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This film also seems to be highly revisionist: the "heroes" may have been mass murderers,

Posted by tinear (A) on January 17, 2009 at 17:42:57

In Reply to: Defiance: Partisans in the woods fight the Nazis posted by grinagog on January 16, 2009 at 20:48:38:

themselves.
(wikipedia)
"The largest controversy centers around the Naliboki massacre in May 1943, when Polish peasants and members of the Polish resistance were killed by Soviet partisans. (For more on the relations between Polish and Soviet resistance, see Soviet partisans in Poland). While historians have yet to finish their research on that subject, some sources contend that the Bielski partisans participated in the Naliboki massacre with the Soviet partisans.[8] Other sources argue that so far little evidence has been found to suggest the Bielski partisans were responsible for the massacre, and some historians, including Tuvia Bielski’s son, claim that the Bielski partisans were not in the area at the time.[9] No mention of this event is present in the film, which has been criticized for this omission, particularly in Poland, and also for glorifying people who may have been responsible for the massacre.[8]
While the issue of the Naliboki massacre remains the most controversial, the Polish press and historians have criticized the movie for other historical inaccuracies. The mainstream Polish journal Gazeta Wyborcza (editor Adam Michnik is of Jewish descent) noted in a series of articles that Zwick inaccurately portrayed the Bielski partisans as actively fighting the German army. Citing research by Polish historians and the Institute of National Remembrance, the critics point out that the Bielski partisans followed a "survivalist" strategy: their goal was to stay alive, not to strike at the Germans. Thus they fled German manhunts and avoided direct confrontations as much as possible.[10]
Further, the background of the movie is criticized. The movie portrays the Navahrudak (Nowogródek) and surrounding areas (pre-war Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic) as entirely Jewish and Belarusian, while, according to Gazeta Wyborcza, there was a significant Polish minority in those areas. (According to official Polish pre-war census data, Navahrudak was approximately 50% Jews, 25% Poles, 20% Belarusians, and 5% others.) Critics also complain that the movie ignores the significant presence in the region of the Polish resistance, not just the Soviet-allied groups. There have also been complaints that the movie portrays the Bielski partisans as fluent in Russian (or Belarusian), but not Polish, when in fact, according to Gazeta Wyborcza, they were more fluent in Polish, and might have not known Russian at all. However, since the film is mostly in English, it is possible that this is being used as a simplification to represent Polish and Russian, thus making this point moot. Gazeta Wyborcza proposes that the movie's main problem is not the in-progress investigation of the (possibly false) Naliboki connection, but the gross historical inaccuracy of ignoring the dominant Polish element in the background.[11]
The Jewish Press cited the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, Telford Taylor, as saying that, with regard to movies generally, "historical misrepresentations could leave the uninformed viewer with an inaccurate historical record about what a movie is depicting" while criticizing the fictionalization of the story.[12]"

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