Mila 18 - Leon Uris

He was in the small corridor lined with tiny cells. He was standing on a mass of entwined corpses. His flashlight played over them. He pushed into the commander’s cell. It was empty. He found Rabbi Solomon in his cell, still stretched on his cot, a Torah in his waxy hands.

Andrei stepped over the bodies into the main corridor. The Chelmno room with its ammunition stores was a sight of devastation. Bodies were charred, unrecognizable from the explosions of the bottle bombs.

Wait!

Coughs!

Weak ... weak coughs!

Sounds of gagging and gasping from the Majdanek room.

Andrei plunged over the bodies.

“Simon! Deborah! Alex!” his lone voice called in the dark.

His light sped frantically over the bodies in Majdanek. Two or three of them were breathing with the desperation of fish out of water.

“Simon!”

Andrei rolled over the body of his commander. Simon Eden was dead. And then the light fell on the lifeless face of Alexander Brandel holding his infant Moses against his chest.

He turned the corpses over one by one. Fighters who had tried to hold back the civilians. Children ... children ... children ... and the light poked at the bricks removed to the sewer.

“Deborah!”

He knelt behind the body of his sister, who hung half in, half out of the room, stricken down while passing a child through the sewer to the safety of Mila 19. As he touched her she gasped. There was yet life!

“Deborah!”

“Don’t ... Don’t ...”

“Deborah ... you’re alive!”

“Don’t ... look at me ... I am blind.”

“Oh God! Deborah ... oh, my sister ... oh, my sister ...” He lifted her in his arms and found a corner and held her and rocked her back and forth and kissed her cheeks.

She coughed and gagged in terrible pain. “Some children are alive in Mila 19,” she rasped.

“Ssshhh ... don’t talk ... don’t talk.”

“Chris ... Rachael ... Wolf ...”

“Yes, darling ... yes. They have escaped. They are safe.”

She made a sound of relief and groaned as the sharpness of the gas jabbed her lungs.

“Andrei ... pain ... children in pain. Kill them ... put them out of their misery ...”

“Deborah! Deborah! Deborah!”

“So good ... you holding ... me ... Andrei ... I lost my pill ... please ... give ... me ... one.”

Andrei reached in his breast pocket and took a small cyanide capsule and put it against his sister’s parched lips.

“So good ... you holding me ... I was afraid I’d be alone. Andrei ... sing Momma’s song ... when we were children ...”

“What is the best Sehora?

My baby ... will ... learn the Torah. ...”

Chapter Twenty-two

GABRIELA BOLTED UPRIGHT IN bed, her heart pounding unmercifully. A dream of a chill wind passing through the room was unfounded. She perspired from the clarity of the nightmare. Andrei was a ghost floating over the smoldering rubble of the ghetto. She rolled to one side and squinted to read the luminous dial of the bedside clock. Three forty-five.

She flicked on the radio automatically, as she always did during the waking hours. Perhaps there would be a radio signal from the ghetto transmitter today. There had been none for twenty-six days, since the last time they fetched four children out of the sewers and took them to Father Kornelli. Twenty-six days of silence.

She slipped into a dressing gown and walked out to the fifth-story balcony. Far from the dream of cold, it was warmish out, fighting its way into late spring. Moonlight threw light on the ghetto. She watched for ever so long, just as she had stood and watched for hour after hour during the day. She had taken the new apartment because of its view of the ghetto.

The artillery fire had stopped. Almost nothing remained standing. The moonbeams played on disorganized heaps of brick.

Beep ... beep ... beep ...

A weak sound came from her radio.

She ran into the room.

Beep ... beep ... The signal faded and became drowned in static and re-emerged. Beep ... beep ... beep.

It stopped.

She sat with bated breath for a repeat. There was no further sound.

Then from the ghetto a sudden crackle of gunfire startled the stillness. She ran once more to the balcony but could see nothing. The gunfire sounds heightened.

Gabriela closed the balcony door, pulled down the blackout curtain, and flicked on the lamp beside the phone stand. She hedged for several moments, hoping that the transmission from the ghetto would be repeated. She lit a cigarette and pulled at it nervously, then with an impulsive spur of decision dialed a number.

A half-sleeping voice answered at the other end of the line.

“Kamek. This is Alena,” Gabriela said.

“Yes?”

“Did you hear it?”

“Yes, but I could not understand it.”

“Neither could I,” Gabriela said. “What should we do?”

“There is nothing we can do until after curfew. Come over to my place as soon as it turns light.”

Oberführer Funk blinked sleepily over the report. It was almost four o’clock in the morning, yet he wanted it for Kroger, Globocnik, and Himmler, finished and en route by dawn. It was precariously close to the one month marking the uprising. He wanted to give assurances that the bulk of action was over. Any further action was merely the formality of a mop-up. Soon, quite soon, victory could be formally declared.

Four o’clock.

Funk untied his silk night robe.

The sound of gunfire! What the devil! It was not possible. He had ordered the artillery to cease fire at two-thirty and for the patrols to resume their fixed positions.

He tied his robe quickly and started to lift the phone, then let his hand drop. A sudden grip of fear encompassed him. Could it be possible that the Jews were attacking? No ... it was ... discovery of another bunker, that was all. Don’t let your imagination run wild. Calm ... calm, now. Another large belt of schnapps and he sat slowly behind his desk again.

The crackling gunfire was sharper now. His hand once more touched the phone, fell from it. He licked his dry lips, sagged in the chair, and waited. The report to Berlin, Lublin, and Krakow lay face up before his eyes.

From: The SS and Police Führer, Warsaw District, Special Actions.

Ref. NO: 1 ab/ST/Gr-1607-Journal No. 663/43 SECRET

Re: Large-scale Ghetto Operation

To: Reichführer Der Schutzstaffel Himmler, Berlin

SS Obergruppenführer, Police General, Krakow

Gruppenführer General Government SS, SD, Lublin

I beg to advise the following information:

1. A total to date of 34,795 Jews and other sub-humans caught for deportation, 7,654 known destroyed in former residential area. Estimate another 11,000 destroyed in bunkers by asphyxiation, flames, etc.

Conclusion:

Except for sporadic resistance from the few remaining Jews and sub-humans, we have succeeded in our mission.

2. Account of reduction of Jewish residential compound,

(a.) 612 bunkers destroyed.

(b.) So-called Jewish residential area is nonexistent. Three buildings remain standing; that is, the Convert’s Church, parts of the Pawiak Prison, the Jewish Civil Authority building (former post office convenient for us to make immediate on-the-site executions of those we do not desire to transport).

3. Booty captured to date:

(a.) 7 Polish rifles, 1 Russian rifle, 7 German rifles.

(b.) 59 pistols of various calibers.

(c.) Several hundred hand grenades, including Polish and home-made.

(d.) Several hundred incendiary bottles.

(e.) Homemade explosives and infernal machines with fuses.

(f.) A variety of explosives, ammunition of all calibers. (In destroyed bunkers we were not able to capture further booty, which was destroyed. The captured hand grenades were used by us against the bandits.)