Essie Shor

Essie Shor, née Esia Levine, was born to a Jewish family in Novogrudek, Poland (present-day Belarus). Her parents were Sidney, a bookbinder, and Kunia Levine, and she had four siblings: sisters Mariashke and Rivale, and brothers Aron and Israel. When Essie was 16, life changed drastically as World War II began. Her hometown was occupied first by the Soviets, then by the Nazis. Then Jewish children were expelled from school and Jewish families were forced to give up all of their belongings. On December 7, 1941, the Jews were called to assemble in the courtyard of the district courthouse, where Essie and her father survived the massacre of about 4,500 people that followed, including her mother, her brothers, and her sisters. Essie and her father were among those confined in a ghetto in the suburb of Peresieka and put to work.
In 1942,
Essie learned about the existence of Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis, and escaped the ghetto to reach them in the forest. There she was reunited with her cousins, the brothers Tuvia, Zus, Aron, and Asael Bielski, leaders of the brigade. She was one of the only women in the group who learned to use a gun, and went on missions to obtain food, supplies, and strategic information. Near the end of the war, she

and another female fighter in her brigade, Itka, went on a combat mission against Nazi soldiers.
After the war, Essie met and married Jerry Shor after a whirlwind courtship. She and her husband and their young daughter emigrated to the USA, where they settled in the Bronx, New York, and had a second daughter. Essie worked for a major book manufacturer, and eventually went back to school to earn her college degree. She became a public school teacher, retiring at age 80. She published a memoir, Essie: The True Story of a Teenage Fighter in the Bielski Partisans, with Andrea Zakin, in 2009.