The story of how 1,000 fugitive Jews dwelt for two years in a well-established forest community in the Baranovici district of Byelorussia, in the heart of German-held territory, was told today by Henach Levin, a 13-year-old Jewish partisan who frequently visited the camp.
The residents of the settlement had fled from ghettos, labor camps, and concentration camps in the cities of Mir, Rakov, Slonim, Baranovici and the surrounding hamlets. Among them were 90 Jews who had escaped from a camp at Kildychev by an underground tunnel which they had dug secretly over a period of three months.
The first community, which was under the protection of neighboring partisan bands, provided the guerrillas with shoes, caps, clothes and other articles which were manufactured in shops established by the refugees. Articles not required by the partisans were given to local farmers in return for food.
When the Red Army liberated the Baranovici district last month the settlement was liquidated and its residents, all of whom were safe and sound despite two years of hardship, returned to their home towns to begin the task of rebuilding their homes and factories.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
