Faye Schulman, born on this day in 1919, was a Jewish partisan and photographer who took up arms against the Nazis who were responsible for killing her family.
On August 14th, 1942, the Germans killed 1,850 Jews from the "Lenin" ghetto (named after Lenin, Poland, where Faye was from), including her parents, sisters, and younger brother. Faye was spared for her ability to develop photographs, and the Nazis ordered Faye to develop their photographs of the massacre. Later, she cited taking a photo of her dead family in a mass grave as the impetus to take up arms.
During a partisan raid on the camp, Faye fled to the forests and joined the Molotava Brigade, a partisan group mostly comprised of escaped Soviet Red Army POWs. She was accepted because her brother-in-law had been a doctor and they were desperate for anyone who knew anything about medicine. Faye served the group as a nurse from September 1942 to July 1944, even though she had no previous medical experience.
During another raid on the Lenin ghetto, Faye succeeded in recovering her old photographic equipment. During the next two years, she took over a hundred photographs, developing the medium format negatives under blankets and making "sun prints" during the day. While on missions, Faye buried the camera and tripod to keep it safe. Schulman is the only known Jewish partisan photographer from this era.
"I want people to know that there was resistance. Jews did not go like sheep to the slaughter. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof."
- Faye Schulman
After liberation, Faye married Morris Schulman, also a Jewish partisan. Faye and Morris enjoyed a prosperous life as decorated Soviet partisans, but wanted to leave Pinsk, Poland, which reminded them of "a graveyard." Morris and Faye lived in the Landsberg displaced persons camp in Germany for the next three years and immigrated to Canada in 1948.
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cw: dysphoria and suicidal thoughts mentioned
Am feeling a bit better health-wise. Still have the permanent eye blind spot thing and it still makes me quite doomer to think about but I'm coping, I guess I can live with it (it is quite small tbf, I can cover up a word with it if I close my left eye and place the word in my inner peripheral vision) even if it makes me feel like.... I'm already dead somehow. They gave me Vyvance for my horrible ADHD recently and I now feel less like a corpse and more like a person that can sometimes do things when the spoon-count permits lol
And I think the enby-worrying stuff has been/is mostly repression for me (been boymoding rly hard lol), that has also been a bit better in the last month
Am glad my support during the feelings-posting times is appreciated
Sameee, was sad to hear about your recent brief relationship not working out :(
Btw, and sorry if this brings up bad feelings, on your long-term partner not working out: I have been both the person who lost interest and the person who still had interest in a romantic relationship with someone who lost interest and wanted to talk about it a bit. My situations were much messier compared to my impression of yours (could be entirely wrong or forget details tbf)
Like my losing interest also coincided with interest in someone else and this sounds probably as bad as it was but then it become a """"""poly"""""" (am so sorry poly comrades) thing for a minute (actually wasn't my idea unlike the way this typically goes aaaaa, we both had an interest in this person, both had something with him for a bit, but then it all went bad :( ). Idk we were all much younger and inexperienced but we're all on good terms again
And the person losing interest in me (who actually was one of the people involved in the previous thing, omg this sounds so bad, I guess cuz it was, I rarely explain this to people) rly hurt for a while but it's okay and I'm glad he ended it with me rather than let it go on any longer and he remains one of my best friends :3 although we did lose touch for a bit until recently cuz of all my health issues stopping me from living my life (I do still have occasional dreams about these heartbreak feelings but they don't bother me consciously anymore at least lol)
I feel so bad about some of my actions during all that, cuz at a certain point it just became cheating :(, especially how I hurt the person who I ended things with but have tried to make amends since and we are bffs again too
Idk, my point with this is that for a long time it all felt like a massive mistake, like all of it meant nothing in the end but I realized some time ago that it isn't true, is just my current feelings influencing my memories of those times. There were lots of bad moments ofc but we still had many more good moments, even if it ended eventually. I definitely should have ended things sooner (it's complicated and I don't want it to detract from my point or my harmful actions but he did say for a while that he would kill himself if I ended things :( ), and the person who lost interest in me also should have... but like, I saw yourself call yourself dishonest with yourself and a coward in one of your feelings-posts but real cowards never end things unless the other person forces them to and the whole thing explodes. It all looks much easier in hindsight but regardless you, me, and the other person I mentioned did eventually figure out what should be done and did it :/ And that those periods of our lives still had value
The other thing is (not asserting that you do this more than the usual, healthy amount but this is becoming a journal-post, fuck lol), and I find myself doing it sometimes, especially in the past, which I am trying to combat, that it's cathartic, simple, and soothing in a way to have a reductive conception of yourself as some kind of bad person. Like for me: "I was doing cheating and X which are other things, only bad people do cheating and X, therefore I am a bad person and deserve nothing but the very real suffering I experience and worse until I die". It's comforting to just give in and stop struggling with yourself and your life-conditions (suicidal thoughts are like this/part of this too ime) but, at best, it ends up just preventing you doing better or, at worst, gives you an excuse to lean into your worst aspects. That is primary but secondarily also (you have to be careful with this one especially when considering other people who could hurt you) is that everyone is deserving of dignity and happiness, at least imo (this also exists on a scale in my head from like... Hitler to uhhh the ideal New Soviet Person lol). Idk, is like if Puyi (last Chinese emperor, collaborated with the Japanese) himself, with the communists' help ofc, can fix Puyi, doesn't that mean anyone can in the right conditions? For me this exists as some kind of contradiction in my head between the desire to give up and die (possibly by suicide) and to keep fighting and struggling to be better and help make a better world even if that just means I can be a positive influence in people's lives
Sorry for that whole mess, I am still trying to figure all this out to this day lol (I guess it only ended like 4 or 5 years ago). I hope you find it interesting or helpful to think about at least maybe <3 (I have a very hard to break tendency toward apologizing for my existence)