In Eastern Europe during World War II, 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 were chronicled in books, a documentary and a Hollywood movie coming out next year. But now, the sole surviving Bielski brother is being called something far 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.
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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 and returned to Palm Beach.
The charges against the couple carry up to 90 years in prison. Bell's attorney has strongly denied the allegations and said the old woman was going senile.
During the 1941 Nazi invasion of what was then the Soviet Union in which they thousands of Jews were killed or imprisoned, the Bielski brothers fled their home near Stankiewicze, now in Belarus, and hid in the forest.
Over a thousand armed fighters and Jewish families joined the brothers' encampment and a resistence movement emerged.
"To save a Jew is much more important than to kill Germans," Tuvia Bielski would tell his followers, differentiating the Bielski movement from the majority of partisan groups.
Relatives said they are shocked at the charges against Aron Bell. "I don't believe it," said Zvi Bielski, 56, of New York City, Zus' son. "It's totally out of character."My dad was like his father during the war. I can't imagine what happened," he added.
Authorities said the Bells befriended the elderly Janina Zaniewska, who was once imprisoned by the Nazis alongside Jews in Poland. She lived in the same Palm Beach condominium complex as the Bells.
The couple persuaded her to give them power of attorney over her bank accounts, investigators said.
In May, the Bells flew with Zaniewska to Poland under the guise of taking her to visit old friends, police said. The Bells dropped her at a nursing home and returned to Palm Beach.
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.
"Thank God you found me," police said she told authorities. She returned to the U.S. in early October and prosecutors charged the Bells with scheming to defraud Zaniewska, exploitation of the elderly and theft.
"This whole notion that the Bells sent this poor lady to Poland so they could steal her money is just preposterous," said the couple's attorney, Steven Gomberg, adding that the Bells were financially comfortable and intended to aid Zaniewska with her finances as her mental capacity diminished.
"We have people here, elderly people, in their 90s who are losing their faculties and have financial assets that need to be preserved and unfortunately have nobody else," Gomberg said. "There was nothing stolen. She's not lost a penny," he added.
Ewa Chyra, director of the nursing home in Poland, said Zaniewska was aware of where she was, what was going on, and who brought her there but showed some confusion. "Zaniewska told various stories, so one could doubt some of what she said," Chyra said. Zaniewska's attorney, Robert Montgomery, said she has all her faculties but fell victim to the Bells.
"They stole money from her, there's no question about that, pretty much cleaned her out," Montgomery said. "She was taken advantage of," he said. Aron Bell did not return repeated telephone messages. Zaniewska's number is unpublished and efforts to reach her at her condo were unsuccessful.
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