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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it feels like i can’t even express the slightest hint of alienation without people in my life being dismissive or shitting on it. like they mention that people that don’t celebrate holidays must be annoyed by all the traffic, and i DARED to express a sympathy because holidays don’t mean much to me outside of obligations to humor family members and i find crowded stores and roads during holidays unpleasant due to sensory overload, and its taken as if i insulted anyone who enjoyed any holiday. any time i express neurodivergence of any kind it is fucking PUNISHED, i guess adult men are not allowed to experience any mental illness or negative feelings whatsoever without being blamed for personal failure to fully repress all of our emotions except bland mundane contentedness
You should apologize to the Christmas lover for picking at the fraying threads at the end of their rope.
“I’m sorry I offended you when we last talked. As a neuro-divergent individual I forget that most people need holiday festivities to give them a sense of short term hope. Like a candle in the pitch black of a long tunnel, Christmas looks like a light at the end of the tunnel, it breaks up the brutal reality that there is no end in sight, no long term plan to fix the mounting stresses of every day life, but there is always the the next candle. Christmas is the brightest of those candles and I made it flicker, I was insensitive to your mental health and coping mechanisms and I am sorry for that.”
(This is a joke)