A place for families of Jewish partisans from World War II to connect and share their stories.
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Boris Jochai


Boris Jochai was born in early 1922 in the small village of Swencian, Poland. He lived with his parents, Chaim and Chasia, and his younger siblings, Lova, Dudke, and Pesia. A third of Swencian’s population was Jewish, and it was a vibrant, interconnected community. Boris’ father was a tanner...

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Community Stories

Sonia Orbuch


In 1941, the small Polish town of Luboml fell under German occupation following Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union. Among the 8,000...

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Essie Shor


Essie Shor, born Esia Levine, was taken on December 3rd, 1925, in the Polish town of Novogrudok (now northeast Belarus). She lived...

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Rita Gurwitz Yelgin


Rita Gurwitz Yelgin was born on June 21, 1921, in Slonim, Lithuania, and grew up in Grodno, Poland. She lived with her...

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David Elazar


David Elazar was born on September 16, 1919, in Kosovska Mitrovica, then part of Yugoslavia. David had eight siblings, Moshe, Nissim, Yaakov,...

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Mira Shelub (Raznov)


A Polish Jew born in what is now White Russia, Mira Shelub joined a partisan group that operated in the forest near...

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The biographies on this site are compiled from testimonies, recollections, transcripts, memoirs, and biographies of Jewish partisans, their children and their grandchildren.