Jews Without Yellow Stars: Yiddish stories of Jewish partisan fighters in Nazi-occupied Belarus bilingual edition by Hersh Smolar

Bilingual English/Yiddish text

Translated by Ruth Murphy

They were soldiers by circumstance, not by choice. Heroes by necessity, with nothing left to lose, Jewish resistance fighters fought back against the Nazis from strongholds deep in the primevals forests of World War II Belorussia. Among the most ferocious fighters were Jewish female partisans who had lost their children at the hands of the Germans.
Hersh Smolar — a Polish Jew, prolific writer, and ardent activist — was front and center in the Jewish resistance. His short vignettes of partisan life in the Naliboki forest chronicle the quiet, relentless pursuit of the enemy and the ongoing efforts to liberate Jews from the Minsk ghetto.

Ruth Murphy’s translation of Smolar’s Yiddish work gives us an intimate view of ordinary people forced into extraordinary circumstances; people who embarked on unimaginable missions to avenge the brutal murders of their friends, family, and way of life. These are battle reports delivered at a personal level, fraught with anger, heartache, and determination.