key profiles

Question 1

The Bielski Brothers

Answer 1

• Bielski family were from Stankiewicze Poland, and were millers and grocers
• After Nazis took over this part of Poland in 1941, parents were killed in the ghetto in Nowograndek + 4 sons fled to nearby Naloboki forest
• Set up a camp, which attracted other Jewish escapees, and at its height housed over 1200 people.
• For 3 years carried out sabotage missions against Nazi forces and managed to evade capture
• When Soviet Red Army occupied area in 1944, partisans emerged from the forest but were treated with hostility and suspicion by the Soviet commanders

Question 2

Martin Bormann
1900-45

Answer 2

• Head of the Nazi Party Chancellery + Hitler’s private secretary
• Exercised enormous influence since he controlled access to the Fuhrer
• Had a key role in Party and Civil Service appointments
• Died trying to escape the Soviet advance in Berlin in May 1945

Question 3

Hans and Sophie Scholl
1918-43 + 1921-43

Answer 3

• Founders + leading activists of the White Rose group
• Hans had joined Hitler Youth in his teens but was disillusioned with the Nazi regime
• Advocated passive resistance against the regime
• Arrested, tried and executed in February 1943
• At her trial Sophie said, ‘What we have written and said is in the minds of all of you, but you lack the courage to say it aloud’.

Question 4

Archbishop Frings
1887-1978

Answer 4

• Archbishop of Cologne 1942-69
• Denounced the Nazi persecution of the Jews as a ‘crime that calls out to heaven’
• Placed under surveillance by the Gestapo