Faye Schulman

Faye Schulman (28 November 1919 – 24 April 2021) was a Jewish partisan photographer, and the only such photographer to photograph their struggle in Eastern Europe during World War II. Her full name was Faigel "Faye" Lazebnik Schulman.

Early life Schulman was born Faigel Lazebnik on November 28, 1919, in Sosnkowicze, Poland (now Lenin in Western Belarus) as the fifth of seven children born to Yakov and Rayzel Lazebnik, Orthodox Jews. At age 10, Faye was apprenticed to her brother, Moishe, a photographer, later taking over his studio at the age of 16 and learning photographic processing techniques. She also received some basic medical training from a brother-in-law, who worked as a physician.

Surviving the Holocaust After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Schulman's family was split up, with most of them, including Schulman herself, being imprisoned in the Lenin Ghetto, while two of her brothers were sent to a labor camp. On August 14, 1942, German forces killed 1,850 Jews from the ghetto, sparing only 28 for their skills useful to the Nazis, Schulman among them, due to her photography skills. Shortly after the massacre she was ordered to develop photos by the Nazis, which she made personal copies of in secret. About a month after her capture, when Soviet guerrillas attacked the locale, they allowed her to flee with them. In September 1942, she joined the Molotava Brigade, a partisan unit made up largely of Soviet prisoners of war who had escaped German captivity. She served with the brigade as both a nurse and a combatant until July 1944. Following a raid on Lenin, she recovered her photographic equipment and produced more than 100 images documenting partisan life, developing negatives under blankets and making sun prints. During her time in the Molotava Brigade, she participated in numerous raids on her old village to restock on supplies. During one of these raids, Schulman ordered her comrades to burn her old house down, so it wasn't left in the hands of the Nazis.

In spite of those shortcomings, she was grateful to the partisans for their help in defeating the Nazis. About the experience, she wrote: "We all belonged to one brigade. We learned to live together, eat together, fight together and survive together. We also needed to get along with each other. Sometimes it was hard to live through one day, let alone years. There was a strong friendship, cooperation and loyalty amongst most of us and a willingness to help each other. In the forest, connections were made between disparate people. Cold, hunger, stress forced strangers to become like family. We were also comrades in arms, all dealing with the same life-and-death circumstances. Our lives were bonded by the dangerous conditions under which we constantly lived. A special bond, nonetheless, existed among those of us who had experienced similar horrors under the Nazis." In 2000 she was the subject of Shelley Saywell's documentary film Out of the Fire.

Schulman was decorated by the Soviet and Belarusian governments for her wartime service as a partisan, and later received honors from Canadian and American institutions.

Personal life Faye was survived by her two children Sidney Schulman and Susan Schulman; six grandchildren Michael, Daniel, Nathan, Rachelle, Matthew, and Steven; and six great-grandchildren.