After
Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Schulman's family was split up, with most of them, including Schulman herself, being imprisoned in the Lenin Ghetto, while two of her brothers were sent to a labor camp. On August 14, 1942, German forces killed 1,850 Jews from the ghetto, sparing only 28 for their skills useful to the Nazis, Schulman among them, due to her photography skills. Shortly after the massacre she was ordered to develop photos by the Nazis, which she made personal copies of in secret. About a month after her capture, when Soviet guerrillas attacked the locale, they allowed her to flee with them. She joined the Molotava Brigade which was composed mostly of Soviet
prisoners of war who had escaped from German captivity, working as a nurse and soldier for them from September 1942 to July 1944. After a raid of Lenin, she regained her photography equipment, eventually taking over 100 photographs of the Resistance. In spite of those shortcomings, she was grateful to the partisans for their help in defeating the Nazis. About the experience, she wrote: "We all belonged to one brigade. We learned to live together, eat together, fight together and survive together. We also needed to get along with each other. Sometimes it was hard to live through one day, let alone years. There was a strong friendship, cooperation and loyalty amongst most of us and a willingness to help each other. In the forest, connections were made between disparate people. Cold, hunger, stress forced strangers to become like family. We were also comrades in arms, all dealing with the same life-and-death circumstances. Our lives were bonded by the dangerous conditions under which we constantly lived. A special bond, nonetheless, existed among those of us who had experienced similar horrors under the Nazis." ==Post-war==