Mila 18 - Leon Uris

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, taking her arm to lead her to his car.

She jerked free of him.

“Come on, Deborah. We’ll talk about it at home. If one of those shells falls short we’ll be blown to kingdom come.”

“Get away from me,” she snarled.

The skyline lit up in quick, brilliant flashes and he saw her face. Her eyes were those of a madwoman. He grabbed her hand.

“I want to die!”

“Control yourself!”

“We did this to Paul!”

Chris shook her till her head bobbed. “We didn’t make this war!”

“God is punishing me! Murderers! We are murderers!” She tore herself out of his grip and ran off into the darkness.

Part Two

DUSK

Chapter One

Journal Entry—September 27, 1939, Warsaw surrendered.

POLAND HAS BEEN DIVIDED into three parts. Germany annexed western Poland to the pre-1918 borders. Soviet Russia has grabbed eastern Poland. The third part has been designated as the General Government Area, which the Germans are going to administrate. It appears this has been set up as a buffer zone against Russia.

The streets of Warsaw trembled beneath the treads of hundreds of tanks moving up Jerusalem Boulevard and the Third of May Boulevard in parade array. These were followed by tens of thousands of goose-stepping soldiers moving in absolute precision, and overhead, squadron after squadron of planes flew in elements at house-top level.

It was an awesome display. The curbs were lined with stunned people. A few German flags fluttered from the homes of ethnics or cowards.

I think that Andrei and I were the only two of Warsaw’s three hundred thousand Jews who watched. The rest sat behind drawn curtains and locked doors. I could not resist the temptation of seeing Adolf Hitler. He glowered at us from an open Mercedes. He looks just like his pictures.

I had to watch after Andrei. He was so enraged I was afraid he might try something foolish and get himself killed. He behaved.

Well, we’re in it now, brother.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

Franz Koenig wiped the peak of his cap with his sleeve to enhance the shine. What a pity Herr Liedendorf was not here for this moment. Liedendorf, long the leader of Warsaw’s ethnics, had been caught shining lights during German night-bombing raids and was shot by a Polish firing squad. He died a true son of Germany.

Franz Koenig, a brand-new official, had applied for Nazi membership. He was pure in birth, German all the way down to his great-grandparents. He was certain his membership would come through. He admired himself in the mirror and attached the swastika to his right sleeve and went into the bedroom to collect his plump Polish wife. She was too afraid to laugh when she saw the potbellied little professor decked out in a comic-opera uniform. Franz had changed since he began taking up with the Germans a few years before. Once she had had ambitions for him when he was at the university. She prodded him to try to win the chair of medicine. Now he had suddenly become a powerful man and was showing her a dark side she never knew existed, and she did not particularly like it.

Koenig’s wife looked like an over decorated Christmas tree or perhaps a clove-garnished pig ready for the oven. She made nearly two of him. Franz circled her, reckoned she would have to do, and they went out of their flat to the staff car waiting to take them to the grand ballroom of the Europa.

When they arrived the room was filled with uniformed generals of the land forces and admirals of the sea forces and generals of the sky forces and pin-striped, swallow-tailed, beribboned members of the diplomatic forces. Franz saw many old friends, also in new uniforms, and they looked neither more nor less ridiculous than he did, nor did their wives. There was a fantastic amount of heel clicking, square handshakes, bowing and hand kissing, glass clinking, and merry congratulations to the tune of soft Viennese waltzes ludicrously rendered by a German army band. Bottles popped and there was laughter and monocles. There was an entourage of new Polish mistresses, quick to serve new masters, and they were sized up for bed duty by the new administrators of Warsaw.

The orchestra stopped between two notes.

A single drum roll.

Everyone scrambled to set down his drink and line up on either side of the sweeping staircase.

Adolf Hitler appeared at the top of the stairs and as he stepped down, followed by a mass of black-uniformed men, the orchestra rendered a soul-stirring “Deutschland über Alles.” It was indeed a moment for German backs to be ramrod-stiff and German hearts to pound. Unable to contain himself, an overenthusiastic officer of lower rank cried out, “Sieg Heil!”

Hitler stopped and nodded and smiled.

“Sieg Heil!” cried the officer again.

And the room broke into spontaneous rhythmic chanting, right arms thrust forward.

“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

Tears of joy streamed down the cheeks of Dr. Franz Koenig, the enthralled and the hypnotized.

Like the ethnic Germans of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the ethnics of Poland lined up for their reward for the service of spying on Poland and helping to destroy the country of their residence in advance of the German army. In the months before the invasion Dr. Koenig had grown powerful in the movement, second only to the late Liedendorf. He was made a special deputy to the new Kommissar of Warsaw, Rudolph Schreiker.

“Dr. Paul Bronski is here to see you, sir,” a secretary told Koenig.

Koenig looked up from his massive, gleaming desk in his new office in the city hall.

“Show him in.”

Paul was ushered in. Koenig pretended to be deep in meditation of a paper before him. He allowed Bronski to stand, neither offering recognition, a handshake, a seat, or sympathy for his missing right arm.

Paul Bronski had made a good recovery, but he was still very weak and in constant pain. He stood before Koenig’s desk for a full five minutes before the German looked up. He realized that Koenig was basking in the glory of retribution. Koenig looked around the lavish environment, as if to point out the distance he had traveled from the tiny cluttered room he had had at the university.

“Sit down,” Koenig said at last. He lit his pipe, rocking his chair back and forth, back and forth. Then, after another few moments, after insatiable sensations oozed from every pore, the delightful pleasures of revenge faded.

“Bronski, I summoned you here because we are in the process of forming a new Jewish Civil Authority. We are disbanding the old Jewish Council as of this afternoon. I am appointing you as deputy in charge of Jewish professionals.”

“But ... Franz ... my position at the university ... ”

“As of tomorrow, there will be no more Jews at the university.”

“I have no choice?”

“That is correct. If you carry out our directives and cooperate, you will be much better off than the other Jews in Warsaw, I can assure you.”

“I ... don’t know what to say. It would certainly do no good to plead that ... I have been divorced from all things Jewish for many years.”

“The directives from Berlin clearly state that all new laws regarding Jews refer also to converts to Catholicism and people having one Jewish parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent. Active or inactive practice of Judaism is not a matter of consideration.”

“Franz ... I ... it is hard to believe what I hear.”

“Times have changed, Dr. Bronski. Get used to it quickly.”

“We have been friends a long, long time. ...”

“Never friends.”

“Professional colleagues, then. You have always been a compassionate man. You were here this last month. You saw what happened. You are an intelligent human being. I cannot believe that you have completely lost feeling for us.”