a soap
factory, a metal workshop and a blacksmith’s
forge. In addition, a flour mill, a slaughterhouse
and a tannery provided the artisans with raw
materials, and, in response to concerns about
health and hygiene, a two-room bathhouse pro-
vided washing, steam bathing and fumigation facili-
ties. The camp also boasted a hospital (as was
normal practice, this lay outside the main camp
area), a prison and a cemetery.26 Later, in the
spring of 1944, the camp expanded when Tuvia
Bielski gave permission for a group of smaller resi-
dences to be constructed away from the ‘main
street’ on higher, drier ground (these are the build-
ings shown at the bottom of figures 6 and 7). This
expansion reinforced the sense in which the head-
quarters building was the physical as well as the
military centre of the camp.
All the camp’s buildings, whatever their function
or size, were dugouts, although the less vulnerable
site and flat ground conditions of the Nalibocki
camp dictated that the following construction
method was used (Figs. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). Simply
framed timber structures were built within holes
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Figure 7. Layout of the
partisan ‘family camp’
under the command of
the Bielski brothers
(March – July, 1944),
unknown authorship,
unknown date,
although verified by
Jack Kagan and other
Bielski Group survivors
as a more accurate
reconstruction of the
camp than the diagram
provided by Chaja
Bielski. (Source: http://
www.gfh.org.il,
courtesy of Beit
Lahamei Haghettaot;
annotations translated
by Gil Klein for this
version.)
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approximately 1 yard deep.27 This timber structure
emerged just above ground level and provided the
base for one or more simple pitched roofs of
rough timber planks, bark sheets and soil, whose
form was camouflaged by a covering of tree
branches and seedlings.28 Each large residential
hut provided sleeping quarters for 40 partisans.
Beyond the low door, a couple of steps led down
to a space approximately 16 ft by 23 ft that had a
small iron stove in the middle and deep bench-
shelves to each side. Opposite the door was a
small window. The shelves formed platforms on
which partisans29 could sit or sleep shoulder to
shoulder, away from the coldness of the ground.
The similarities and differences between figures
6 and 7 are worth noting. While confirming the
significance of the ‘main street’, and the collection
of ‘public buildings’, large workshop building and
large residential bunkers at the centre of the
settlement, the maps differ as to the arrangement
and location of some of the other workplaces and
shared facilities at the camp’s periphery. In fact,
neither map seems to dovetail exactly with either
of the two more extensive written descriptions
of the camp, instead offering alternative but
comparable versions of how an overall spatial
44
Invisible city: a
Jerusalem in the forest?
Mary Ann Steane
Figure 8: (a)
Longitudinal section; (b)
Cross-section, through
a Nalibocki camp
dwelling. Forest logs,
bark, soil, leaves and
moss provided the basic
materials, while
elements such as doors
and windows, and key
components such as the
metal containers from
which stoves and stove-
pipes were improvised,
and the barbed wire
used for fixing, were
taken from abandoned
farmhouses.
Figure 9. Jewish
partisans in Slovakia
constructing a shelter in
the forest. (Source:
http://www.gfh.org.il,
courtesy of Beit
Lahamei Haghettaot.)
Figure 10. Partisans in
the Rudniki forest,
Lithuania, standing
beside the ziemlanka
they have built. (Source:
http://www.gfh.org.il,
courtesy of Beit
Lahamei Haghettaot.)
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order orchestrated relationships between dwellings,
workplaces and ‘public buildings’, and the ‘public
space’ of the place of assembly. The fact that both
drawings also indicate the existence of a separate
‘place for prayer’ or synagogue, unacknowledged
in the written accounts, deserves further dis-
cussion below.
