Nechama Tec Livres

A Jew passing as a Christian in occupied Poland during WWII, Oswald Rufeisen worked as translator and personal secretary to a Nazi commander of the German police, repeatedly risking his life to save hundreds from the Nazis. A relatively unknown Jewish hero and rescuer at the magnitude of Oskar Schindler, Rufeisen's life and role during the Holocaust is perhaps even more riveting and complex than the man memorialized by Stephen Spielberg in Schindler's List.

A story of a young Jewish girl's coming-of-age during the tragic years of the Holocaust.

In this careful study of Jewish and non-Jewish resistance during World War II, Holocaust scholar Tec Nechama argues that Jews were not passive or submissive in the face of German oppression, but that their efforts had different aims and expressions than those of their non-Jewish counterparts.

The prevailing image of European Jews during the Holocaust is one of helpless victims, but in fact many Jews struggled against the terrors of the Third Reich. Here, Nechama Tec offers a history of one such group, a forest community in western Belorussia that would number more than 1,200 Jews by 1944--the largest armed rescue operation of Jews by Jews in World War II. She reconstructs for the first time the amazing details of how these partisans and their families--hungry, exposed to the harsh winter weather--managed not only to survive, but to offer protection to all Jewish fugitives who could find their way to them. Arguing that this success would have been unthinkable without the vision of one man, Tec offers penetrating insight into the group's commander, Tuvia Bielski. Herself a Holocaust survivor, Tec draws on wide-ranging research and never-before-published interviews with surviving partisans to reconstruct the story of those who chose to fight.--From publisher description

In this, Nechama Tec’s fifth book on the Holocaust, vivid individual stories blend effortlessly with detailed comparisons of wartime experiences of women and men. The result is a captivating account of how the coping strategies and the ultimate fate of each sex differed. Tec, as always, listens to the voices of the oppressed, voices that originated in wartime diaries, postwar memoirs, archival materials, and her own interviews with survivors and rescuers. Concentrating on life under extreme conditions, Tec’s research uncovers the previously overlooked significance of mutual cooperation and compassion that operated across gender lines.

„Dlaczego Żydzi nie uderzyli w prześladowców? Dlaczego Żydzi poddawali się biernie szarganiu godności i odbieraniu im życia przez Niemców? Dlaczego Żydzi nie chwycili za broń?” W podtekście tych pytań tkwi obiegowe przeświadczenie, że Żydzi szli na pewną śmierć jak owce na rzeź. Lecz tematem tej książki nie jest kolaboracja, ani podporządkowanie się okupantowi, tylko opór. Nechama Tec – autorka słynnej książki o partyzanckim oddziale braci Bielskich – w swojej najnowszej pracy podważa rzadko kwestionowany mit o bierności Żydów poprzez dogłębną analizę faktów i źródeł historycznych dotyczących żydowskiego i nieżydowskiego ruchu oporu na terenie Polski i Europy Wschodniej. Urodzona w Lublinie w 1931 roku autorka, skupiając swoją uwagę na wspólnych (także polsko-żydowskich) działaniach przeciw terrorowi nazistów, odsłania przed czytelnikiem mało znaną do tej pory stronę II wojny światowej.

Nechama Tec schildert die Geschichte der Bielski- Partisanen, der größten bewaffneten jüdischen Armee zur Rettung von Juden. Erstmals wird in allen Einzelheiten gezeigt, daß in den Wäldern Weißrußlands Partisanen lebten, die den deutschen Besatzern erbitterten Widerstand leisteten.