Frank Blaichman (1922–2018)

Frank Blaichman was born Franek Blajchman to a Jewish family in the small town of Kamionka, Poland, southeast of Warsaw. He was 16 years old when Nazi Germany invaded his country in World War II. He took many risks to help his parents and six siblings survive. He rode a bicycle from neighboring villages and farms to nearby cities, buying and selling food and other supplies. He refused to wear the Star of David and managed to travel without being recognized as a Jew. When he learned that all the Jews of Kamionka were to be resettled in the Lubartow ghetto (they were, in fact, deported to an unknown destination), he hid outside the town. Making his way to the forest, he found more than 100 Jews living in an encampment of small bunkers. Eventually, they were joined by more refugees. Blaichman organized a defense force that acquired weapons; eventually the group met up with men who had fought in the Polish Army and others with ties to the Polish underground and the Soviet Army. At the age of 21, he was the unit's youngest platoon commander. They spent the war disrupting German supply and communications lines and ambushing German patrols. In July 1944, when the Red Army took Lublin from the Germans, Blaichman's partisan group entered the city. After the war, he was assigned to the Polish Security Police, and married Cesia Pomeranc, who had been part of a different Jewish partisan group. However, with the anti-Semitism of the postwar period, "I did not see a rosy future for Jews in Poland," he later wrote. The couple emigrated first to Germany and then to the USA, settling in the New York City area. Mr. Blaichman became a builder and developer. His memoir, Rather Die Fighting, was published in 2009.