The forest ‘town’ of the Bielski detachment
Forest dwellers saw the camp from various perspec-
tives. Beyond any military purpose it might serve,
Soviet partisan commanders thought of it as a
holding camp for Jews. Other Polish and Russian par-
tisans dismissed it as a refuge for ‘soft’ urbanites. In
contrast, Jewish partisans enthusiastically embraced
the idea that the new camp had the character of a
small town or shtetl.30 The reflections of Oswald
Rufeisen, a visitor in early 1944, on the social
benefits of the camp’s more coherent settlement
pattern are typical:
I admired how in the forest they were able to
create a shtetl, a little town, where people lived
in dignity. They all worked. It was a town in the
middle of the forest. On both sides of the main
streets there were structures that contained
many different workshops: shoemakers, tailors,
workshops for fixing arms, slaughterhouses,
mills and others. In this camp one could find
people from Belorussia and other parts of
Poland. I have a tremendous respect for this
man, Tuvia Bielski. He created an almost normal
atmosphere under abnormal conditions.31
In these Jewish accounts frequent emphasis is given
to the camp’s spatial articulation: its streets, main
square (the ‘place of assembly’) and ‘public buildings’,
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Figure 11. A Soviet
partisan workshop for
the production of
weapons. Note wall
construction with moss
stuffed between crudely
squared logs. (Source:
http://www.gfh.org.il,
courtesy of Beit
Lahamei Haghettaot.)
Figure 12. Partisans at
work in the forest
outside a ziemlanka.
(Source: http://
www.gfh.org.il,
courtesy of Beit
Lahamei Haghettaot.)
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and the fact that it included a range of workplaces in
addition to residential dwellings. Despite the unu-
sually primitive living and sleeping arrangements,
they suggest that those who lived there were able
to see themselves as a more effective community
as a consequence of the plan’s greater spatial
order. The question that remains to be answered is
whether or how much the intention behind this
spatial articulation was to found a shtetl, how
much to give urban form and symbolism to a military
necessity.
Pragmatic military order
Although it contained the key buildings all larger-
scale partisan bases were expected to include, and,
like them, had a kitchen and headquarters at the
centre and a hospital nearby, the more coherent
geometry of the Nalibocki camp layout was not
typical. (The overall plan of most partisan camps
seems to have been primarily determined by issues
of defence such as the positioning of gun emplace-
ments, earthwork fortifications or roadblocks, and
the ability of fighters to provide cover for one
another in case of attack.)32 The remoteness of its
location may explain this lack of concern for fortifi-
cation. It can be argued, however, that the promi-
nence given to the headquarters building by its
location close to the camp’s central ‘square’ or
‘place of assembly’, contributed to the efficient
running of the camp, and perhaps even to group dis-
cipline (Kagan suggests that the notice-board which
listed everyone’s duties for the day was the de facto
‘centre’ of the camp).33 When considered in this
light, the new arrangement had the benefit of trans-
forming the large disparate group into a more effec-
tive fighting force while at the same time
articulating for the group the significance of its mili-
tary role. It also reinforced the group’s military/social
hierarchy. Space (like food) was not evenly distribu-
ted in the camp. Those in command and their
immediate families enjoyed more spacious living
quarters (and better food from a separate kitchen)
in dwellings located close to the headquarters.34
The idea that the plan had acquired military signifi-
cance was certainly not lost on Tuvia Bielski. In a
December, 1943, despatch to his superiors describ-
ing the unit’s successful relocation to the puscha, a
list of workplaces accompanied by a plan drawing
helped him to underline the valuable military
resource the camp now represented.35
Political order and the Jewish way of life
Prior to a discussion of the urban order represented
by the camp’s spatial geometry, aspects of the
prewar cultural geography of Belarus that throw
light on the meaning of ‘town’ in this cultural
context are worth emphasising. In this region a
small town was inherently a Jewish entity and rep-
resented an archetypically Jewish form of settle-
ment, its structure and life determined by the fact
that small town populations were predominantly
Jewish. Although the presence of churches and a
castle might suggest otherwise, many of the princi-
pal elements of a town were either owned and run
by Jews, or for Jewish community use. The market
place and its surrounding shops, workplaces and
inns were dominated by Jews. The main synagogue
in synagogue square was only the most prominent
of a range of Jewish buildings: Jewish schools and
centres of learning, a ritual bathhouse, a ritual
46
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slaughterhouse, several smaller synagogues and a
number of other Jewish-run institutions that cared
for the old, the sick and the destitute. The architec-
ture of these buildings was not distinctive, apart
from the more forceful scale and presence of the
main synagogue, so a small town did not look par-
ticularly Jewish, but because so much of the
pattern of its life was dictated by the Jewish calen-
dar, it felt Jewish, to Jew and gentile alike (Figs.
13, 14, 15, 16).
