Schulman was a teenager when the Nazis invaded her town on the Russian-Polish border and murdered more than 1200 people, including her parents and siblings. She was spared because she was a photographer and she was ordered to develop their pictures of the massacre.  She later joined a partisan group made up mostly of escaped Soviet Red Army POWs. 

She described herself in a photo on the website www.jewishpartisans.org. 

“This is my group of partisans and I am here one girl and all boys. So you can imagine that sometimes it was a little bit hard because there was no body with me only all boys, all men,” she said.

Visiting instructor in modern European History at Florida Gulf Coast University, Lisa Booth, said Faye Schulman was among many women who served the partisan groups well.

“Faye’s experience aside from the photographer and aside from being Jewish but from being a woman is certainly an experience that we could learn a great deal more about as far as especially gender relations and the war and what war does to what we would consider standard  gender relations in the 1940’s. So it is a remarkable story, ” said Booth.

Booth said Schulman shows these photographs so that people don’t believe the Jews went to their deaths willingly. The photos Schulman took document her experiences while surviving for years in the woods while taking up arms against the Nazis. The exhibit is open through January 30 at the FGCU art lab. 

There’s a reception from 4 to 6 January 13 in the FGCU ArtLab lobby.