Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War
people have said that he was publicly executed by fellow partisans for reasons unknown. Samuel, who was part of a special unit that fought on Polish soil, lost his left arm clearing a mine and received special decorations for his actions as a partisan and soldier. 3 Other Ludvipol survivors who joined the NKVD include Haim Shlifer and Ben Shecna. Shlifer, one of Shmuel Shafir’s older broth - ers, was born in 1911 in the Ukrainian village of Selishtch; the family later moved to Ludvipol, where their father, Rabbi Yeshaiyo Dov Shlifer, was a chazzan (cantor, in Hebrew). A local organiz- er for Beitar, Haim married Hannah Babtzuk in 1938. They had one daughter. According to Shmuel and another surviving brother, Isser, Haim witnessed the murder of his wife, daughter, and other brothers by Germans or Ukrainians and was determined to avenge their deaths. During or after the liquidation, he fled into the woods and joined the Medwiedow partisans, then moved to Mezhirichi and joined the NKVD. While with the NKVD, he and Ben Shecna took part in numerous operations against Nazis and local collabo- rators. When the Russians were unwilling to track down perpetra- tors who had killed Jews, which happened frequently, these two operated with an independent group of Jewish survivors; Shlifer was said to be the head, hands, and legs of the group. One of his most famous deeds was the capture of a man, known as “Truchon” or “Combat,” who, as a senior commander of the Ukrainian Ban- dera partisans, had murdered a large number of Jews. After the war, Truchon was known to have gone into hiding in the village of Lipka. Sixty armed cavalrymen from the Red Army accompanied Shecna and Shlifer to the outskirts of the village. When the villag- ers opened fire, the soldiers wanted to withdraw, but Shlifer insist - ed on entering and fighting until the Bandera leader was captured and handed over to the authorities; Truchon admitted to numerous atrocities and was hung with thirteen other murderers. Shlifer con- tinued his pursuit of Nazi killers and collaborators until the tenth of Tevet, 1945 (December 14), when he was ambushed and killed by Ukrainians on his way to an action in Skitzin, near Mezrichi. He was buried in Mezrichi with thirty-seven other partisans, the only
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