PALM BEACH, Fla. — In Eastern Europe during World War II, young Aron Bielski and his three older brothers mounted what was, by most accounts, the biggest armed rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust.
The Bielski brothers were acclaimed as heroes, and their exploits chronicled in books, a documentary and a Hollywood movie coming out next year.
But now, the sole surviving brother is being called something different — a con man.
Now 80 and known as Aron Bell, he has been arrested on charges of swindling a 93-year-old woman, a Catholic survivor of the Holocaust. Bell and his wife, Henryka, 58, are accused of tricking the old woman into giving them control of more than $250,000 in various bank accounts.
According to police, the couple then convinced the woman they were taking her on a vacation to her native Poland, and instead put her in a nursing home there, returned to Palm Beach and spent her money, nearly every penny.
The charges carry up to 90 years in prison.
Bell’s attorney has strongly denied the allegations and said the old woman, Janina Zaniew ska, was going senile.
Back in 1941, as the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the Bielski brothers fled their home near Stankiewicze in what is now Belarus and hid out in the forest, determined to resist, fight and save lives.
The encampment grew to include hundreds of armed fighters, families, children and elderly. No Jew was turned away.
Their movement ultimately rescued about 1,200 Jews.
“To save a Jew is much more important than to kill Germans,” Tuvia Bielski would say.
Most other partisan groups focused solely on hunting Nazis, killing collaborators and seeking revenge, said Christian Gerlach, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied the Holocaust extensively.
“There are thousands of people who are walking the Earth because of the decisions that him and his older brothers made,” said Tuvia’s son Michael Bielski, 55, of Bonita Springs.
One brother was killed in 1944 while fighting for the Red Army. The others immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s, settling down in the New York area and mostly working blue-collar jobs until finding success in the taxi and trucking industries. Aron retired to Florida in the 1990s.
Police were contacted in August by a bank manager who wondered why the Bells were withdrawing Zaniewska’s money. Police eventually found Zaniewska at the nursing home.