That such towns were seen as Jewish was also the
result of larger-scale cultural geography. Most of the
local gentile population was rural: peasant farmers
who lived and worked in the small village settlements
that lay scattered amongst farmland and forest. The
Jews made a living by engaging in trade with this
rural population, buying their produce and supplying
them with goods and services. The small market
towns of Belarus were thus ‘Jewish islands in a
non-Jewish ocean’,36 a situation which reinforced
the ‘intensity of community life, intimacy of family
and friends, as well as very high social cohesiveness’
experienced by prewar Jewish communities.
This suggests that the spatial order of the camp
deserves to be interpreted differently. The very fact
that the plan has a clear spatial hierarchy (the
square, larger residential bunkers and a number of
key ‘public buildings’ at its centre; smaller resi-
dences, workplaces and other shared facilities at
the periphery), and an orientation as a result of its
main street, allowed it to articulate a political or col-
lective order that would have been familiar to its
occupants. Despite the lack of a synagogue and an
external market place, it is also worth underlining
that certain aspects of this spatial structure parallel
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Figure 13. The prewar
plan of the shtetl,
Novogrudek, Belarus.
Note that the street
leading south between
the market place and
synagogue square was
called Jewish Street.
Most of the houses and
businesses in the town
centre were owned by
Jews. (Source: Sir
Martin Gilbert.)
Figure 14. ‘Jewish
street’, Novogrudek,
before the war. (Source:
http://www.
eilatgordinlevitan.
com/novogrudok/
novogrudok.html.)
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those of a shtetl: its central ‘place of assembly’ and
headquarters building played a comparable role in
community life to that of the synagogue and syna-
gogue square (one of the titles for the synagogue
was ‘place of assembly’); the large workshop build-
ing with its range of small production facilities acted
as a kind of internal market place, and like such a
space, could even double as a theatre
when required; the presence of so many different
workplaces and shared facilities in the camp trans-
formed it from a residential base into an intense
working community, which in its occupants’ eyes,
gave it the status of a town; and finally, as the fol-
lowing account illustrates, the introduction of a
‘main street’ enabled camp members to establish
and engage in the kind of urban public life with
which they were familiar.
The ‘main street’ was the main traffic route; it was
always alive with people and all sorts of goings on.
Partisans, women and men, strolled in the street
in their typical ‘uniforms’ partly peasant’s garb,
partly military, a strange combination of peasant’s
furs. . . the boots were made out of a light yellow
leather, which was a product of the camp, army
hats, Russian and German or peasant’s fur hats,
weapons that were gathered from different
sources. Friends met on the main street, as did
groups of guests who frequented the camp.37
The settlement’s more obvious spatial order and less
primitive architecture prompted other changes. First,
clearer organisation meant that a stronger sense of
locatedness was possible. Each residential hut was
given an address by way of a number and even a
nickname, depending on the trade or origin of its
occupants. For example, hut number 11 was called
‘intelligentsia’, because it housed the camp doctor,
a woman dentist, a lawyer and several other
professionals.38 Secondly, although still extremely
cramped, the improvement in living conditions rep-
resented by half-buried rather than underground
dwellings, meant these were now buildings of
which owners could be proud. As this vivid account
of one of the smaller residences that were built in
the spring of 1944 indicates, the construction of
more comfortable dwellings transformed people’s
conception of the wilderness and their place in it:
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Figure 15. The Old
Synagogue,
Novogrudek, before the
war. (Source: http://
www.eilatgordinlevitan.
com/novogrudok/
novogrudok.html.)
Figure 16. The market
place, Novogrudek,
before the war. (Source:
http:// www.aforgotte
nodyssey.com/gallery/
album24/Now02.)
