A new account sheds light on a little-known aspect of World War II: resistance to the Nazis by Jews. It has been written by two Holocaust survivors, Jack Kagan and Dov Cohen.

Kagan and Cohen, his elder cousin, both spent several years serving with the Jewish partisans who fought the Nazis after they invaded Belorussia in the former Soviet Union and occupied their home town of Novogrodek in the winter of 1941.

Before the war, Belarus had a large Jewish community, very little of which now remains

At the outbreak of war Novogrodek had a prosperous Jewish community numbering more than 6,000. Once the Nazis arrived they quickly set about implementing their genocidal policies and rounded up the town's Jewish men, women and children.

Once captured they were taken deep into the forest that surrounded the town. They were forced to strip by the Nazis and local collaborators. Once naked they were then shot with machine guns. Five thousand one hundred of Novogrodek's Jews were killed in this manner.

Jack Kagan was one of the remaining 900 Jews who were placed in a ghetto. Although conditions there were terrible some prisoners did manage to escape. A tunnel was dug, over 150m (164 yds) long and fully equipped with electric lights, via which Kagan broke free.

Secret community With his freedom secured Kagan managed to join up with a band of Jewish partisans led by the Bielski brothers. Working behind Nazi lines the Bielski brothers managed to improvise a resistance network.

Over 1,200 Jews found refuge with them, 360 of whom took up arms against the Nazis. The Bielski brothers managed to create a whole partisan community, complete with synagogues, bakeries and even an airstrip which the Soviet air force used to fly in supplies and fly out the wounded.

The two surviors have published an account of their experiences, called Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans. The decision to put pen to paper was prompted by the simple fact that survivors are now dying out. Jack Kagan put it bluntly: "After I go, no one will be able to say anything."

An exhibition detailing Jewish resistance to the Nazis in Belarus is being launched at the Imperial War Musuem in London on Thursday.

 
Kagan describes his torture by the Nazis

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