Aron Bielski (Bell)

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Aron Bell, born Aron Bielski on 21 July 1927 in Stankiewicze, Poland, now Belarus, was the youngest of twelve children. Following the German occupation in 1941 and the murder of his parents and two brothers, he joined his older brothers Tuvia, Asael and Alexander “Zus” Bielski in the forests near Nowogródek.

Still a teenager, Aron served as a scout and guide with the Bielski partisans, gathering information and helping Jews escape from nearby ghettos to the group’s forest refuge. Operating in German-occupied Belarus between 1942 and 1944, the group combined armed resistance with the rescue of Jewish civilians. Its camp in the Naliboki Forest sheltered women, children and elderly people alongside fighters, with workshops, a school and an infirmary. By liberation in 1944, approximately 1,230 Jews were under the group’s protection.

After the war, Aron moved to Palestine and served in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. He immigrated to the United States in 1954, adopting the surname Bell. The Bielski brothers’ wartime story inspired the film Defiance (2008).

Aron died on 22 September 2025, aged 98, the last surviving Bielski brother.