Mila 18 - Leon Uris

“Don’t take any wine unless it’s offered.”

“Shalom.”

“Shalom.”

Simon set the phone down and looked up at Tolek and Andrei.

“I heard,” Andrei said. He went quickly to Belzec and Auschwitz. “All right! Let’s go! Up to the roofs!”

The Fighters snatched their weapons and crowded to the ladder which would take them through the stove into Mila 18.

“Move along, move along,” Andrei prodded.

Alexander Brandel stumbled from his cell, coming out of a deep sleep. “A drill, Andrei?”

“No drill. They’re coming.”

“Runners!” Simon Eden barked.

A dozen swift, daring boys in their teens clustered around the entrance to Poniatow. Simon towered over them. “The Germans are massing before their barracks with their Auxiliaries. We expect them through the Zelazna Gate. One thousand in number. Alert all companies. Hold fire unless fired upon. Move out!”

The ghetto rats scampered through the six exits to alert the scattered bunkers.

Andrei watched the last of his men go up the ladder to the stove upstairs. Stephan, Andrei’s personal runner, followed his uncle as though he were glued to him. Andrei poked his head into Poniatow. Simon was afraid. Andrei slapped Simon’s shoulder hard. “We won’t fire until we can smell their breath,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“We’ll soon find out,” Simon said. “I wish I could be up there with you.”

Andrei shrugged. “Such are the fortunes of a commander,” he said, and was gone with Stephan close behind him.

Tolek ran up and down the tunnel. “Stop the generator! Combat conditions! Deborah, keep the children quiet. Rabbi, I’ll have to ask you to pray silently. Moritz, card game’s over for now. Button up, everyone—button up!”

Adam Blumenfeld at the radio threw a switch to put the receiver on batteries as the generator ground to a halt and the lights went out.

Beep ... beep ... beep ... beep ... he heard in his earphones. He pulled the headset off and called out in the darkness.

“Are you there, Simon?”

“I’m here.”

“Radio confirmation. The Germans are moving.”

Beep ... beep ... beep ... beep ... warned the mobile transmitter from the Aryan side.

Simon struck a match and found the candle on the desk. He cranked the phone handle.

“Haifa ... hello, Haifa.”

“This is Haifa.”

“This is Atlas in Jerusalem. Let me speak to Chess Master.”

“Chess Master speaking,” Wolf Brandel answered from the Franciskanska bunker.

“The Rhine Maidens and their Swans are at Stalingrad. One thousand bottles. They’re coming through the Red Sea. Don’t drink any wine unless it’s offered.”

“Oh boy!”

Simon hung up. He could see Alex and Tolek on the fringe of the candle glow. Now was the commander’s agony. Waiting in the dark. The acid test was here. It was deathly still. Even the endless prayers of Rabbi Solomon trailed to a silent movement of the lips.

Across vacant courtyards, flitting over rooftops, sloshing through sewage, darting up deserted staircases, the runners from Mila 18 flashed from cover to cover to alert the Fighters. The companies moved in ghostlike silence to their positions behind windows, on the roofs, from sewer cover. Yes, it was all quite like a drill.

The streets had a stillness like the face of the moon. Some feathers fluttered down from the rooftops in sudden gusts of wind. Hidden eyes watched the ethereal stillness.

A dim sound of heels cracking against cobblestones. Clump ... clump ... clump ... clump ... clump.

The SS at the Zelazna Gate, barricaded behind machine-gun nests, darted out to remove the barbed-wire gate blocking the entrance.

Rodel looked from the window in the uniform factory out to the picket fence where the black-uniformed marchers flickered past with the broken motion of a film running to a halt. The bootless brown uniforms of the Auxiliaries made a softer tread. Rodel watched, his teeth tightening in his moon-shaped face. On and on they passed.

“Hello, Beersheba,” Rodel phoned to his bunker. “This is Tolstoy. Advise Jerusalem that the Rhine Maidens and their Swans have passed the Land of Goshen. Brunhilde is leading them. They are going up the Jordan River.”

Andrei Androfski looked up and down the rooftops at his dispersed Fighters. He was satisfied that they were deployed properly. Once on the roofs, the Joint Command was able to keep their companies in communication by signal posts from roof to roof. A message was relayed from Ana Grinspan’s company that the Germans were marching up Zamenhof Street almost at the same moment that Rodel’s command had phoned the information to Simon Eden.

Andrei crawled on his belly to the corner overlooking the intersection of Mila and Zamenhof streets, with Stephan at his heels. He wiggled into a position to observe Zamenhof Street through a pair of field glasses.

Andrei grumbled to himself and sharpened his focus. “Brunhilde himself,” he said. “Stutze. How nice.”

Clump! Clump! Clump! Clump! The boot heels cracked, their echoes reverberating off the hollow shells of the buildings.

“Halt!”

The SS, Wehrmacht, and Auxiliaries broke ranks and scattered at the corner of Zamenhof and Gensia streets under the eyes and guns of Ana Grinspan’s company.

With the enemy three blocks away, Andrei shifted his position, risking a little more exposure to get a better view. He saw the Germans surrounding the Civil Authority building and the Jewish Militia barracks. SS men smashed into the abandoned Civil Authority. In a few minutes Andrei watched a confused command meeting in the middle of Zamenhof Street. Stutze pointed and ranted.

“Hello, what’s this?” Andrei whispered.

Jewish militiamen appeared in the streets for the first time since they had been terrorized into their barracks, but now they came at the end of Wehrmacht bayonets. Several Jewish militiamen, obviously of rank, were pulled from the herd and beaten into the Civil Authority building.

The sounds of machine pistol shots split the air.

“Runner!” Andrei snapped. Stephan crawled alongside him.

“Get a message to Simon. The Germans are rounding up the Jewish Militia. Some of them are being executed in the Civil Authority building. Apparently the Germans don’t know that the Civil Authority has defected. We can anticipate the Germans taking the Militia straight up Zamenhof to the Stawki Gate and the Umschlagplatz. We want instructions.”

Stephan repeated the message, then scooted down the middle of the roof for the short run through the skylight of Mila 18 and down the stairs to the bunker. Stephan appeared at the same moment that Ana Grinspan’s runner appeared with an identical message.

Simon looked to Tolek and Alex.

“Andrei wants instructions,” Stephan said.

The Germans would march the Jewish Militia under the massed guns of Andrei’s companies and a company of Wolf’s Fighters near the Stawki Gate. There were a thousand Germans in the street. They would be sitting pigeons. Should the rebellion begin on a note of saving Jewish traitors? Would it not be poetic and historic justice to see those ghouls marched off to the Umschlagplatz just as they had taken their own blood and flesh? An outburst which would give these bastards a chance to spread and hide would all but deplete the ammunition stores of the Joint Forces.

Command decision! God. If only Andrei were down here to knock me on my back. Tolek and Alex continued to watch him in the dim light. Simon sucked in a deep breath, then another. The Germans were in a box such as they might never be caught in again. But ... did it not take just as much courage to make the decision to let them pass out of the ghetto to give his Fighters a day, a week, ten days to find more ammunition?