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We went especially to the destroyed town of Nali-
boki and brought from there a big window with
the windowpanes intact, a door and an iron
stove. We made three separate benches, a
table in the centre and chairs out of stumps. The
window let through a pleasant bright light. The
air was dry and fresh — a crowded clump of
birches, like a green wall, was seen through the
window. It felt like ‘home’, it looked to us like a
splendid villa. We were proud of it. The camp’s
people arrived to feed their eyes on that miracle
of ‘architecture’ and praised its comfort.39
The forging of a new communal identity, on the
other hand, was primarily a consequence of the
decision to construct workshops on a much
greater scale,40 and to introduce shared facilities
like the barbers’ shop, bath house and school. In
these workplace and social settings spontaneous
humorous banter and gossip over work or social
relationships began to flourish once again. The life
that children were leading was paid more attention,
and they were encouraged to attend school and to
engage in the theatrical productions that brought
the whole community together. Furthermore, with
the workshops up and running, the trading activities
that had been the life-blood of typical prewar Jewish
communities were reintroduced. When Soviet
visitors came seeking professional craftsmen or
medical assistance, camp members were now able
to barter these services for guns, ammunition and
food. What is worth underlining here is that the
employment provided by the workshops allowed
confidence and camaraderie to build up as the
older Jewish craftsmen were able to pick up the
threads of a familiar existence.
Finally, it is also possible to interpret the provision
of a cemetery as a clear statement of the stronger
collective identity now experienced by those in the
Bielski group. As the hallowed repository of commu-
nity history, burial grounds have a particular signifi-
cance in Jewish settlements and a shtetl was not
considered a living institution without one.
Symbolic order and Jewish identity
With its almost exclusively Jewish population, the
camp was called ‘Jerusalem’ by the surrounding par-
tisans and peasants. This was actually a pejorative
designation that indicated the presence in the
forest of those they considered subordinate: town-
dwelling, non-fighting Jews. Yet it should not lend
weight to the idea that the camp openly expressed
its Jewishness, or that its spatial order was an
attempt to symbolise Jewish identity. Its inhabitants
may have been able to imagine it as a kind of shtetl,
but they knew that the political and military realities
of life in the forest (all partisans were expected to
swear loyalty to the communist party, a communist
movement had no provisions for religious obser-
vance) meant that the Jewishness of the camp had
to be invisible or only barely visible to the Soviets.
Their name for it, the Bielski Detachment, reflects
this acceptance of cultural invisibility.41
Yet such things can change in the retelling of
history. It is not difficult to see the camp as an
extreme example of the conditions of Diaspora, in
which the Jews had frequently found themselves
living in compressed, makeshift conditions, as a
result of internal cohesion and isolation from host
peoples. Being extreme, it attracts symbolic reson-
ances (Moses’ departure from Egypt, the Babylonian
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captivity, the Jewish revolts against the Greeks and
the Romans). Such symbolism has indeed been
evoked by some in the group when they have retro-
spectively called it a ‘Jerusalem of the Forest’.42 This
is interesting. It suggests that the narratives of
wartime resistance now helping to reshape
postwar Jewish identity, are giving this forest
‘town’ an afterlife in which its iconic status is
finally becoming apparent.
The fact that the actual topography of the camp
remains controversial illustrates the difficulties
raised by, but also the importance of, this aspect
of the story. For example, as already noted, both
drawn reconstructions indicate the existence of a
synagogue or ‘prayer-house’ in the camp, a fact not
supported by the written evidence and hotly
disputed by Jack Kagan,43 who, like others, only con-
cedes that the tannery was occasionally in use as a
discrete gathering place for prayer. On the one
hand, it is known that a plan was drawn by Tuvia
Bielski, in 1943 (see above), although this document
seems to have vanished. Consequently, all efforts to
present the camp in terms of an architectural plan
fall into the territory of reconstructions. Moreover,
as these are necessarily part of the postwar effort to
grasp the uniqueness of the phenomenon, there is
a spectrum between archaeological accuracy and
idealisation, between the immediate exigencies of
wartime pragmatics and the need for many survivors
to inscribe the event within the legacy of the
Diaspora. The first is built out of local distances and
intense experiences whose overall field of relation-
ships long-term memory can obscure. The second
has behind it a tradition that ranges from Jewish quar-
ters in European cities and kibbutzim to theological
speculations on the heavenly temple.44 In this
context the ‘actual’ acquires a relative value — one
must choose between truth as archaeological data
and truth as the ideals and memories of a struggle
that exceeds the camp itself.
