An Evening with Zvi Bielski, October 27, 2009

Zvi Bielski speaks at USC about his father and the story of the Bielski Partisans.

The audience included students and their family members, USC staff, Holocaust survivors, and other members of the local community.

The Institute showed clips of testimony in which Holocaust survivors recalled their experiences as Bielski Partisans.

The audience took a moment to acknowledge Renée Firestone and other Holocaust survivors who attended the event.

Zvi Bielski (center) posing with Chabad representatives and Sonya Sharp from the Institute (first from the left).

On October 27, 2009, Chabad@USC sponsored an evening with Zvi Bielski, son of the late Zus Bielski who, along with his brothers, led the largest Jewish resistance and rescue effort during World War II. Zvi spoke with students about the true events behind the 2008 film Defiance, which told the story of the Partisans and how they came to rescue more than 1,200 Jewish people by escaping to the deep forest in German-occupied Poland (now Belarus). The USC Shoah Foundation Institute archive is rich with the firsthand stories of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, including almost 90 testimonies of members of the Bielski Partisans. At the event, the Institute presented a series of clips from the testimony of some of the Bielski Partisans, as they recalled their own experiences of survival.

Album posted on: December 16, 2009