Faye Schulman, born on this day in 1919, was a Jewish partisan and photographer who took up arms against the Nazis who were responsible for killing her family.

On August 14th, 1942, the Germans killed 1,850 Jews from the “Lenin” ghetto (named after Lenin, Poland, where Faye was from), including her parents, sisters, and younger brother. Faye was spared for her ability to develop photographs, and the Nazis ordered Faye to develop their photographs of the massacre. Later, she cited taking a photo of her dead family in a mass grave as the impetus to take up arms.

During a partisan raid on the camp, Faye fled to the forests and joined the Molotava Brigade, a partisan group mostly comprised of escaped Soviet Red Army POWs. She was accepted because her brother-in-law had been a doctor and they were desperate for anyone who knew anything about medicine. Faye served the group as a nurse from September 1942 to July 1944, even though she had no previous medical experience.

During another raid on the Lenin ghetto, Faye succeeded in recovering her old photographic equipment. During the next two years, she took over a hundred photographs, developing the medium format negatives under blankets and making “sun prints” during the day. While on missions, Faye buried the camera and tripod to keep it safe. Schulman is the only known Jewish partisan photographer from this era.

“I want people to know that there was resistance. Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”

  • Faye Schulman

After liberation, Faye married Morris Schulman, also a Jewish partisan. Faye and Morris enjoyed a prosperous life as decorated Soviet partisans, but wanted to leave Pinsk, Poland, which reminded them of “a graveyard.” Morris and Faye lived in the Landsberg displaced persons camp in Germany for the next three years and immigrated to Canada in 1948.

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  • Azarova [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    24 days ago

    I’m trying to find a quote that I’ve seen posted around here a few times, but I can only very vaguely remember it. I believe it’s by Marx, but I’m not sure. The gist was something like the ruling class of an era must thoroughly debase themselves before exiting history or that it becomes increasingly depraved as its historical moment comes to a close, or something like that? It’s driving me nuts that I can’t find it and I’m beginning to think I imagined it.

    • Kolibri [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      24 days ago

      Not exactly Marx but that sounds a lot like this one from Aimé Césaire?

      Because, after all, we must resign ourselves to the inevitable and say to ourselves, once and for all, that the bourgeoisie is condemned to become every day more snarling, more openly ferocious, more shameless, more summarily barbarous; that it is an implacable law that every decadent class finds itself turned into a receptacle into which there flow all the dirty waters of history; that it is a universal law that, before it disappears, every class must first disgrace itself completely, on all fronts, and that it is with their heads buried in the dunghill that dying societies utter their swan songs.