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The narrative follows several youths who managed to escape ghetto and sure death in Eastern parts of Belorussia and joined Soviet partisan units. Often considered too young to fight, the refugees nonetheless participated in dangerous military operations. The chapter focuses on the tension between the integrative force of these Soviet partisan units and the discriminations and difficulties ghetto refugees faced because of their Jewish or gender identity. Whereas officially the brotherhood of Soviet people was propagated, Jews often disguised their national identity and assumed non-Jewish names; women and girls were often relegated to women’s labor in kitchens or medical tents without the opportunity to choose otherwise, or were pushed into unwanted sexual relationships. The partisan detachments were thus sites of integrating ghetto refugees in the Soviet war effort, yet also showed the extent to which prewar promises of gender equality and interethnic solidarity were invalidated.

The chapter focuses on the implications of living through occupation and genocide in Minsk, emphasizing individual and collective strategies of youth trapped in a ghetto of up to 55,000 people. Following several female and male adolescents, the chapter demonstrates that multinational relationships of Jews with former classmates, neighbors, or strangers, especially in response to the precarious situation of orphaned teenagers in a context of ongoing violence, were essential for people’s survival. Especially for orphans who were trapped in the ghetto of Minsk, struggling to find food, dealing with constant humiliation and violence, and coming to terms with previously unsuspected antisemitism and anti-Jewish attitudes among neighbors and strangers, the support networks organized by party members, union activists, or individual helpers, as well as strong bonds among ghetto inmates, proved crucial.

The chapter looks at the experiences of adolescents who escaped the Minsk ghetto and found refuge in a so-called “family unit,” a partisan detachment that provided a safe haven for several hundred Jewish civilians. The detachment provided shelter for refugees from the ghettos and also fulfilled important tasks in sustaining themselves and other partisan units by providing for wartime needs in the form of food, clothing, weapons, and medical aid. Survivors’ accounts highlight the role of personal relationships and of Soviet institutions such as party and youth organizations as central to their experience in the unit. Reports of hard field labor, schooling for the orphans, the unit’s medical unit, and how a letter to Stalin was drawn up to signal the unit’s patriotic sentiment give detailed insights into the functioning of this exceptional unit and its material and emotional value and propose a redefinition of what we understand as resistance.

Picking up on the lives of Frieda Ped’ko, Grigorii Erenburg, and Alevtina Kuprikhina, who are introduced in chapter 1, the chapter sharpens the account of survival and destruction in Eastern Belorussia, and the implications of remembering both. Eastern Belorussian territories remained under military administration throughout the war; and they were the site of indiscriminate executions of civilians beginning in summer 1941. A number of children and young people were deprived of their closest relatives and tried to make sense of this loss, efforts that continue to fail in light of unbearable terror and violence. The resulting fragmentary narratives demonstrate the aftereffects of systematic violence and pose thorny questions for historical scholarship.