by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Features Editor

December 11, 2008

When Anne Monka was able to take in how many fellow Bielski partisans had made it to an exclusive sneak preview of the new film Defiance at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan last month, one of her reactions was “kena hora.”

An audience of more than 375 attended the event for survivors and their families to see the movie, which stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell as the Bielski brothers, a trio of underground Jewish resistance fighters in Belarus during World War II.

The day-long proceedings took on a reunion-like atmosphere, said Monka. “It was a very, very moving day,” she told NJ Jewish News in a telephone interview from her home in Montville.

Although she was not consulted for the making of the film, Monka had been interviewed for Nechama Tec’s 1994 book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, on which the “docudrama” is based.

“Originally, when we were interviewed for the book,” she said, “we were all under the impression that it would be made into a movie.”

Craig, she said, “was a perfect copy of Tuvia Bielski from the days I remember him as a young man,” said Monka. She assessed Defiance as “accurate,” but not long enough, which is, of course, often a problem when trying to condense such historic events that took place over a long time into a feature film. Overall, however, said Monka, “satisfied is not enough to say. Just the fact that we were there, that we lived to see such a moment that the Belskis brothers are finally recognized as heroes.

“Let’s face it, if not for their heroism, I wouldn’t be here to talk to you.”

Monka was 10 years old in 1939, the year the War broke out in Europe. In 1941, she and her family were confined in the Lida Ghetto, where she remained until 1943. When the Nazis rounded up the Jews for transport to the Majdanek concentration camp, she and her mother hid in an attic to avoid detection; her father, brother, and sister were captured but managed to escape by jumping off the train that was taking them to their doom.

Monka and her mother made their way out of town and eventually found the Bielski partisans. They spent the next two years living with other refugees. The brothers — Tuvia, Zus, and Asael — “built an entire city in the woods,” she told the British Jewish Telegram in an article published in May 2008, shortly after she learned about the movie. “They baked bread, had skilled people to fix things, and had their own synagogue.”

Monka was accompanied to the screening by a dozen members of her family, including her grandson, Ariel Lippa, who was told about the production from a friend in England in May.

“Telling my grandmother about the film was a true honor,” Lippa wrote in an e-mail to NJJN. “Finally, her story — and the story of the Bielski partisans — will be told to the world.”

Lippa, a United Synagogue Youth adviser at the Pine Brook Jewish Center, a Hebrew tutor, and a graduate student at William Paterson University, called the movie “incredible” and a “truly moving and emotional experience,” with residual effects: “This has only made my identity as a Jew stronger, and I have an obligation to live up to the phrase ‘Never Again!’

“Witnessing the survivors and their families pack a theater to watch a film about their own survival was an experience I will never forget,” Lippa said. “Movies like Defiance show the evolution of Judaism toward Zionism and auto-emancipation; I could not be more proud of where I come from.”

Lippa also praised director Edward Zwick for his attention to detail in the film. “I think he captured it and truly showed the daily struggle of living in the woods during the Holocaust.”

Monka told NJJN she had only one complaint.

“This should have been recognized many, many years ago, when Tuvia Bielski was still alive,” she said. “But better late than never.”

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