Abba Video:

		List Price: $29.95		Label: New Video Group Salesrank: 46019 Released: April 26, 2005
		Our Price: $17.78
		Used Price: $11.97
		MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
An enormously riveting and inspirational tale of WWII and the Holocaust like no other, PARTISANS OF VILNA is the first documentary to chronicle the amazing endeavors of the Jewish resistance fighters, who courageously staged a sabotage offensive against the Nazi army in the Polish city of Vilna. Co-written with passionate devotion by director Josh Waletzky and producer Aviva Kempner, the film has been lauded as "rich, poignant, terrifying and even ennobling" (L.A. Times).

Partisans of Vilna Reviews:
Not heros. They wanted to choose their own manner of death.
2007-05-31 - Audiovisual material is nearly necessary to get a realistic take on the extermination of yiddish jewery. Waletzky's material does very well in this regard.

More importantly Waletzky's commentary is on this DVD and as far as commentaries go, it added significantly to the deapth of the film.

One reviewer writes "Jewish community in Vilna put up a heroic resistance". They didn't. And this is an unrecognized aspect of the tragedy. A partial reason for this is because the jewish leadership were the first to be liquidated.

I'd suggest listen closely to Waletzky and mostly the witnesses. The witnesses express their frustrations, their own understanding of their hopeless situation.

That which set them apart from the overwhelming majority, decisive for their fate, was that they consciously decided to choose where or how to die. Paradoxically, this psychological stance, dramatically increased their chance of surviving the genocide. Many nevertheless did not.

Fighting back became a viable option towards the end of the occupation, when most of Lithuania's Jewery were already exterminated.

The resistance had no effect on the genocide. Their actions were uncoordinated and often hindered by Jews in the Ghetto who thought they would possibly live out the occupation, and their extermination that came with it, or often hindered by other partisan groups. There was not even one raid set against Ponar or similiar locations.

But view the film and learn "why".

Excellent documentary on tragically unknown subject
2006-10-16 - The well-known Warsaw Ghetto uprising was going to be producer Aviva Kempner's focus when she went to Israel to interview survivors, but a recommendation by a museum director turned her attention to a lesser-known partisan movement. In the Jewish-quarter-turned-ghetto of Vilna, the partisans -- mostly Socialist, Communist and Zionist youths -- unified and slowly came to the realization that the Nazis meant to exterminate the 20,000 Jews left.

Partisans of Vilna tells the story of these courageous men and women, many of whom fought and fought for years only to be rewarded with the fact at the end of the war that 20,000 Jews had dwindled to 3,000. They had no national army to back them and were even faced with antisemitism from their Russian, Polish and Lithuanian partisan tallies in the cold Eastern European forests. Their hardest conflict, however, came against the local Jewish police, who tried to appease the Nazis by letting them take small numbers of Jews to the death camps in order to save the majority. That was a hopeless idea, but the film demonstrates that a hope that time would save the Jews was not ridiculous and eventually made sure more of Vilna's Jews chose not to join the armed insurgents.

DVD Extras: Accompanying this 20th-anniversary edition are plenty of educational bonuses. An audio CD of Yiddish songs from the film, mostly inspired or written by the fighting partisans themselves, is accompanied by a 10-page Yiddish and English songbook with voluminous notes. Also here is a 29-page study guide, with historical background, questions for discussion, a timeline and a stellar bibliography that will be perfect for those whose curiosity is sparked. Commentaries include a filmmaking-focused one from director, co-writer and narrator Joseph Waltezsky, and another by producer and co-writer Aviva Kempner, who gives greater historical context and reveals tidbits of information about the people and places that didn't make it to the film.


Lost history
2005-07-06 - There is not nearly as much of this kind of material as there could be available. I feel this dvd did a good job of showing that the Jwish community in Vilna put up a heroic resistance even with the local community and he Soviet Union putting roadblocks in their way. To many people can only look to Sobibar or Warsaw when this shows how wide spread the desire was to fight back.
The educational materials, the CD of partisian songs with translations make this an outstanding resource for teachers as well.

The battle for Vilna
2005-05-07 - This is the most thorough film of the resistance movement in Vilna, made in 1986 but only now getting widespread release on DVD. The documentary is told in retrospect by the survivors of the holocaust in Vilna, which resulted in the killing of over 90% of the Jews in what was regarded as the Jerusalem of Lithuania. For centuries Vilna had been a safe haven for Jews, a center of religious scholarship and a vibrant Yiddish community. As one survivor noted, Vilna isn't Vilna without its Jewish culture.

The film deals with the very troubling aspect of the Jewish police, or Judenrat, which was used by the Germans to keep the ghetto in line. Jacob Gens essentially served as the constable of the Jewish community during the German occupation, turning over members of the resistance with the false hope that this would spare the community at large. This led to horrible divisions within the crumbling Jewish community, which were painfully retold by the survivors.

The partisans took to the woods outside Vilna, joining up with Russian, Lithuanian and Polish partisan forces, and mounting a very effective resistance to German occupation until the Soviet tanks rolled in late in 1943. It was a tragic victory for the Jewish partisans, caught up in the wave of euphoria surrounding the defeat of the Germans, but having to bear witness to the destruction of the once proud Jewish quarter in Vilna.