The minimum dimensions of culture
in near-survival conditions
For the Jews, the regret for their houses was not a
hope but a despair, buried till then under more
urgent and more serious sorrows, but latent
always. Their homes no longer existed: they
had been swept away, burned by the war or by
slaughter, blooded by the squads of hunters of
men; tomb houses, of which it was best not to
think, houses of ashes.45
As is the case with much other so-called ‘primitive
architecture’, the ‘ecological niche’ that the Bielski
group came to occupy, and that was defined in
large part by decisions about what shelter to build,
depended on an intelligent exploitation of limited
resources that ensured immediate survival. Semi-
buried living conditions may have been crude but
they achieved their fundamental objective: mitigat-
ing the most life-threatening factors of the bitter
winters of Belarus, the extreme cold and enemy
attack. Lack of space, lack of warmth, the constant
presence of damp and dirt, the scourge of lice and
the requirement to sleep next to non-family
members, may have placed significant physical and
psychological demands on people who were
poorly dressed and poorly nourished, but everyone
knew such deprivation was necessary. In their iso-
lated situation the construction of robust enough
shelters made considerable demands on limited
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manpower and resources, and such building work
was therefore only carried out when absolutely
necessary. Sheltered space was thus always at a
premium; privacy, except on occasion for the com-
mander himself, an impossibility; and undifferen-
tiated internal and external space the rule rather
than the exception.
In the forest, the Jewish partisans had to re-orient
themselves to a world which lacked all the familiar
markers of social relationships, place and time that
had previously allowed them to express where and
who they were. The direction-less wilderness in
which they were hidden was also a wilderness
in which they were ‘lost’. ‘Finding themselves
again’, the development of a sense of ‘locatedness’,
and thus longer-term survival, depended not only on
a process of adjustment to the new conditions but
also on the realisation that the construction of a
‘primitive town’ would help them to recreate, at
least to a degree, those with which they were
familiar.
The Bielski group’s final settlement was very differ-
ent from those that preceded it. While the most
plausible hypothesis concerning its clearer overall
plan is that it represented an explicit articulation of
the group’s military role, it is worth emphasising
that the greater spatial order it imposed had an
implicit but equally important resonance for the
community it reshaped. The decision to arrange all
the buildings of the camp along a ‘main street’
centred on a group of ‘public buildings’ and place
of assembly, allowed its occupants to imagine and
inhabit it as a small town. As a result the group
was able to recreate something of the living metab-
olism of the shtetl, and to achieve in the process a
collective identity as a working community. In this
way greater spatial differentiation at the scale of
the settlement enabled the camp to provide a
setting for a less ‘primitive’ way of life. Yet it must
be stressed that such a shtetl had to be ‘visible’
only to its occupants. It could not be a ‘Jerusalem
of the Forest’ in the actual conditions on the
ground. Sixty years and a new and very different cul-
tural context have been required for this idea to
emerge.
The founding of something like a town thus
emerges as a minimum condition of survival, a
basic means of establishing the conditions for
fruitful collaboration, as well as for preserving a
memory of, and hope for, a proper life. This is not
the ‘myth of fire’ of Vitruvius, which is meant to
give the origins of architecture, it is more like the
ancient military camps of Assyria or Rome, which
always harboured the symbolism of city. Aristotle
was right when he declared that humans were
fundamentally political.
Notes and references1. E. Kahn, ‘Evelyn Kahn, Part II’, in J. Cohen, ‘Women of
Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters (www3.
sympatico.ca/mighty1/valor/evelyn.htm, 2001). Evelyn
Kahn was a Jewish partisan in the forests near Vilnius,
Lithuania.
2. From 1793 onward Catherine II had restricted Jewish
residence in Russia to a ‘Pale of Settlement’, territories
annexed from Poland or areas near the Black Sea taken
from the Turks. Later, other annexed territories in this
region were added to the Pale.
3. Slav fighters also departed for the forest, although
unlike Jews, they were more sure of a welcome in
the remote village communities in which they sought
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information about the enemy, and on which they
depended for food and shelter. See General
S.A. Kovpak, Our Partisan Course (London, Hutchinson
and Co. Ltd., undated) and Lieut. General Pono-
marenko and others, Behind the Front Line (London,
Hutchinson and Co. Ltd., undated) for detailed
accounts of Russian partisan life.
