I've registered here just to write that I'm amazed by some reviews pointing that Zwick was inaccurate or illiterate when making his film. And it's really amusing to read that 'partisans couldn't speak Russian because Naliboki was a Polish town'.
Naliboki is a town in the very center of present Belarus. It's a point were cultures mixed. For many centuries everybody here mastered at least 3 languages, and elder Belski spoke 6 of them: Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Belarusian, Russian, German. It's not so impossible, I may assure you:)
Actually, Russian is appropriate only in episodes when Zus Belski talks to a Soviet partisans' commander - that guy was from Moscow. I'm pretty sure, that in reality Jews talked to their neighbors in Yiddish and got answers in Polish or Belarusian. As for Belskies, they where the only Jewish family in their village, so they should master Slavic languages perfectly.
Naliboki is a town in the very center of present Belarus. It's a point were cultures mixed. For many centuries everybody here mastered at least 3 languages, and elder Belski spoke 6 of them: Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, Belarusian, Russian, German. It's not so impossible, I may assure you:)
Actually, Russian is appropriate only in episodes when Zus Belski talks to a Soviet partisans' commander - that guy was from Moscow. I'm pretty sure, that in reality Jews talked to their neighbors in Yiddish and got answers in Polish or Belarusian. As for Belskies, they where the only Jewish family in their village, so they should master Slavic languages perfectly.