ABSTRACT
Flight from the ghettos was an integral part of any plan of salvation made by the ghetto Jews, no matter whether it was as an aftermath of an uprising within the ghetto or preparations for partisan fighting or individual attempts for survival. In the reality of the frightful aktzias, degradation to subhuman status, with the unending fear of death weighing like lead upon their heads and destroying the very soul of life — the conditions in the forest, free of the ghetto, and the aktzias and German orders, seemed like a paradise. What is more, escaping to the forest seemed to be the proper course of action for every Jew in order to fight the Germans to the death and to avenge the blood of families and relatives that had been shed. The physical distance between these two conditions was often only a step — from the ghetto to the forest that was sometimes to be seen on the horizon from the cracks in the ghetto walls, a dark-green mass concealing in some mysterious fashion the very antithesis of the ghetto. That “step” however, sometimes turned out to be an infinite distance and the forest — an unattainable goal.