4. In the local gentile population, attitudes to the Jews
varied. Some were deeply anti-semitic and thus quite
happy to betray them to the Germans, while many
others were less hostile, but unwilling to sacrifice
themselves or their families for people they considered
strangers. Just a handful risked, or occasionally gave
their lives, to offer active help. In the forest most
Polish and Russian partisans were initially dismissive
of the idea of Jews becoming partisans. They saw
Jews as ‘soft’ townspeople and assumed they lacked
the courage to fight. Before Polish and Russian partisan
units were prepared to collaborate with them, Jews
had to prove that they could be taken seriously as fight-
ers. Small Jewish groups were particularly vulnerable in
the forest.
5. Most of the activities of guerilla units in ‘partisan
country’, territory which was rarely under the control
of German forces, were directed by partisan
command in the ‘Great Land’, unoccupied USSR.
Modern techniques of communication and supply,
through aeroplane and wireless, ensured that Soviet
partisan units, whether led by Russians or Jews, could
be welded into a useful instrument of Russian military
and political strategy.
6. Relationships between the various national groups
within the partisan movement in this region were
very complex and changed over time. Local partisan
fighting units were made up of Jews and a mixture
of Poles and Russians whose political allegiances and
cultural assumptions varied widely. Thus units of the
Polish ‘Home Army’ collaborated extensively with the
Russians but units of fascist ‘White Poles’ deliberately
strove to undermine their communist enemies.
Although a number of Polish and Russian units were
prepared to accept Jewish fighters, others were not
and would disarm them before threatening them so
that they would go away. ‘White Poles’ were even
more stridently anti-semitic, seeking to attack and kill
all Jewish partisans they encountered.
7. Partisan hideouts were generally in the most inaccess-
ible locations provided by forests and marshes. For
most groups the defensibility of a site was another
key criterion: C.A. Dixon and O. Heilbrunn, Communist
Guerilla Warfare (London, George Allen and Unwin
Ltd., 1954), p. 75.
8. Forbidden to own land and restricted as to occu-
pation for centuries under the Tsars, most Jews were
townspeople. Although born and brought up in the
locality and thus familiar with the woodlands as a back-
drop, the deep forest was ‘out-of-bounds’ to most
Jews, an alien and deeply forbidding territory:
J. Kagan, personal testimony in R. Mears, ‘Belarus’,
Extreme Survival, Series 3 (London, BBC, 2001).
9. In winter, adequate temporary shelter was more diffi-
cult to improvise but had to be attempted if the cold
was severe. While looking for the Bielski group in the
winter of 1943, Meyer Bronicki constructed a simple
‘tree pit snow shelter’ that allowed him and his
mother to sleep in a small protected space, out of
direct contact with the ground. Having identified a
suitably bushy spruce tree and measured out the hole
required, he describes digging ‘a kind of double
grave, 4 feet deep near the trunk, and covering it
with branches, leaving a hole for an entrance’. A fire
of spruce wood made the air too acrid to breathe, so
the pair relied on body heat to maintain warmth and
survived winter nights in which temperatures
dropped as low as –408 c: Meyer Bronicki, personal
testimony, in R. Mears, op cit.
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10. E. Gabrilovich, ‘Bogdan the elusive’, in Ponomarenko
and others, op cit, p. 52.
11. A partisan unit’s military objectives were to train
and send armed fighters to participate in missions
against the Germans, supply itself with food and
fuel, build its own shelters and defend itself against
attack. In the large Bielski family group, it became
obvious that internal camp rules had to be enforced
with strict discipline: no Jewish fugitive, however
weak or ill was to be turned away; everyone had a
right to food as everyone had a right to shelter;
unless ill or injured, everyone had to work. Refusing
to turn away any Jew, however old or young, weak
or ill, Tuvia Bielski would warn new arrivals, ‘Life is
difficult, we are in danger all the time, but if we
perish, if we die, we die like human beings’: testimony
of Moshe Bairach, as quoted in N. Tec, Defiance. The
Bielski Partisans (New York, Oxford University Press,
1993), p. 4.
12. It was best to construct such winter camps by mid-
November before the ground froze. Their location
was kept secret by ensuring that the large piles of
earth produced during their construction were
carried away at night, sometimes for many miles.
Harassed by the Germans, the Bielski group had to
abandon one such camp and construct a second
some distance away in the winter of 1942.
