Background
The Bielski family were millers and grocers in Stankiewicze (Stankievichy) near Nowogródek, an area that at the beginning of the Second World War belonged to the Second Polish Republic and was recovered by the Soviet Union in September 1939 (cf. Polish September Campaign and Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)) in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union.
The Bielski family took part as low level administrators in the new government set up by the Soviets which strained their relations with the local Poles, to whom the Soviet Union was an occupier. Following the Germans' Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Union that began on June 22, 1941, Nowogródek became a Jewish ghetto, as Nazis took over those lands and implemented their genocidal policies (see Holocaust in Poland and Holocaust in Belarus).
Read more about this topic: Bielski Partisans
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