Reviewed by NEAL GENDLER
Moshe Gildenman was an unlikely killer.
Town engineer in Korets, now in Ukraine, he was 42 and a leader in its professional community when Germany began World War II.
He’d supported and helped lead Jewish charities, founded and chaired the local Artisan Association, been a leader in the Jewish Drama Lovers’ Circle, for which he played in the orchestra, wrote plays and music and founded a concrete plant, says James Grymes in Partisan Song.
A survivor later described him as “a friend and companion, a vibrant man and a talented musician who brought the joy of life everywhere he came. … His home and heart were open to all in need.”
But to a band of Jewish partisan fighters he was Uncle Misha, killing Germans and Ukrainian auxiliary police, blowing up buildings, derailing German trains, burning collaborators’ homes and stealing their livestock.
It’s an interesting story, told from Gildenman’s substantial but sometimes imprecise writings, histories and official records found by Grymes, University of North Carolina musicology professor and author of the acclaimed Violins of Hope, which inspired this book.
Partisan Song chapters begin with lyrics of wartime songs. The book opens in 1945, as Gildenman walks along the rubble of Korets, noting where Jewish homes, businesses and the Great Synagogue had stood.
Korets’ Jewish life began ending before Nazis arrived, after the Aug. 29, 1939, German-Soviet nonaggression pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) divided Poland into “spheres of influence.” When war began, Korets, then in Poland, was occupied by the Soviet Union.
Sovietization closed Korets’ Tarbut school and Zionist youth organizations. Jews of military age were drafted “and never heard from again,” Grymes says.
On July 2, 1941, the Germans arrived. Jewish activity was restricted, the yellow star was imposed and Jewish homes were marked with blue stars and looted. When 120 prominent Jews were driven away and killed, Moshe was saved because he could repair watches, his son Simcha because he was an electrician.
Grymes describes the brutalization of Korets’ Jews. May 21, 1942, they were forced from their homes, marched to a pit and killed. Moshe and Simcha were among 186 skilled workers spared. Sorting the clothes of the dead, Moshe’s nephew found the coats Moshe’s wife Golda and daughter Feigela had been wearing.
The survivors went to a vandalized Jewish study hall to mourn. Moshe, angry, lectured them on fighting back.
Simcha had contacted partisans in the forest. Moshe urged escape. He, Simcha and 11 others did, with two guns, a butcher knife and hope to meet Soviet partisans.
Grymes describes refugees’ encounter with a partisan group that sent them searching for another group. The two Soviet escorts deserted, taking all their food and money. Germans were nearby, and a refugee whose son could not stop crying gave him to others to be killed.
Moshe and his small band met a group of about 40 refugees and was elected leader. The search for partisans continued, with a stop at the home of a woodsman to seek weapons.
They took a rifle and shotgun, but to protect the man, Moshe left a receipt signed with his nickname: “Uncle Misha.”
Grymes traces Uncle Misha’s actions through the part of a region called Volhynia-Podolia. It’s a somber, heroic story of privation and courage too lengthy to summarize in a review but unsparing of the group’s eagerness and successes in killing Germans and collaborators — but not without losses.
The size of Misha’s group varies and is a little hard to follow. It grew to include men and women with skills such as cooking, leatherwork and making explosives.
Song has 20 pages of source notes, a 15-page bibliography, but alas, no index to keep track of characters.
Despite the research, there’s a little air of vagueness — likely from what Grymes in an author’s note says is imprecision about dates and places in Gildenman’s books about the war. But Grymes found ample documentation of Moshe’s group’s combat.
An example of vagueness, or perhaps of length-reducing editing: Misha’s group of 16 men and four women raided German depots and stole supplies, including “several tons” of salt useful to gain favor with non-collaborating locals.
Did they steal those tons in one raid or over several weeks, and how did they transport so much while hiding in forests? And Misha is writing and distributing leaflets and pamplets to villagers. Handwritten? Printed?
I don’t question that these things occurred, but they beg for more information. At one time, Misha was supporting about 50 refugees. But his unit numbered just 10 when it was invited to join Alexander Saburov’s United Partisan Federation, in January 1943.
Misha was assigned to the First Stalinist Partisan detachment, an official Soviet organization with support and weapons. Soon he led his own detachment, which came to be known as “Uncle Misha’s Jewish Combat Unit” — 31 partisans charged with killing German-appointed village leaders and their informants and attacking and burning the farms of policemen while stealing the livestock.
“By July 1, 1943, there were almost 30,000 partisans spread out over 17 federations and 160 independent detachments in Ukraine,” Grimes says. In October, the federation was disbanded. Multilingual Misha was awarded a medal and drafted into the Soviet army as an interpreter for an engineering unit.
Later, he was summoned to Moscow and awarded the Order of the Red Star for his team saving a command staff headquarters, an event described in detail.
Misha was sent to Prague on May 9, 1945. Clearing mines, one exploded, hospitalizing him for three months.
Discharged from the army in November, he returned to Korets. He reunited with Simcha, and they moved to Poland.
They moved to Israel in 1951, where Misha died from illness in 1957.
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Neal Gendler is a Minneapolis writer and editor.
(American Jewish World, March 2026)
