CENTRAL NEWS
The insurgence against Hitler’s army of fascists during World War II remains a topic which has not yet been unveiled. One woman photographer documented the armed resistance by thousands of Jews, the Partisans, against the Nazis. As an important woman figure in history, this woman herself is also unknown of.
In August 1942, Nazi occupiers murdered more than 1850 people in the Lenin ghetto. One of the people amongst the Jews was spared for her photographic skills. The young woman, Faye Schulman, was abducted by the Nazis and forced to photograph the atrocities they committed for propaganda purposes.
Faye was forced by the Nazis to photograph mass graves, until one day, she recognized a group of people amongst the corpses. Upon coming to the realization that the corpses belonged to her relatives and parents, Faye dropped her camera and swore to avenge the millions of innocent people being killed by the fascists. She escaped and joined a nearby partisan unit, serving as her group’s nurse and using her camera to document the war.
The key part of Fayes fight would be to ensure that what happened to Jewish people during the Holocaust would never be forgotten.
During World War II, approximately 30,000 Jews escaped ghettos and work camps and formed organized armed resistance groups known as partisans. Though women insurgents were able to join the organistion, their work was limited to domestic duties such as cleaning, cooking and nursing to reconnaissance and weapons transport. Women made up approximately 10% of the partisans.
Born in Poland in 1924, Faye received her first camera from her brother when she was 13. That camera ultimately saved her life and allowed her to later document the unknown Jewish partisan activity against. During the years of 1942-44, Schulman took hundreds of photographs using her Doppel-Anastigmat folding camera with Zeiss Icon lens while on missions, as one of the few known Jewish partisan photographers.
“I want people to know that there was resistance. Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter,” she said
Faye’s rare collection of images captures the camaraderie, horror and loss, bravery and triumph of the rag-tag, tough partisan—some Jewish, some not—who fought the Germans and their collaborators. Speaking on the difficulties she faced as a woman photographer documenting insurgence against the holocaust, Fate explained that age repeatedly buried her equipment when it was not in use, Schulman developed photographs under blankets, making sun prints during the day.
