Jack Sutin, Jewish resistance leader during World War II, dies at 103

For longtime Twin Cities resident Jack Sutin, love and resistance went hand in hand.

During World War II, Sutin led a small group of Jewish partisans who gathered arms and fought the Nazis in Poland. Years later, in America, he and his wife were the subjects of a book about their experiences that won the Minnesota Book Award.

Sutin died Tuesday at his home in St. Louis Park. He was 103.

Born in Stolpce, then in Poland but now a city in Belarus, Sutin lived in a Jewish ghetto with his parents following the Nazis' 1941 breach of Hitler and Stalin's Nonaggression Pact. After his mother died, Sutin and his father fled to the woods of eastern Poland.

There Jack met his future wife, Rochelle. They were married in a Jewish partisan bunker in December 1942. They spent the next few years fighting with the resistance, ambushing German troops and blowing up bridges.

"We were in love for 68 years," Jack Sutin told the Star Tribune shortly after his wife's death in 2010. "She was a wonderful woman. When I was in the underground, I was very sick and she took care of me. I am alive today because of her."

In 1995, the Sutins' son, Larry, wrote a book chronicling his parents' story. "Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance," won broad critical acclaim, including a Minnesota Book Award.

He said his father always knew that he had lived through something that was important for people to understand and felt the need to share his experiences.

The Sutins were incredibly open when telling their story, said Steve Barberio, the director of a 2005 play performed by Hopkins' Stages Theatre Company based on the book. Their candor and sharp memories helped his actors understand the story and gave the play depth, he said.

"It was as much a love story as it was a story about the Holocaust," Barberio said.

Barberio said what he remembers most about Jack Sutin was his enduring love for his wife. Watching the pair interact with each other, he said, made it apparent how much Jack adored Rochelle. "As hateful as the world was at that time, their love ran deep," he said.

Another of Jack Sutin's defining characteristics was his warmth. "He was just as nice to the janitor and the waiter and the cleaning person as he was to the Wal-Mart corporate executive," said Sutin's daughter, Cecilia Dobrin.

In their later years, Sutin and his wife often shared their story in interviews and public talks. Even for Sutin, the story of survival was still sometimes hard to process.

"When we think about all the things we went through, we can't believe we did that," he said in a 1995 interview with the Star Tribune. "When we tell the stories to some people, they can't understand how we lived through the horrors. It's unexplainable."

In addition to his two children, Sutin is survived by three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Services have been held.

Haley Hansen is a University of Minnesota student on assignment for the Star Tribune.