Sam Bloch, WWII resistance fighter as a teen, dies, 93

Sam Bloch, who was a teenaged resistance fighter in the forests of Eastern Europe during World War II and who devoted his career to preserving the memory of Jewish Holocaust survivors, including the establishment of museums and museums around the world, died Feb. 4 at his home in Queens, New York.

He was 93.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said a son-inlaw, Menachem Rosensaft.

Bloch grew up in what was then Poland, the son of a prominent Hebrew-language teacher. After his father was killed in a mass execution by Nazi forces in 1941, Bloch, then 16, was forced to survive on his wits and guile.

With his mother and younger brother, he escaped a Jewish ghetto just before it was about to be liquidated and sought shelter with a family of Polish farmers. They later fled into the countryside, hiding in the woods as Bloch made connections with a underground Jewish resistance movement.

He eventually joined the Bielski Partisans, an armed Jewish unit of resistance fighters led by three brothers. The Bielski group, depicted in 2008 film “Defiance” with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, included hundreds of people in makeshift camps hidden deep in the forests of modern-day Belarus.

Bloch engaged in sabotage, fought against Nazi forces and collaborators and helped rescue other Jews. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Bielski Partisans helped more than 1,200 Jewish people survive the war.