Nechama Tec, Polish Holocaust Survivor and Scholar, Dies at 92

Nechama Tec, a Polish Jew who pretended to be Roman Catholic to outlive the Holocaust after which grew to become a Holocaust scholar, writing about Jews as heroic resisters and why sure folks, even antisemites, grew to become rescuers, died on Aug. 3 at her residence in Manhattan. She was 92.

Her demise was confirmed by her son, Roland.

In “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” (1993), Dr. Tec’s best-known e book, she described the brave actions of Tuvia Bielski, who commanded a resistance group that fought the Germans and, extra essential, saved some 1,200 Jews. The partisans entered ghettos beneath siege and introduced Jews again to the Belarusian forest, the place Mr. Bielski had constructed a group for them.

“Defiance” gave Dr. Tec a platform to point out that Jews saved different Jews through the struggle and have been extra lively in resisting the Nazis than some have generally believed.

When a pal steered to the filmmaker Edward Zwick that “Defiance” would make a very good film, he was not instantly persuaded.

“Not one other film about victims,” he recalled his response when he wrote in The New York Occasions about directing the movie, launched in 2008, which starred Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber as his brother Zus.

“No, it is a story about Jewish heroes,” he mentioned his pal informed him. “Just like the Maccabees, solely higher.”

As Mr. Zwick put it, “Reasonably than victims sporting yellow stars, right here have been fighters in fur chapkas brandishing submachine weapons.”

After “Defiance,” Dr. Tec wrote “When Mild Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland” (1986). Her interviews with rescuers for that e book yielded a portrait of Christians who hid Jews, regardless of the probability of being imprisoned or killed for offering such help. They have been, she concluded, outsiders who have been marginal of their communities; had a historical past of performing good deeds; didn’t view their actions as heroic; and didn’t agonize over being useful.

“Many have been casually antisemitic, however that wasn’t their prime function in life,” mentioned Christopher R. Browning, a Holocaust professional who’s a professor emeritus of historical past on the College of North Carolina and who edited, with Dr. Tec and Richard S. Hollander, a group of letters written by Mr. Hollander’s Polish Jewish household from 1939 to 1942. “Utilizing her expertise as a sociologist, she was capable of painting a extra complicated spectrum of interactions than the simplistic ones that individuals who didn’t accumulate empirical information as she had.”

Nechama Bawnik was born on Could 15, 1931, in Lublin, Poland. Her father, Roman, owned a chemical manufacturing unit. Her mom, Esther (Finkelstein) Bawnik, was a homemaker.

Quickly after the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939, Mr. Bawnik transferred title of his manufacturing unit, moderately than have the Nazis confiscate it, to his foreman, who additionally gave him a job and a spot for the Bawniks, together with Nechama’s older sister, Giza, to dwell on the highest ground of the constructing. Nechama hid within the dwelling quarters, her solely hyperlink to the skin a gap in a wall that allow her look onto the courtyard of a convent faculty.

As circumstances for Jews worsened and rumors of deportations frightened them, the household thought-about relocating to Warsaw however discovered it too perilous. In mid-1942, Nechama’s dad and mom despatched her and Giza to dwell with a household in Otwock, Poland, a half-hour’s practice experience from Warsaw. Nechama had false papers that recognized her as Krysia Bloch. To assist her play the position, she discovered Catholic prayers and a household historical past.

The sisters, who each had blond hair and blue eyes, have been capable of move as orphaned nieces of the household they have been dwelling with and moved round with out hiding. In the summertime of 1943, they and their dad and mom moved in with a household in Kielce.

When the Bawniks wanted cash in Kielce, Nechama’s mom baked rolls and despatched Nechama to promote them in a neighborhood black market. Nechama additionally offered bottles of vodka that had been distilled by a neighborhood farmer, Roland Tec mentioned. As soon as, he mentioned in a telephone interview, a retailer denounced her and the Gestapo chased her away; when she returned, her father informed her to run into close by fields, whereas her dad and mom hid beneath floorboards, till it was secure.

After the struggle, the household returned briefly to Lublin after which moved to Berlin. In 1949, Nechama immigrated to Israel, the place she met Leon Tec, a Polish-born internist who later grew to become a toddler psychiatrist. They married in 1950 and moved to the USA two years later.

Nechama studied sociology at Columbia College, the place she obtained a bachelor’s diploma in 1954 and a grasp’s in 1955.

After working on the New York State Division of Psychological Hygiene, she started instructing sociology in 1957 at Columbia. She then taught at Rutgers College, returned to Columbia and moved to Trinity Faculty in Hartford, Conn., earlier than becoming a member of the sociology school of the College of Connecticut’s Stamford campus, in 1974. She remained there for 36 years.

She earned a Ph.D., additionally in sociology, from Columbia, in 1965.

Dr. Tec mentioned that she had been decided to place her Holocaust previous behind her, however that in 1975 her childhood experiences demanded her consideration.

“When these calls for was a compelling pressure,” she wrote in “Defiance,” “I made a decision to revisit my previous by writing an autobiography.”

In that autobiography, “Dry Tears: The Story of a Misplaced Childhood” (1982), she recalled the angle that Helena, the grandmother within the household of rescuers in Kielce, had towards Jews.

“I’d not hurt a Jew,” Dr. Tec recalled Helena saying, “however I see no level in going out of my method to assist one.” She added: “You and your loved ones should not like Jews. In the event that they needed to ship you away now, I’d not allow them to.”

In one other e book, “Into the Lion’s Den: The Lifetime of Oswald Rufeisen” (1990), Dr. Tec explored the lifetime of one other Polish Jew, who hid his id, labored as a translator for the German police and helped save about 200 Jews within the Mir ghetto.

“Particularly riveting are the small print of his translations for his German superiors,” Susan Shapiro wrote in The New York Occasions Guide Assessment, “during which his cautious change of two phrases may save a complete Jewish group.”

After his id was revealed, Mr. Rufeisen took refuge in a monastery, transformed to Catholicism and joined partisan fighters, in accordance with Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance and analysis middle in Jerusalem. He grew to become a Catholic priest after the struggle and moved to Israel, the place he joined a monastery on Mount Carmel.

Along with her son, Dr. Tec is survived by her daughter, Leora Tec; two grandsons; one great-grandson; and a half sister, Catharina Knoll. Her husband and her sister, Giza Agmon, each died in 2013.

Through the filming of “Defiance,” Dr. Tec was happy to see that the Bielski partisan camp within the Belarusian forest had been faithfully recreated in Lithuania, with a kitchen and workshops to restore footwear and watches and to tan leather-based.

“She was in awe of what that they had constructed; it was actually unimaginable,” mentioned her son, who was a co-producer of the movie. He added: “As quickly as Daniel Craig noticed her on the set, he cornered her and spent an hour or an hour and a half asking her questions. It was great.”