Faye Schulman (then known as Faigel Lazebnik) in the forest near Lenin, Poland. "This photo is really part of my history as a partisan. This is my 'new' automatic rifle…. I really had to practice how to shoot this one." 1943. Courtesy Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation

More on Faye Schulman below, but first, a few thoughts on writing a weekly newsletter for ten years.

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Faye Schulman was 14-years-old when the Nazi's invaded Poland, where she lived in the town of Lenin (named for Lena, the daughter of a local aristocrat, not the Bolshevik revolutionary). 

Hitler and Stalin had signed a secret pack in August 1939, dividing Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe between them. Though the village of Lenin became Russian territory, less than two years later, the Nazis arrived and rounded up the town's Jews.

 Fourteen-year-old Faye Schulman, (Faigel Lazebnik) before the Russians came to her town. There are conflicting accounts of Faigel's birth date, which vary from 1919 to 1925. 

The Nazis kept meticulous records helping them identify Faye as someone useful to them. Her parents, her sister Sonia and her husband and her two children, her sister Esther and her two younger brothers were sent to the Lenin ghetto.

One of Faye's older brothers who'd fled town, Moishe, had been a photographer and took her on as an apprentice when she was ten. At sixteen, she took over his studio. Due to her photograph skill, Faye became one of a handful of Lenin Jews, including a carpenter, shoemaker and tailor, put to work by the Nazis.

Faye's job was to take pictures for the German officers, their mistresses, and to develop film they delivered to her. One day she developed a photo of Jewish bodies being shot in trenches. She recognized her family. In August 1942, the Nazi's had shot everyone in the Jewish ghetto, 1850 people, nearly the entire Jewish population of Lenin.

“I just was crying,” she told the Memory Project, a Canadian historic preservation program. “And I — I lost my family. I’m alone. I’m a young girl. What shall I do now? Where shall I go? What shall I do?”

"When I developed the film, I made the positives, and I made a few copies for myself and that's how I saved the real pictures where my family [was] killed in our town."

Faye hid the photo and vowed vengeance. When partisans came out of the forest raiding Lenin for supplies, took the opportunity to escape.

Faye Schulman third from the right with her Red Cross box behind her head. Ivan Vasilewich, the Molotova Brigade’s doctor, a veterinarian, center with hands crossed in front, 1942.

 Courtesy Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation

The Molotova Brigade, a group of escaped Soviet Red Army POWs didn't welcome women, though many women and children hid out in the forests of Eastern Europe trying to survive the Nazi occupation. I wrote about one family last year.

It's been estimated only about 5% of partisans during WWII were women. Faye convinced the clandestine guerilla fighters to take her on, saying she could help nurse the sick and wounded. She received more medical training from the brigade's doctor, a veterinarian.  

"I am here one girl and all boys," Faye said later. "So, you can imagine that some time was a little bit hard because there was nobody with me. Only all boys, all men." 

Medical supplies were scarce, bandages washed and reused if possible. Many resistance fighters died from infection and lice-borne disease.

Faye tending to a wounded member of their group in the forest.

Photo Courtesy Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation

Faye's resistance group raided her own village several times to restock food, medicine and weapons. During one such raid, she retrieved her camera and photography supplies and became the only known Jewish partisan photographer to capture life in the forest. 

Photographs of wartime resistance fighters are rare, most taken after Germany surrendered.

Faye's brother Kopel Lazebnik, third from left, brought food to a Jewish civilian camp. 

Courtesy Faye Schulman, via Second Story Press

Resistance was a harsh and perilous existence. 

“We faced hunger and cold; we faced the constant threat of death and torture; added to this we faced anti-Semitism in our own ranks,” Faye wrote in her memoir. “Against all odds we struggled.”

Faye's family had been Orthodox Jews, but she hid her identity, not explaining why she ate only potatoes during Passover. Shortly after joining the Russian partisan group, Faye unexpectedly met some boys she had known in Lenin.

Date: Winter 1944 | Source: JPEF / A Partisan's Memoir

"These boys escaped the Nazi-occupied half of Poland and came to Lenin in 1939…. I was happy to meet three Jewish boys together. In my brigade, I couldn't even say I was Jewish…. So, when I saw boys I knew, I was very happy not to hide anything." 

The Russian partisans had been soldiers, so they were a highly organized fighting force and trained Faye to shoot a rifle. They blew up bridges and wrecked whatever havoc they could under cover of night to harass Nazi forces. 

"When it was time to be hugging a boyfriend," Faye said. "I was hugging a rifle.

For two years, Faye documented their activities along the Russian-Polish border determined that she and her photographs would survive. 

"I want people to know that there was resistance," Faye said. "Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. Many fought back – if there was the slightest opportunity – and thousands lost their lives fighting the enemy and working to save lives. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof."

In this video, Faye talks about protecting her camera during the years she spent with the resistance fighters.

Courtesy Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation

When Faye joined the partisans, she said the grass became her bed, the sky her roof and the trees her walls. Later during a raid on her village, she demonstrated her pre-war life was gone, telling the partisans to destroy her family's home.

"I won't be living here. The family's killed. To leave it for the enemy? I said right away: Burn it!"

Some 25,000 Jewish partisans and up to 200,000 non-Jewish partisans resisted the Nazis. Jewish partisans fought across most of Europe. 

In 1944, Faye reunited with her two older brothers who had also survived the way. She married Morris Schulman, an accountant whom she had known before the war. They lived several years in a displaced persons camp in Germany, then immigrated to Canada where she had two children, six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren She died in 2021, at age 101.

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Booklist starred Review:​

"Smooth, engaging writing nimbly...putting readers directly in the action beside Leroy.... Farrell blends Leroy’s experiences and achievements in Vietnam with historic details, information on combat action and shifting attitudes toward this war, and fascinating insights into the world of freelance news photography.
 

Faye Schulman was an ordinary teenager when the Nazis invaded her town on the Russian-Polish border. She had a large, loving family, good friends and neighbors, most of whom were lost soon after the horrors of the Holocaust began. But Faye survived, and the photographs she took testify to her experiences and the persecution she witnessed.
 

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