James,
Your mention of Zus Bielski’s birthday and the film Defiance.
It includes interviews with many partisans among them Aron Bielski, the youngest of the brothers (still living). After more than half a century since the holocaust, the myth still persists that all of the Jews just walked peacefully to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. Nothing could be further from the truth! More than 20,000 Jews fought the Nazis as partisans. In this group memoir, eleven men and women, now in their 70s and 80s, recount their battle against the Nazis in Poland, Lithuania, and Belorussia from 1941 to 1945. They chronicle their battle for survival, the almost insolvable dilemmas facing Jewish partisans (provisions, weapons, and prejudice) and the emotional aftermath of war. This is among the best documentaries of their story that I have seen. – Dollardog