Nechama Tec was 8 years-old when Germans invaded her hometown of Lubin, Poland. Nearly 70 years later, the 77-year-old UConn-Stamford sociology professor's novel, "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans," has been made into a major feature film.
"Defiance" tells the story of the largest armed rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. With 1,200 survivors, the courageous resistance of the Bielski Otriad - a group of partisan Jews led by three Polish brothers - is a testament to humanity that has gone somewhat untold.
The Bielski partisans struggled to survive the Nazis in the grey, bitter-cold forests of western Belorussia (modern-day Belarus). Tec took nearly eight years to research and interview the eldest three Bielskis. She ended up with a massively detailed book with many footnotes and historical explanations.
The film takes place from 1941 to 1942, whereas the book goes back to explain the background of where the brothers grew up, and continues until July 1944, when the Russian army recaptures Belorussia from the Germans and liberates the Jews.
"You cannot completely express through a movie the content of the book; it is very difficult, the book is much more complex," Tec explained
Directed by Edward Zwick ("Blood Diamond," "The Last Samurai"), the project took was stuck in development for quite some time. Tec's novel was published in 1993, and optioned by Zwick at that time. However, the option ran out and Zwick moved on to make many other critically acclaimed films in the meantime. But year later, Zwick still couldn't get Tec's story out of his mind, and he once again asked her to the option for the book. This time, "Defiance" became a reality.
Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell star as Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski, respectively. "It was really impressive to see such excellent acting, and how patient they were," Tec says. "To me, it was like an introduction to a new world that I had not known up until then, and I was very much impressed by the amount of patience that they had."
While observing the film shoot in Lithuania, Tec was particularly impressed with British actor Daniel Craig. "I said to myself, 'why does he have to do it again, and again, and again?" she muses. "I just wouldn't have had the patience."
The other actors were similarly diligent with their craft.
"I was impressed very much about how serious they were about their respective parts, and how much they gave of themselves to each small scene that the director demanded of them," Tec says.
She remembered a particular instance when Daniel Craig asked for her advice. "I couldn't tell them how to act, but I could tell them what it meant at the time," she explained.
When Craig's character Tuvia, the leader of the Otriad, goes to the ghetto, he tries to encourage the Jews to leave, and offers them protection in the forest. Craig asked Zwick if the Jewish leaders of the ghetto knew that the Jews being taken were being gassed, shot and similarly exterminated; Zwick told him to ask Tec.
"Even if you are told about the situation, there are ways of absorbing it or not," she told Craig. "You may not want to know the truth … it's very difficult for us - how many of us accept the truth that we are going to die?" she said. "It is very difficult to accept the idea that doesn't make any sense … [and the Holocaust] made no sense."
Tec, a Jew, posed for three years as a Christian Polish girl, living constantly with the fear of being discovered by the Germans. "The Jews were hunted and haunted by the Germans and by their collaborators. So we had to hide and to pretend to be somebody else if we wanted to survive in what we called 'the Forbidden Christian world'" she said. "The 'Aryan side' as the German's called it."
"Why murder people that didn't do anything wrong to you - people that you could use for labor, that don't demand from you anything?" she said. "Why do you have to murder them in the most cruel, unprecedented way? It doesn't make any sense … but much of life doesn't make sense."
Two of Tec's books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She hopes her autobiography, "Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood," will be next in line for a film adaptation. Her son Roland Tec, who co-produced "Defiance," would be the director and producer if the film ever gets made.
In response to the number of Holocaust movies out this year, Nechama Tec posited that it was a good thing.
"[The Holocaust] leaves us with many, many question marks, so I am not surprised that it is being explored," she said. "I think it ought to be explored much more frequently and in much greater depth, because [it was] an unprecedented part in human history - a part which some people should be ashamed of, and some people can congratulate themselves, that they behaved decently and tried to help the suffering."
"If anything," she added, "I think I'm surprised that there are not more movies."
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