8 Days Honoring 8 Female Fighters — Day 4

These skills rendered her one of the only Jewish partisan photographers to memorialize partisan endeavors during World War II.

Upon the Nazi invasion, her family was imprisoned in the Lenin Ghetto. On August 14, 1942, German soldiers killed 1,850 Jews from the ghetto; only 26 were spared.

Faye was one of them.

She was taken to serve as a photographer for the Nazis. Not only did they commit the most horrendous human crimes, but they also wanted to have memories of them.

As a Nazi photographer, she also developed photos. Then, one day, she developed a photo of her own family. Dead and splattered, undignified, in a mass grave.

This shocking image compelled her to leave immediately and join the resistance. She joined the Soviets in the Molotava Brigade and served as a nurse, soldier, and photographer from September 1942 to July 1944.

Faye was the only woman in the group.

In her memoir, A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust, Faye reminisces about her time with the Soviet partisans. She tells about how men and women were treated as equals; everyone was united with the sole focus of defeating the enemy.

However, an officer nearly killed her when she did not reciprocate his sexual advances.

Although unified by a shared adversary, antisemitism was not uncommon among resistance fighters. Because she was Jewish, Faye had to work twice as hard to prove her worthiness.

Finally, after incessant work, her comrades complimented her, “You are not like a Jewish girl. You are just like the Russian girls”, to which she replied proudly, “ Yes, but I am Jewish.”

Schulman once said in an interview: “I want people to know that there was resistance. If [Jews] had the slightest opportunity to fight back, they did and took revenge. Many lost their lives heroically. I was a photographer. I have pictures. I have proof.”

For two years, she took over a hundred photographs, developing the negatives under blankets and making “sun prints” during the day.

When Belarus was liberated in July 1944, she was reunited with two of her brothers and left the brigade when she met her future husband, Morris Schulman, a Jewish partisan.

Faye’s camera was buried in the ground many times when she was on assignments or in battle.

She would return, dig it out, and continue to take photos. It was no simple feat to take and develop pictures in war-torn territories.

She said,

“This camera has seen everything”

After the war, Faye and her husband lived in Displaced Persons Camps in Germany for three years, finally emigrating to Canada in 1948.

In 1995, Faye published a book, “A Partisan’s Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust,” displaying many of her photographs.

She was blessed with two children, six grandchildren, and a long life when she passed away, surrounded by her family, on April 24, 2021.

She was 101 years old.

To Faye and all the brave women out there. May we know them, may we be them.