For a moment there a young girl from Scotland who calls herself @sophiegeeking achieved infamy with a tweet of herself wearing a Hezbollah T Shirt:
Sophie has pinned the following tweet on her Twitter, it is a photo of Faye Schulman the Jewish partisan and photographer:
Faye’s family were all murdered by the Germans in the Lenin ghetto. They kept her alive because she had photographic skills and they wanted her to develop their photos of the massacre. She developed photos of the trenches containing the bodies of her whole family. Shortly after she managed to escape to the forests around Lenin.
When the war ended she married Morris Schulman, a fellow Jewish partisan. They could have lived in Plonsk as heroes of the Great Patriotic War against Hitler but instead they wished to escape what Faye referred to as a “graveyard” and move to (what was then) Palestine. They lived in a displaced persons camp for two years and smuggled guns to the Jews in Palestine while there. The British blockade of Palestine prevented the Schulmans from leaving Europe to take part in the creation of the Jewish state. When Faye fell pregnant they decided to move to Canada rather than raise their child in the uncertain circumstances of an Israel at war.
Schulman’s contribution to the historiography of partisan life and particularly Jewish partisan life is unparalleled. She is the only known photographer from the partisans. She said this of her struggle;
“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 travelled to Israel in 2008 to give an address to a gala dinner honoring female soldiers of Israel. Something utterly fitting for one of the first soldiers of Israel.
I think Sophie has chosen a fitting heroine in Faye Schulman whose tenacity and bravery ensured not only that she served as an inspiration to the generations who have come after her but also that her struggle and that of many others was documented. I hope Sophie takes a long, hard look at Hezbollah and understands that anything Faye has in common with them is entirely coincidental rather they are symbolic of everything Faye fought against.
She made a series of short video interviews that can be found on youtube; the first I have added below;
