Jewish Partisans Led by Tito, Croatian Anti-Fascist

Anti-Fascist Yugoslav Partisan leaders Josip Broz Tito (Croatian) and Moša Pijade (Jewish)

The following newspaper report was published by
The Canadian Jewish Chronicle on 31 March 1944.

Tito’s Partisans Reveal Heroism of Jews.

LONDON, (JPS) — Deportations and extermination having taken their toll, few Jews are left of the 68,000 Jews who resided in Yugoslavia before the war, according to a report from Cairo to the Jewish Chronicle of London. The report based on conversations with Tito’s Partisans, who visited Cairo, reveals that several hundred Jews are now serving with Tito and that Jews played a leading role in the founding of his resistance movement.

The reports reveal that there, as in Poland, “whole (Jewish) families were taken away, some to concentration camps for ‘liquidation,’ others to the notorious gas vans which were used on a large-scale in Serbia.”

Many of the Jewish Partisans were enticed to return by a Nazi decree that Jews who did not report within a certain time would be punished through their families.

The report tells of Jews who fought with the Partisans “from the very beginning.” The leading figure among them is Moshe Pijade (Moša Pijade), known as “Uncle Yanko,” who is one of the newly formed provisional government.

No less legendary among the Partisans are the four Baruchs. Bora Baruch, a painter who arrived from Paris to participate in the fighting; Jorge and Issa Baruch, and their sister Rachel. The three brothers, two of them detachment organizers and one a political officer, died in action. Rachel made bombs at home. One day there was an explosion and Rachel was taken away to the hospital in a critical condition. Police removed her and shot her.

There are two doctors who are spoken of with great reverence by the Partisans. Dr. Herbert Kraus was among the first to join the Partisans and was second in command of the Partisan medical service. Dr. Schlesinger, a major in the first World War, joined the Partisans with his wife and twenty-year-old daughter. His wife died of a disease attributed to overwork, and the doctor and his daughter died fighting several months later.

Olga Alcalij, the only woman lawyer in Serbia, and a well-known radical journalist, joined the underground as soon as the war broke out. She was 29 at the time, but the Nazis already had a price on her head. October, 1941, she was caught by the Gestapo in the capital, where she was engaged at the time in recruiting Partisans. She died under torture, but would not reveal her accomplices.