13. T. Bielski, and others, Forest Jews. Narratives of Jewish
Partisans of White Russia, Tuvia and Zus Bielski, Lilka
and Sonia Bielski, and Abraham Viner as told to Ben
Dor: unpublished translation of Yehudy Yaar (Tel Aviv,
Am Oved, 1946).
14. C.G. Dixon and O. Heilbrunn, op. cit., p. 73. See also
J. Armstrong, Soviet Partisans in World War II (Madison,
The University of Wisconsin Press,1964), p. 160.
15. The ziemlanka was a building type that had tradition-
ally provided simple dwellings for the very poorest
Eastern European peasants: A.G. Jones, trs.,
S. Colley, Anne Gwen Jones’ Account of her Experi-
ences in the Ukraine 1889–1892 (www.colley.co.uk/
siriol/pages/Gwen_Russia.htm, 1990). The term
ziemlanka is derived from the word for soil.
16. The guerilla known as ‘A.S.’, ‘Orel Guerillas’, in
Ponamarenko and others, op. cit., p. 107.
17. J.Armstrong, op, cit., pp. 159–161.
18. J. Kagan, personal interview, op. cit., 2004.
19. P. Duffy, Brothers in Arms (London, Arrow Books,
2003), pp. 111–112. For further detailed descript-
ions of slightly later dugouts of this type see Y. Tys-
Krokhmaliuk, trs., W. Dushnyck, UPA Warfare in the
Ukraine (New York, Society of Veterans of the Ukrai-
nian Insurgent Army, 1972), pp. 181–209.
20. Tuvia Bielski continued to lead the much larger family
group, now known as the Kalinin or Bielski detachment,
while his younger brother Zus helped to command a
satellite fighting unit, the Ordzonikidze detachment.
As Tec suggests, it was these difficult negotiations that
underlined to Tuvia the need for the family group to
establish a more secure position for itself in the
forest’s military hierarchy (N. Tec, op. cit., p. 147).
21. A despatch by Tuvia Bielski to his superiors indicates
that the Soviets expected the camp to provide a
base not only for the Bielski group, but for all Jewish
non-fighters in the district. Around 100 Jewish
fugitives in the Stolpcy and Mir districts were
rounded up by Bielski and brought to the camp. See
Bielski Detachment Report, dated 5.12.43, in Central
National Archives (Partisan section), Minsk, as
translated in D. Cohen and J. Kagan, Surviving
the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans
(London, Valentine Mitchell and Co. Ltd, 1998),
pp. 192–194.
22. It is clear that Tuvia Bielski planned the camp at least
three months in advance, giving thought to how
food supplies for the group could be stockpiled in
advance of construction work by leaving a small
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group in the vicinity to harvest what was available in
the abandoned farms and fields nearby.
23. For detailed descriptions of the camp, see S. Amarant,
trs., A. Kamil, ‘And the bravery. The partisans of Tuvia
Bielski’, in E. Yerushalmi, ed., Navaredok Memorial
Book (Novogrudok, Belarus) 538360 / 258500:
translation of Pinkas Navaredok (Tel Aviv, 1963),
(www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Novogrudok/nov333.html
(1999–2004, updated August, 2003); and T. Bielski
and others, op. cit. For other briefer accounts, see
D. Cohen and J. Kagan, op. cit., pp. 87–88 and pp.
188–191; N. Tec, In the Lion’s Den (New York,
Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 185; and R. Mears,
op. cit.
24. J. Kagan, personal interview, op. cit., August, 2004.
25. P. Duffy, op. cit., p. 133. See also N. Tec, Defiance. The
Bielski Partisans (1993), op. cit., p. 87.
26. Those who died (mostly those who were killed in
action) were buried in a special area of land set aside
as a cemetery (N. Tec, 1993, op. cit., p. 172).
27. See D. Cohen and J. Kagan, op. cit., p. 188.
28. The age and huge size of the Nalibocki trees meant
that their bark, which was harvested in late summer,
provided a more waterproof roof covering than had
been available in previous winter camps (N. Tec,
1993, op. cit., p. 129). Photographs of pitched-roof
ziemlanki interiors indicate that a central line of
posts, presumably beneath a ridge-beam; a pair of
intermediate posts, presumably supporting purlins;
or, in the case of a truncated pitched-roof ziemlanka,
a number of ridge beams, helped both to strengthen
the structure and to support the weight of the roof.
