Jewish partisans

The Jewish partisans are a clandestine armed resistance group operating in the forests of Eastern Europe during World War II, who infiltrate the Kovno Ghetto to offer escape to its Jewish inhabitants. Led by a young man named Benno, they represent a stark alternative to the ghetto's passive endurance, embodying both the possibility of freedom and the moral complexities of survival. Their presence in the novel forces a generational and ideological confrontation within the ghetto council, ultimately enabling the escape of hundreds of people while exposing the limits of both prayer and authority.

Identity and Background

The partisans are first encountered through the eyes of Yehoshua, a young boy who serves as a runner for the Kovno Ghetto Council. They arrive in the ghetto as a delegation of three—two men and a woman—emerging from a trapdoor in a storage cabin used for paint supplies, sand bins, and carpentry tools, located less than a block from the ghetto's perimeter. Their entrance is described as being like a birth, with first the head, then the shoulders rising from the darkness, followed by the rifle. The three are children in Yehoshua's perception, the men no more than twenty or twenty-one years old, with dark beards and thick black hair. The leader, Benno, wears round-rimmed glasses that give him an incongruously scholarly, yeshiva bocher's appearance, while his companion has a broad Slavic face and wide shoulders, the sort of oaf Yehoshua would have avoided at school. The woman is a slight, slim creature with eyes past all grief, whose hardened mien momentarily betrays a sisterly compassion when she catches sight of the boy. Their faces and hands are blackened with dirt, and their rifles are identical to those carried by the German guards on the bridge—a detail that thrills Yehoshua because each rifle must have been taken from a German. They are known to no one in the ghetto except Dr. Koenig, whose pre-war medical practice had taken him throughout the district and who may have delivered at least one of them, possibly Benno himself, whom he greets by grasping his shoulders and whispering, "Look, how strong!"

Aims and Methods

The partisans' purpose is announced by Benno in a hushed, fluent Yiddish that sounds to Yehoshua like a brook running over rocks. The Russian army is within a hundred twenty miles, Benno tells the assembled council members, and as the front moves west, the ghetto will be dismantled and its inhabitants with it. "You will dig the graves you will lie in," he warns. The partisans propose to take people out of the ghetto, as many as want to come, moving thirty or forty a night. Their organization consists of three partisan units—one Jewish, two Russian—holding militarily secure areas behind German lines. Benno's own group comprises a hundred and fifty armed Jewish men and women plus another two hundred people whom they care for. Their methods are ruthless and effective. They camp in the forests, requisitioning livestock and produce from farms for food. In villages with German garrisons, they attack and destroy the garrisons, then pay the tradesmen for sugar, flour, and other necessities from the German cashboxes. They move freely about the countryside because of a reputation earned through revenge: they execute those who report them to the Germans and burn down their homes and barns, so that such betrayals no longer occur. Their attack squads perform acts of sabotage, blowing up railroad tracks and cutting phone lines, then ambush the military who come out to undo the damage.

The Meeting with the Council

The clandestine meeting takes place in the early morning stillness, after Yehoshua has nodded off several times, when the signal comes—soft taps, once, then again. A desk is moved aside and the three partisans rise from the trapdoor, bringing with them the cold and darkness they have come from. They wave off any assistance, hoisting themselves into sitting position on the floor before standing to face the room. The other two take positions by the windows, peeking through the drawn sack curtains before turning back. Benno sits on a table, holding his rifle loosely across his knees, and addresses the council in his hushed Yiddish. Present are Dr. Koenig, the community leader; Rabbi Pomeranz, a very thin, slight, middle-aged man in an old battered homburg with a white beard, who sits against the wall holding a closed siddur with his finger keeping the place, silently davening while attending to the matters at hand; and a third council member. The exchange is tense and philosophical. When Dr. Koenig suggests the Germans are already trying to destroy evidence of their murders because they fear criminal prosecution after the war, Benno dismisses this as self-delusion: "If they don't slaughter you here, they will move you somewhere else and slaughter you." Rabbi Pomeranz raises the German policy regarding escape—people were executed who were caught trying. Benno's reply is pointed: "Well, Rabbi, look at me, we're here talking to you, aren't we? Do you suppose we just might know what we're doing?" When the rabbi worries about the coming winter and whether older people could endure living in the open, Benno answers with a stark moral clarity: "If they can't, they will at least die free." Dr. Koenig voices concern about retaliation against those who remain—once the Germans begin to miss their workers, they will take hostages and execute them. The partisans' position is uncompromising: people must choose for themselves, and if the council imposes its authority in this matter, "you are as bad as the Nazis."

The Escape and Its Aftermath

Before departing, Benno takes Dr. Koenig aside to instruct him on how to make further contact, then addresses Rabbi Pomeranz with a final barb: "Since your prayers are so effective and have already done so much good, you, I expect, will choose to remain and pray to the Lord your God to save your people." The rabbi's response, spoken to no one in particular as he sets his battered homburg firmly on his head, is a quiet theological defiance: "That's not why I pray to the Lord, blessed be His name. I pray to bring Him into being." Once the council meets in full, it decides it has no choice but to inform people there is now a means of escape. The news is disseminated in the most painstaking, secure manner, not only because of the obvious danger from the Germans but because of the spies the Germans have installed among the ghetto's population—pretend Jews, or simple betrayers, as some of the ghetto police have become. The procedure proceeds one by one, beginning with people the council members know personally. Yehoshua receives a new assignment as the star runner in his garrison cap, finding the selected people at the hours they are available and summoning them in secrecy to the council offices. The partisans have very easily infiltrated the city, and the underground railroad proves surprisingly effective. Yehoshua is not sure how it was done, what the actual means of escape was—perhaps it changed from night to night. He thinks as many as two hundred fifty people got out before it all ended. The council gives priority to those most fit to endure the difficulties of living in the open, and when people leave, their registration and work cards are bestowed upon people of the same age and gender who don't have them, in the hope of keeping the Germans from realizing the numbers are decreasing.

Narrative Role and Significance

The partisans function in the novel as a counterpoint to the ghetto's institutional leadership and its religious response to catastrophe. They are the embodiment of active resistance against the Nazis, in stark contrast to the council's bureaucratic endurance and Rabbi Pomeranz's prayerful waiting. Their presence forces a generational confrontation—the young, armed, and free against the old, captive, and cautious. The woman partisan's momentary compassion for Yehoshua, a betrayal of her hardened mien, reveals the human cost beneath the revolutionary exterior. The partisans' methods, including their brutal revenge against informers, raise uncomfortable questions about the morality of survival and the price of freedom. Their promise that people will "at least die free" stands as a rebuke to the ghetto's passive hope. The escape they enable, involving as many as two hundred fifty people, is a rare instance of successful resistance in a narrative otherwise dominated by destruction and loss. The partisans also connect to the novel's broader themes of testimony and memory: the escapees carry with them the knowledge of the ghetto, and the survival of figures like Yehoshua—who later becomes Sarah's father—ensures that the story of the partisans and the escape is preserved for future generations. Their infiltration of the city and the ghetto demonstrates that even in the most closed and desperate circumstances, agency and resistance remain possible.