Mila 18 - Leon Uris

It was turning light outside. They poked their heads out of the drainage pipe in the Nalewki 39 courtyard and sprinted to cover. Around them, fires continued to sizzle. They could hear a rumble of trucks assembling in Muranowski Place.

Andrei gestured that they had to move along under cover to the intersection of Nalewki and Gensia, a single block. They were almost completely hidden by the few walls, shell holes, immense rubble piles.

At the intersection they were in for trouble. It was a main cross street which ran parallel to the ruins of the Brushmaker’s and was filled with patrols and movement. It would be hell to get across the street without being seen.

Andrei crept along a few feet, signaled Chris to follow, crept another few feet, signaled Chris again.

They inched along for fifty yards. It took two hours.

Clump! Clump! Clump! Clump!

They lay flat as a company of soldiers passed. The hoots seemed to be only inches away from them.

A hundred feet north, the Germans had discovered a bunker of civilians. A little emaciated boy and two girls no more than six years old crawled out of a pile of bricks, holding their hands over their heads. They stood trembling under the guns and bayonets of the German soldiers, who were amused with their find. An officer ordered the children to hold their hands higher so he could properly photograph his “prisoners.”

Dogs were moved into the area along with sound detectors.

Freeze or go? Andrei did not like his present position. His only cover was out toward Nalewki Street. The Germans were fanning out and would be behind him. He nudged Chris and pointed to a shell hole a few yards away.

Andrei slid up to it cautiously. It was perfect. The bottom was covered with fallen timber, mud, and muck. He plunged down six feet headfirst and Chris made his move in a leap and dive atop him. They squirmed under the charred timbers to cover their bodies. And they lay.

An hour passed. The sounds of activity overhead never faded.

Grrrrrrr! Grrrrrrrr!

They heard a dog’s claws padding around, sniffing. Andrei opened an eye just a slit.

A dog crouched on the rim of the shell hole. He could see fangs. The animal sniffed and growled.

“What do you see, Schnitzel?” a soldier said.

“Jews down there, Schnitzel boy? I see nothing.”

The animal poked his nose through the boards and sniffed. Chris felt the dog’s wet nose against his face. The animal’s jaws opened and the teeth pressed close to Chris’s throat.

“Schnitzel! Up here, boy!”

“Up here I say!”

The dog backed slowly off the buried bodies. The soldier hooked his leash again and knelt and squinted into the shell hole. He called another soldier.

“Schnitzel smells Jews down there. Do you see anything?”

“No ... Wait. Is that a hand?”

“Where?”

“In the mud there.”

“Ah yes ... I see it now.”

“It looks like they are dead.”

“Well, let’s make certain. Stand back. I throw a grenade.”

... the grenade slowly rolled down the hole.

Andrei lifted his head, snatched the grenade in a lightning motion, and threw it back up.

Blam!

The dog yelped.

“Jews!”

“Move your ass, Chris! Move your ass!”

Chapter Twenty

THE GERMANS WERE IN Mila 18, directly over the bunker, smashing around to find the entrance.

In the dark catacomb the hidden could hear guttural orders being snapped, the clumping of boots, the crashing of axes. Simon Eden slipped from the cot to the floor. The cot creaked too much. It could send up a sound. He propped his back against the dirt wall, and his bleary black-ringed eyes went upward in his head. Alex sat against the wall opposite him, bent double with tension, exhaustion, and grief for his wife. The stunted, lily-pale boy Moses Brandel, who had spent most of his life in silence, was silent again.

For five hours the enemy prowled in Mila 18. In this endless agony the hidden tried to make their breathing soundless and their hearts stop, for surely the detectors would catch a sound of life. Alex raised his head long enough to look at his watch. It was three more hours till darkness.

Oh Lord ... what then? Even when darkness comes they would be locked in this, their tomb, their final coffin. Four hundred lungs gasped for the meager ration of air.

Four hundred of the damned—numbed, sweaty, half naked, half dead.

The sixty Fighters who remained still had enough anger in their hearts to spoil for the making of a gesture of defiance.

Simon tried to rationalize. It was difficult to do that any more. The sewers were deadly and filled with bloated gassed corpses. There was no door open to them beyond the wall. We are finished, anyhow. Why not take my Fighters up and make a final attack? What would happen to the children and the civilians if we went up? What would happen to them?

Either way, doomsday was at hand. Well, Simon, make the choice, he said to himself. Be baked alive in this catacomb or destroy some of the enemy along with us? So hard to think. So hard. I wish Andrei would get back.

The noise above them stopped. For that instant everyone’s heart in the bunker stopped too. They waited ... a moment ... two ... three.

“They’re gone,” Alex whispered ever so softly. “Do you suppose Chris and Andrei got to Wolf?”

Simon didn’t hear Alex. His stomach churned with anger. The instant Andrei returned he would split into two forces. He would take one and Andrei the other, and they would throw every last grenade, fire every last shot in a suicide attack. Goddamn Germans! Dirty bastard animals! Dirty bastard animals!

Deborah Bronski slipped into the cell. They learned to speak and hear the other by barely whispering. “Will I be able to take the children up tonight? They’ve been lying still for two solid days and nights without speaking. They must have some air ... some water ...”

Simon was detached. Alex and Deborah tried to speak to him, but he was in his own fuzzy world of logistics, trying to organize an attack with knives against cannons.

“Simon, don’t do it,” Alex begged. “Don’t do what you’re thinking.”

“At least we’ll die looking at the sky,” Simon said.

Oberführer Alfred Funk’s field headquarters were in the Citadel, a few blocks from the northern gates of the ghetto. His goading obsession for several days had been focused on a blown-up sectional map of the central area filled with markings where sounds had been detected along Mila Street. Trails of underground sounds indicating tunnels, all in the proximity of the middle of the block. He knew it led to the Jews’ main bunker. Two entrances had been located. One in an air-raid shelter on Kupiecka Street, the other in a house on Muranowski Place. But he could not attack yet, for there were certain to be three or four more entrances and the Jews could either escape or hide in the other exits.

A large black grease-pencil mark was drawn around the houses from Mila 16 to Mila 22.

Funk walked to the second-story window and looked at his handiwork. Most of the ghetto had been leveled. Engineers were systematically dynamiting the standing buildings one by one to flush out those Jews who had hidden themselves in sub-floors. It had gone well in the last few days. Since the final action more than twenty thousand Jews had been taken to the Umschlagplatz and another five thousand were known dead. How many were burned or gassed? Impossible to tell, but the total indicated that victory over the invisible army of the Jews was at hand. He could not foolishly declare victory until the Mila Street bunker had been found.

Funk was desperate to find it quickly, for soon the rebellion would be in its second month and that would look very, very bad. Polish Home Army activity had been spurred by the Jewish rebellion, and unrest among the occupied countries could be felt as a direct result. He simply had to finish it off before it went over a month’s duration.