Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Where to go? Where to turn?

“You!”

Chris whirled about. He saw no one in the courtyard from which the voice came.

“You!” it called again.

Chris walked toward the voice. It was coming from an indentation in the building.

“Turn around and walk,” the voice commanded. “Don’t look around. I will give you directions.”

He sat alone on the cot in the attic of Mila 19. Andrei Androfski entered.

Finally Chris stood up and turned his back on Andrei. “Divine retribution. The sinner has come to face his makers. Poetic justice in its purest form.”

Andrei sat at the wooden table and placed his elbow in the center. “Want to hand-wrestle? I haven’t eaten as well as you, but I can still beat you.”

“Don’t you know me, Andrei? I stood by with my hands in my pockets and my ears deafened to the cries of the dying.”

“Must you be so dramatic? All I want to do is hand-wrestle.”

“Andrei ...”

“We know how that report reached London, Chris. Thank you.”

Chris bit his lip to hold off tears.

“We got a horse over the wall this morning. Steaks tonight. Take this pistol. Later I’ll show you how to move around. I’ll put up another cot here for you. When you hear five alarm bells in short rings, it is a friend. Long dashes, we go to the roof. We must be very careful. The roofs are icy.”

“Andrei ...”

“Never mind. I understand.”

Chris was alone. He peered out of the slanting garret window. The snow had stopped, revealing the spires of churches beyond the wall. The churches would be filled with kneeling, praying, singing people. Meager gifts would be exchanged, and for an instant the spirit of goodness would pass through people. Would they think for a fleeting moment of those inside the ghetto? Would they remember that Jesus was a Jew? Chris was flooded with a strange, wonderful, warm sensation, and peace filled his body and his heart. It was a comfort he had never known in a restless, searching life. Now he had captured it.

Five short rings.

“Deborah ...”

“Don’t say anything. Just let me hold you, Chris. Don’t speak ... don’t speak ... Just let me hold you.”

Part Four

DAWN

Chapter One

Journal Entry

ALEXANDER BRANDEL CONTINUES TO be morose and uncommunicative. He has barely spoken to any of us all winter. The Orphans and Self-Help Society still “legally” exists and carries immune Kennkarten. I have assumed Alexander’s duties, such as they “officially” remain. There is still much intercourse with the Civil Authority on rations, etc.

The ghetto is like a morgue. It is impossible to believe that the face of the moon could be more quiet and deserted than the ghetto streets. During the Big Action the women going to the Umschlagplatz for deportation wanted to carry their silk comforters and feather beds, but they were too bulky. So they cut them open and dumped the feathers and goose down on the roofs so they could carry the outer cover (in hopes of finding something to refill them with at their destination). In some places the feathers are ankle-deep on the roofs, and when a wind blows it looks like snow coming down. Always, feathers drift down to add to the haunting stillness.

We think there are forty thousand of us left. Several thousand are at the Brushmaker’s and the uniform factory. There are some of us “authorized” personnel left, a thousand or so. (Why, we do not know.) Mostly there are Wild Ones. The ghetto has been transformed into an underground city with mazes of tunnels, hidden rooms, and cellars dug under cellars. The Militia and Nightingales wrecked all the vacant houses, so they are thoroughly uninhabitable.

We are completely shut off from the little ghetto, which has been devoid of Jews for almost a year, except for the woodwork factory, which has now closed. Poles are moving back into the former little ghetto, scrambling for the fine houses on Sienna and Sliska streets, which they are able to get without compensation to the departed occupants.

This winter we have concentrated in getting key people into the Aryan side. David Zemba reluctantly left the ghetto with his family, but I hear he continues to live in Warsaw, refusing to leave the country. We have been able to place six of the children (who escaped the Niska orphanage and live in the cellar of Mila 19) in the Franciscan Sisters’ convent in Laski.

Joint Forces has about seven hundred fighters in training, learning street-fighting tactics, the handling of our various weapons, and the routes over the roofs. We have twenty so-called battle companies, about one third armed. There are seven Labor Zionist companies, two Bund, four Communist, two Bathyran, and religious and mixed groups. The Revisionists outside of Joint Forces have a well-armed group of fifty, or more at their bunker under Nalewki 37.

Arms, food, and medical stores are hidden in dozens of alternate store bunkers all over the ghetto. Our standard weapon is the Polish 35 rifle. We have about thirty of these with a thousand rounds of ammunition. Next in importance are the fifty-six various models of 9-mm. pistols (German Mausers, Parabellums and Swedish Lahtis). The odd weapons are a nuisance, but we take them despite the difficulty and cost in obtaining ammunition. We have a few Italian Berettis (cal. 32) and Glisentis 10.35. The two Hungarian Baby Frummer .380’s have only eight rounds between them. (A round of ammunition for the Baby Frummer costs two hundred zlotys apiece, whereas 9-mm. ammo runs from eighty to a hundred and twenty zlotys.)

We have several thousand fire bottles and nearly a thousand water-pipe grenades manufactured from a formula by our genius, Jules Schlosberg. We have also three dozen Polish grenades and assorted knives.

Schlosberg’s newest concoction is a tin can filled with nuts and bolts. The open end of the can is sealed with plastic percussion caps and covered with a light wax. The theory works. We tested four of them in empty houses. The impact was so great that some of the bolts shot clear through the plaster walls into the next rooms. We call this “weapon” the “matzo ball.”

Joint Forces operates out of four primary bunkers. Simon Eden’s headquarters (Leszno 92) under Bund House, Gensia 43, and our bunker at Mila 19 (which now holds almost a hundred people, including eighteen children) form the “Central Command.” Rodel has a series of small bunkers at the southern end around the uniform factory. His main bunker is under the Convert’s Church! Father Jakub hears nothing. A good friend. The other command in the Brushmaker’s district is held by Wolf Brandel, who is barely twenty years old. Wolf amazes us all with his imagination and complete calm. His main bunker is at Franciskanska Street, almost at the ghetto wall and under two parts of the factory complex. Rachael Bronski, now a soldier, has gone to live at the Franciskanska bunker. Stephan Bronski, incidentally, is considered the best runner in the ghetto.

The Brushmaker’s factory still turns out six thousand brushes a day for the Wehrmacht. This means, of course, a constant flow of raw supplies in from the outside. Wolf has capitalized on this by paying off a few key people in shipping and receiving. Food cans and supplies coming in can be easily marked and used for smuggling in pistols and ammunition.

Before David Zemba went over to the Aryan side we held a final meeting of the Good Fellowship Club (half our original number are left). It was decided that everything except the current volume in progress should be hidden immediately. Fifty completed volumes have been stuffed into fourteen milk cans and sealed and buried in fourteen different places. Ten more milk cans and iron boxes contain unclassified or unentered material, such as photographs, diaries, poetry, essays. Only six people know where the twenty-four cans and boxes are hidden: David Zemba, Andrei Androfski, Gabriela Rak, Alexander Brandel, Christopher de Monti, and myself. David, Andrei, Gabriela, and Alex each know where part of the cache is located, so if captured they cannot possibly reveal the entire archives.