Aron Bell, the last living member of the Bielski partisans

We remember Aron Bell, the last living member of the Bielski partisans, led by his three brothers—one of the most successful rescue operations during the Holocaust.

Aron was born in Stankiewicze, present-day Belarus. In 1941, when Aron was 11, Nazis occupied his village and terrorized his family, badly beating his father and targeting his older brothers Tuvia, Asael, and Zisl. By that October, two of his brothers fled to the woods, helping relatives from nearby ghettos to escape and join them. The community in the woods grew quickly: nearly 50 people by the summer of 1942, and in 1943, 700 people formed what Aron compared to a“little town” with many moving parts.

Aron and the partisan group were liberated by the Russian army in 1944. Still a child, he found various jobs in Europe, moved to Israel and joined the army, and eventually settled in the U.S. with the rest of his surviving family.

Aron’s testimony was taken in 1996 and in 2019, he returned to Belarus to give his testimony as a part of the 360 Testimony on Location project, which recorded survivors at the physical locations of their wartime experiences.

May his memory be a blessing.