Saviours , or murderers of women and children ? Gazeta reporters discover who really killed 128 Poles in the village of Naliboki during WWII . Following his appearance as Agent 007 , Daniel Craig plays a partisan - a Polish Jew from the Kresy . Defiance , a Hollywood superproduction , hits movie theatres in the US on 16 January , and a week later - cinemas in Europe , including Poland . The New York Times , which devoted half a column to the movie following its pre - premiere on New Year ' s Eve , praises Defiance . Daniel Craig is noble , brave , and shoots well . And his Tuvia Bielski is an authentic figure . For Jews - a hero equal to Oskar Schindler . For some on the Polish right - a murderer . Nasz Dziennik calls him a butcher and a slaughterer of Poles . ' This movie will trigger off a national debate comparable to those provoked by Jan Tomasz Gross ' s books , ' writes Tomasz Dostatni , a Dominican friar , on jewish . org . pl . Who is Tuvia Bielski ? He was born in 1906 in a small village near Nowogrodek ( today Navahrudak , Belarus ) as the son of a Jewish miller . He had a Polish passport , served briefly in the Polish army , spoke Polish and Yiddish . He was probably a smuggler , the Soviet border was just 50 kilometres away from his home village of Stankiewicze ( Stankievichy ) . Matched and wed for money to an unattractive merchant daughter , he became a respected textile trader in the town of Sobotniki ( today Subotniki ) . Following the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939 , he offered support to the new regime and began an official career . When Hitler invaded Russia two years later , Bielski avoid the ghetto by fleeing to the forest . Together with his three brothers ( and a new wife ) they set up a partisan camp , in which some 1 , 000 Jews survived the war . Initially independent , Tuvia , Zus , Asael , and the teenage Aron from the winter of 1942 / 1943 were subordinated to Soviet command . Until the Polish government in exile remained Stalin ' s official ally , the Bielski brothers and the local Home Army fought together . After Katyn , in 1943 , a Polish - Soviet war broke out in the Nowogrodek area . The Bielski Jews took part in some of the over 100 documented clashes between Polish and Soviet forces - fighting on the Soviet side , of course . Tuvia personally fought against neither the Germans nor the Poles , but his people attacked Home Army units . The Bielski partisans participated , for instance , in the treacherous disarmament of Polish partisans by the Soviets on 1 December 1943 . What happened in Naliboki ? The most well - known crime that Soviet partisans committed in the Nowogrodek area was the murder of 128 inhabitants , including women and children , of the village of Naliboki , a settlement in the heart of the Naliboki Forest . In 1993 , a former Naliboki resident , Wacław Nowicki , published a book Żywe echa ( Living Echoes ) in which he attributed the massacre to the Bielski brothers . The accusation was then repeated by various Polish and Belarussian historians , such as Zygmunt Boradyn , author of the monograph Niemen - rzeka niezgody ( Neman - a River of Discord , Warsaw 1999 ) . In 2001 , the Canadian Polish Congress caused the National Remembrance Institute ( IPN ) to launch an inquiry against the partisans of the ' so called Tuvia Bielski brigade . ' The inquiry is pending . ' I can only say we ' ve taken testimonies from 80 witnesses of the massacre , a dozen of which recognised people of Jewish origin among the attackers , ' says IPN prosecutor Anna Gałkiewicz . ' Five witnesses testified those were members of the Bielski unit . No names have been offered . Neither Tuvia nor his brothers were seen among the attackers . ' Our InvestigationWe went to Belarus , found people who remember the Bielski brothers , as well as Soviet documents where partisan commanders describe the Naliboki massacre as a victorious battle against a ' German garrison . ' The archives contain the names of four officers awarded for the ' battle ' - comrades Gulevich , Muratov , Shashkin , and Surkyev . Pavel Gulevich is mentioned as the one who personally killed four ' fascist lackeys . ' We also found the last living members of the Bielski unit : they live in Belarus , the US , and Britain . Their accounts correspond with the contents of the Soviet archives - on the day of the pacification of Naliboki ( 8 May 1943 ) , the Bielski unit stationed 100 kilometres away . ' They were in the village of Stara Huta on that day , ' says historian Tamara Vyarshitska , director of the Navahrudak regional museum , which has the largest collection of documents pertaining to the Bielski unit . ' They moved to Naliboki Forest only several months later , which long - published accounts clearly say . ' We also visited Mr Nowicki , who lives in Warsaw . He received us in a room filled with old copies of Nasz Dziennik . Mr Nowicki admitted he had never seen any of the Bielski brothers , nor does he have any proof of their participation in the massacre , and that he learned about their role in it from a certain ' Lova from Nowogrodek , ' whose words were confirmed by one ' Vanya from Lubocz . ' Mr Nowicki called the results of the IPN inquiry ' pulling the wool over the public ' s eyes , ' and Defiance - an anti - Polish scandal . Bielski Brothers Hollywood - StyleDefiance indeed departs from the truth on several occasions . Not only because the Bielski partisans fight against German tanks , which in fact never happened . Worse that the pre - war Nowogrodek is a Belarussian town in the movie where no one speaks Polish , and Polish partisans are missing from the film altogether . In Naliboki Forest ( in reality the movie was shot on locations in Lithuania and Canada ) there are only good Soviet partisans and bad Germans . Daniel Craig speaks Russian , even though for the real Bielski it was a language as strange as German ( he spoke both only poorly ) . 출처 : http : / / olv . moazine . com / rviewer / index . asp 저작 자 표시