December 29, 1890

[Straw Man]

29. History.

straw man: The material you quoted makes it clear that these women, elderly persons, and children would have likely perished if they hadn't been taken to the forest and supported by armed partisans.

You need read up on WWII history a lot more, you're not up to speed, and you overrate your sacred cows - firearms. Do you really, seriously think that 400 armed jews in the middle of the nazi wehrmacht stretched from leningrad to moscow to dnieprepetrovsk could've resisted?

I've read both Peter Duffy's book The Bielski Brothers and Nechama Tec's Defiance: The Bielski Partisans. You give me the results of a Google search and then lecture me on what I "need read up on"? Priceless. Absolutely priceless.

"Could have" resisted? They did resist. They engaged in partisan raids on German forces as well as raiding for food to support the people they had rescued from the ghetto.

It wasn't guns which saved those jews, it was the dense forests & swamps where panzers couldn't go, encompassing a fairly large area in western byelorussia which saved them, as well as the ability (+ other partisans) to blend in with the local populace, remaining & operating covertly, and yes integrating with much larger numbers of partisans making the nazis unable or unwanting to spend much needed crack troops to eradicate the partisan menace in the miserable pripyat swamps in byelorus.

"Without a rifle you are nothing, worthless, you are waiting for death, any minute, any second."
-- Aron Bielski

"My father sent my mother a revolver as a gift, which for her was the symbol of what any young girl wants in a marriage, this was for her the means to stay alive, to kill herself or to die fighting."
-- Assaela Bielski

I guess they were mistaken, huh? Poor deluded fools, thinking they needed those guns. If only they had had the benefit of your superior wisdom.

strawman:What's "specious" is your suggestion that somehow being unarmed enhanced one's likelihood of survival.

Not that I did in this case other than your usual twisting of what other people say, most all of ~1.5 million surviving russian jews indeed survived without being armed or fighting the nazis.

Not only did you do it, but in your attempt at a denial you did it again! Classic!