Aron (Bielski) Bell
Aron Bell (originally Bielski) was born on July 21, 1927 in Stankiewicze, Poland, a small rural village near the town of Nowogródek to Bella Mandelavich and David Bielski. He was the youngest of 12 children – 10 boys and 2 girls – and played a pivotal role as one of the four “Bielski Brothers,” the leaders of a legendary Polish Jewish partisan group. The Bielskis were the only Jewish family in Stankiewicze, where they lived on a farm and operated a mill, though several thousands Jews lived in nearby villages that were part of the same county.
Following the Nazi invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939, territory in the western region of modern-day Belarus was annexed to the Soviet Union as part of an alliance with Nazi Germany. When the Nazis broke their pact by invading Russia on June 22, 1941, they almost immediately began persecuting the Jewish population formerly under Russian and, before that, Polish rule.
In July, German killing squads committed the first of several mass killings of the area’s Jewish population. They forced the remaining Jews into a ghetto. On December 5, 1941, after Aron’s parents and two of his brothers, Yankel (Jacob) and Avraham, were murdered in one of these massacres, he, along with his brothers Tuvia, Asael, and Zusya, as well as a sister, Tiba, fled to the forest. The oldest Bielski brother, Walter (Velvel), and another brother, Nathan, had emigrated to the United States before the war, while their brother, Yehoshua, a rabbi, survived the war in Siberia. Their other sister, Estella, also survived the Holocaust but how and where she did so is unconfirmed.
The five Bielski siblings who made it to the forest initially sought safe houses for relatives left behind but in the spring of 1942, as the Germans began liquidating the ghetto, they expanded the group and decided to bring everyone to the Naliboki forest. Tuvia was the leader of the resistance group, and Asael his deputy, while Zus (Alexander Zeisel) was in charge of military operations. Not yet a teenager at the start of the war, Aron served as a courier, evading detection with his youth and agility. In addition to working as a guide and watchman, he gathered intelligence and regularly snuck in and out of the ghetto to help Jews escape to the forest. Towards the end of 1943, as their numbers grew and the situation became more precarious, the group moved to a more remote region of the forest where they set up their base. Among those with them in the forest were Lilka Tickten, who married Tuvia during that time, Sonia Boldo, who married Zus, Chaja Dzentziolsky, who married Asael, and Tiba’s husband Abraham.
While the Bielskis successfully thwarted the Nazis – blowing up rail beds, sabotaging facilities, and engaging in battles with German officers and their collaborators – they prioritized saving Jewish lives. Their forest encampment, which has been referred to as “Jerusalem in the Woods,” ultimately included more than 1200 Jews, the majority of them women, children and elderly people. It evolved into a functioning community, complete with workshops for cobblers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters and leather workers, as well as schools, medical care, a laundry, a soap factory, a bakery, and even occasional cultural events. The Bielski resistance is considered the largest rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust. It inspired the 1993 book Defiance, and the 2008 film of the same name, as well as a curriculum for students in Grades 6-12, Teaching with Defiance,
After the Red Army liberated the East Front where they were hiding, the partisans emerged from the forest. Aron emigrated to British-Mandate Palestine and eventually made his way to New York City after living in Canada for a few years. In New York, Aron was introduced to Judith Weinstock, a niece of his brother-in-law Manny Hirschthal, who had married his sister Estelle. Judy, as she was known, had fled with her family from Germany to France during the Holocaust, and then they managed to secure visas to the United States in the spring of 1941. Aron and Judy were married and made their home on the Upper West Side. Aron first went into the trucking business and then drove a taxi cab, eventually buying his own medallion.
Aron and Judy had three children, Brenda, Susan, and Alan, and 12 grandchildren, including Rena Allen, mother of Livya (Heschel 2033) and Golda Allen.
The last living member of the Bielski family, Aron lived with his second wife, Henryka, a fellow survivor from Poland, until his passing on Erev Rosh Hashanah September 22, 2025.