29. Partisan (and German) accounts vary quite widely
(15–50) in their evaluation of the typical number of
occupants in each ziemlanka. This may, of course,
reflect the fact that bunkers were not always of the
same size. The figure of 40 reflects Kagan’s account
of the larger Bielski huts (J. Kagan, personal interview,
op. cit., 2004).
30. P. Duffy, op. cit., pp. 212–223; D. Cohen and J. Kagan,
op. cit., pp. 87–88, p.191; S. Amarant, op. cit.; N. Tec
(1993), op. cit., pp. 146–151.
31. N. Tec, In the Lion’s Den (1990), op. cit., p. 185.
Oswald Rufeisen, a Jewish convert to Christianity
who risked his life to help Mir ghetto Jews escape
from the Germans, became a partisan in the
neighbouring Ponamarenko unit. On his first visit to
the Bielski camp he was led to the headquarters
to be introduced to Tuvia Bielski, before being given
the honour of joining him for a meal (N. Tec, ibid,
p. 200).
32. Soviet partisan camps varied in size and did not usually
include workshop facilities. Brigades were dispersed
over 10–20 square miles and did not occupy a single
contiguous camp. Separate sites were identified for
each unit or even each company. When housed
in larger or smaller concentrations, the spatial
organisation of a camp was largely determined by a
concern for defence (J. Armstrong, op. cit., p. 161).
In smaller camps dugouts were frequently given a tri-
angular arrangement so that each bunker could give
supporting fire to the others in case of attack (C.G.
Dixon and O. Heilbrunn, op. cit., p. 76). See also
J. Armstrong, op. cit., pp. 159–160, for a detailed
German account of the construction and planning of
Ukrainian partisan camps. Although unusual, the
Bielski Nalibocki camp was not unique. Other compar-
able ‘guerilla towns’ existed in the forest. A detailed
description of one such ‘town’ that proudly lists its
workplaces and amenities, and gloats on the extent
to which the success of its operations relied on
equipment and clothing stolen from the Germans,
also outlines its role in receiving and transmitting
news for the local population (B. Yampolsky, ‘The
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Guerillas Daily Round’, in Ponomarenko and others,
op. cit., p. 44).
33. J. Kagan, personal interview, op. cit., 2004.
34. P. Duffy, op. cit., p. 221.
35. Report in Central National Archives (Partisan section),
Minsk, as translated in D. Cohen and J. Kagan,
op. cit., pp. 192–194.
36. B.-C. Pinchuk, Shtetl Jews under Soviet Rule
(Cambridge, Mass., Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1990), p. 16.
37. S. Amarant, op. cit. At the Nalibocki camp, Dr Shmuel
Amarant became the Bielski group’s official historian
(N. Tec, 1993, op. cit., p. 195).
38. S. Amarant, ibid.
39. S. Amarant, ibid.
40. A smithy, along with workshops for gun repair, tailor-
ing, and shoe repair, had been set up in earlier camps
(N. Tec, 1993, op. cit., p. 146).
41. While sources differ to a degree on how strictly
‘Jewishness’ was suppressed, especially during the
last months of the war, they agree that any explicit
expression of Zionism was outlawed and that Jewish
cultural life, although not absent, was reduced to a
barely articulated minimum. In contrast, a ‘Jewish’
unit was expected to celebrate the main Soviet festivals
of 1st May, 23rd February, Red Army day, and 8th
November, the Anniversary of the October Revolution
(Jack Kagan, personal interview, op. cit., 2004). See
also T. Bielski and others, op. cit.
42. P. Duffy, op. cit., p. 121.
43. Jack Kagan, personal interview, op. cit., 2006.
44. See for example: Enoch, passim, chapter 14; IV Ezra,
chapters 7,10,14; Sirach, chapter 24.
45. P. Levi, trs., W. Weaver, If not now, when?
(London, Penguin Books, 2000). Originally
published as Se non Ora, Quando? (Giulio Einaudi
Editore, s.P.a., Turin, 1982), p. 118. Levi’s moving fic-
tional account of Jewish partisan life in an Eastern
European forest was based on extensive library
research and the interviews he conducted with
Jewish partisans who passed though Turin at the end
of the war.
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56
Invisible city: a
Jerusalem in the forest?
Mary Ann Steane
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