During his life and now in death, Tuvia Bielski was many things to many people: a courageous and resourceful leader who helped save more than 1,200 Jews from falling into the hands of the Nazis; a humble man whose monumental achievements have inspired at least two books and the new feature film "Defiance," starring Daniel Craig.
But for many years, Sharon Rennert knew Bielski by a simple, affectionate moniker: "grandfather."
"On a person-to-person level, he was just a very loving, emotional man," says Rennert, 43, a television editor in Los Angeles who is making a documentary film about her grandfather, the remarkable survival mission he engineered and its enduring effect on her family and the families of those whom Bielski and his brothers spared from almost certain annihilation.
Relatives recall that Bielski used to say, "I'll be famous when I'm dead." His words were prophetic. Since he passed away in 1987, his story has spread around the world. Underscoring the growing interest, last year the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg opened an exhibition, "Courage and Compassion: The Legacy of the Bielski Brothers," that will continue showing through February.
That process surely will accelerate with this month's nationwide release of director Ed Zwick's "Defiance," starring Craig, the latest James Bond, as Tuvia, and Liev Schreiber as his pugnacious brother Zus.
For Rennert, researching and recounting the story of her grandfather's extraordinary deeds have taken her on a 20-year odyssey into her family's history and to the heart of her Jewish American identity.
While growing up in western New York, Rennert was largely unaware of how Tuvia, Zus and their brother Asael rescued about 1,200 Jews by hiding them in the thick Belorussian woods for 3 1/2 years.
As depicted in "Defiance," the Bielski siblings persevered through a combination of intelligence, cunning, bravery and a capacity to endure extreme physical and emotional hardships. Refusing to be cowed by the invading Germans, they launched guerrilla attacks and bloody reprisals against the enemy and its collaborators.
"I knew he had done something amazing, but as a young child I don't think I appreciated it, and I regret that," Rennert says. "I grew up taking my Jewish identity for granted."
Rennert knew her grandfather mainly as a gentle, modest figure who drove a taxi, spoiled her and her brother with candy, listened enthusiastically as she hammered away at the piano and beamed with misty-eyed pride when she received her Boston University diploma.
It wasn't until she read his obituary that Rennert fully appreciated the magnitude of his accomplishments. She then spent three years living with Tuvia's widow, Lilka, in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, N.Y. "I had just finished college, and I was trying to figure out what to do with my life."
Rennert began questioning her grandmother about the adventures of the couple, who married in the woods during World War II. At first, her grandmother was reluctant to discuss the past. "It was like pulling teeth the whole time," Rennert says. But gradually Lilka began to open up and, over the years, allow Rennert to start filming the interviews. Their conversations continued until Lilka's sudden death in the fall of 2001.
A family remembers
That footage helped form the foundation for Rennert's documentary, titled "In Our Hands," a phrase that Rennert explains has a double meaning. "They took their destiny in their hands during the war. But then I feel like it's also in the hands of the future generation to keep telling the stories."
Rennert, who has her grandfather's blue eyes, is putting the documentary together in her Santa Monica apartment. A black-and-white photo of Tuvia looks down benevolently from the wall above her editing equipment. Behind Rennert's desk there's a "Defiance" poster showing a wary-looking Craig holding a machine gun.
Rennert already has seen "Defiance" five times and plans to attend a screening in New York next week. The first time she saw it, she says, "I couldn't speak for, like, four days afterward. I had to process it. It's so overwhelming, but a good overwhelming.
"I think [Zwick] did a beautiful job."
Gradually, Rennert has been fleshing out her documentary with archival footage and other material.
She interviewed many relatives, including her mother, Ruth Bielski Ehrreich, as well as some of the surviving partisans who lived with the Bielskis in the woods. She thinks she'll need to raise about $30,000 to finish her documentary, which she hopes to wrap up later this year.
Ehrreich remembers hearing her parents' stories as a child and the survivors who would visit the family's homes, first in Israel, then in Brooklyn, to play cards, drink vodka and reminisce. The release of "Defiance," and seeing the recent flurry of world attention paid to her family's story, has been an emotionally intense experience, Ehrreich says.
