Tuvia Bielski Tuvia Bielski ( May 8 , 1906 – June 12 , 1987 ) was the leader of the partisan group the Bielski partisans who were situated in the Naliboki forest in pre - war Poland ( now Western Belarus ) during World War II . Biography . Tuvia grew up in the only Polish Jewish family in Stankiewicze , a small village in Eastern Poland ( now Western Belarus ) located between towns of Lida and Navahrudak ( both housed Jewish ghettoes during World War II ) . He was the son of David and Beila Bielski , who had twelve children : ten boys and two girls . Tuvia was the third eldest . His brothers Asael , Alexander ( ' Zus ' ) and Aron were later to become members of his partisan group . During the First World War , Bielski served as an interpreter for the Imperial German Army , which were occupying the western territories of the Russian Empire . Already a speaker of Yiddish , he learned to speak the German language from these men and remembered it all his life . In 1927 , he was recruited into the Polish Army , where he eventually became a corporal in the 30th Infantry Battalion . After his military service was over , Tuvia returned home . In an effort to add to his family ' s income , Tuvia rented another mill . This was still inadequate , so in 1929 , at the age of twenty - three , he married an older woman named Rifka who owned a general store and a large house . The couple lived in the nearby small town of Subotniki . They were conducting retail business in the store . During the Soviet occupation in 1939 , Tuvia feared that he would be arrested by the NKVD due to his " bourgeois capitalist " occupation , so he moved to Lida . Before Tuvia left Subotniki he urged his wife , Rifka , to join him in the move to Lida . She refused . In Lida , under Soviet control , Tuvia met and fell in love with another woman named Sonia . The love affair became serious . In late 1939 , Tuvia divorced his wife , Rifka . He married Sonia , though they were not " officially " married due to wartime conditions . World War II . When Operation Barbarossa broke out , Tuvia , Zus , and Asael were called up by their army units to fight against the Nazi German occupiers . Tuvia recalls : " Suddenly about fifty planes ( " Luftwaffe " ) flew over the town dropping incendiary bombs . In a very few minutes the entire place was on fire . The commander called us in , ordered us to leave the burning town and regroup in a forest about five kilometers from there . We were to continue working . We carried out his command but soon after we began our job in the forest another wave of planes flew over the area and set the woods on fire . The commander called us in and said : ' Friends , you are on your own ! ' " After the units disbanded , the Bielski brothers fled to Stankiewicze , where their parents lived . In early July 1941 , a German army unit arrived in Stankiewicze and Jewish residents were moved to a ghetto in Nowogródek . The four Bielski brothers , Tuvia , Alexander ( also known as " Zus " ) , Asael and Aron Bielski managed to flee to the nearby forest after their parents and other family members were killed in the ghetto in August 1941 . Bielski partisans . During World War II , Tuvia Bielski led a group of Jewish refugees . They saved more than 1 , 200 Jews by hiding them in forests . Although always hunted by Nazis , the numbers of the refugees continued to grow . In their camp , they built a school , a hospital , and a nursery . The refugees lived in the forests for more than two years . As leader of the Bielski partisans , his aim was not to attack railroads and roads that the German Nazi s were using as supply routes , although there were some such attacks , but to save Jews , who were under persecution from the Nazis during the Holocaust . Later life . After the war , Tuvia Bielski was offered a high position in the Israel Defense Forces for his great acts of leadership ; but he declined the offer , instead running a small trucking firm with his brother Zus in New York City for 30 years until his death in 1987 . He married Lilka , another Jewish escapee ; they remained married for the remainder of their lives . They had three children — sons Michael and Robert and a daughter , Ruth — and nine grandchildren , three grandsons , Brendon , Jordan , and Taylor and five granddaughters , Sharon , Ariel , twins Talia and Vanessa , and twins Tori and Sarah . Sharon ( Rennert ) has made a documentary about her family called " In Our Hands : The Legacy of the Bielski Partisans " . Legacy . He is portrayed by Daniel Craig in the 2008 film " Defiance " , which has been criticised in Poland due to its omission of the alleged involvement of the Bielski group in a massacre of Polish civilians conducted by Soviet - aligned partisans in Naliboki . The Naliboki massacre was the subject of an official inquiry by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance ' s Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation . The investigation found no conclusive evidence linking the Bielski group to the crime however the involvement of Bielski ' s group is still considered to be one of the possibilities in the course of the investigation .