Mila 18 - Leon Uris

His class had six other boys. They studied in the basement beneath the home of Rabbi Solomon. They spoke in whispers. All about them were the treasures taken from the synagogue for safekeeping. The synagogue’s library of many thousand books of Talmudic and Jewish literature was there. The menorah, the sacred candelabra, were there. The heart of Judaism, the Torah scrolls from the ark of the synagogue, were there.

The boys learned Hebrew prayers, ethics of the fathers, and prepared for the bar mitzvah.

The old man would walk from one to the other and pick up the chant of their prayer, pat one on the head, twist another’s ear who was lagging. Although he was ancient, the boys could not put anything over on him, for it seemed he could see in back of his head and hear all seven of them at the same time.

Stephan Bronski asked the rabbi if he could be excused for a moment and it was granted. He stood up, and then he saw them!

There were three Nazis in black uniforms in the doorway. Major Sieghold Stutze stood before the other two.

“Rabbi!” Stephan cried.

And they all froze in terror.

Sieghold Stutze limped into the room. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”

The children flocked behind the rabbi, quivering in fright. One vomited. Only Stephan Bronski stood in front of the old man. His eyes burning with anger, he looked at that moment very much like his Uncle Andrei.

Stutze brushed Stephan aside as he tried to “protect” the old rabbi and grabbed him by the beard and flung him to the floor. He took the dagger from his belt, straddled the fallen man, and cut off the earlocks worn by religious Jews because King David had worn them.

The other two Nazis broke into laughter. They walked around the room, throwing the books to the floor, overturning the desks, trampling on the symbolic ornaments from the synagogue.

“These will make a lovely bonfire,” Stutze said. His eyes searched the room carefully. “It is here, somewhere—now where is it?” He walked to a large canvas. “Could it be beneath here?”

“No!” shrieked the rabbi.

“Aha!” Stutze said, pulling the canvas away, revealing the Torah scrolls.

“No!” shrieked the rabbi again.

Stutze took off the breastplate, tore off the velvet cover, and took out the scrolls which formed the heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the five books of Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. “Here it is, the prize.”

The rabbi crawled to the Nazi and threw his arms about his knees and begged him not to harm the scrolls. Stutze answered by sending his boot thudding into the old man’s ribs.

As he dangled the tree-of-life lambskin Torah before Solomon’s nose the old man cried prayers.

Stutze laughed and his troopers laughed. “I understand old Jews often die for this trash.”

“Kill me, but do not harm the Torah!”

“Shall we have some amusement? You! Boys! Line up against the wall! Hold your hands over your heads and put your faces to the wall.”

The boys did as they were ordered. Stutze dropped the Torah to the floor. Rabbi Solomon crawled quickly to it and covered it with his body.

Stutze took out his pistol and walked to the boys. “All right, old Jew, dance for us. Right on the Torah.”

“Kill me first.”

The Austrian cocked his pistol and placed the barrel against the back of Stephan Bronski’s head. “I shall not kill you, old Jew. Let me see how many of the boys I will have to kill first. Now dance for us.”

“Don’t do it, Rabbi!” Stephan shouted.

Stutze went into a spasm of hysterics. “Sometimes when I play this game we have to kill two or three before they do their dance.”

The old man got to his knees, grunting in anguish.

“Now dance for us, old Jew.”

As Stutze tantalized the boys by placing the pistol against their skulls they cried, “Rabbi! Rabbi!”

The tears streamed down the old man’s cheeks.

He brought his foot down on the Torah and shuffled a grotesque dance on the sacred lambskin.

“Faster, old Jew, faster! Wipe your feet on them!”

“Now, old Jew—piss on them! Piss on them!”

While the Nazis convulsed in laughter at the desecration of the Law, Stephan Bronski had in the flash of a second made a lightning dash for freedom.

Chapter Fifteen

Journal Entry

NEVER A DULL MOMENT since Sturmbannführer Sieghold Stutze has honored us with his presence. He calls his SS detail the “Reinhard Corps” after Reinhard Heydrich, the SD chief in Berlin. This gives us a clue to the chain of command. Hitler, Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Globocnik, and, in Warsaw, Stutze. In this week’s meeting with Emanuel Goldman, David Zemba, and Simon Eden, they gave me a raft of notes for my journal.

The Reinhard Corps swept into the northern Jewish area in large trucks and emptied Jewish stores of all their merchandise.

The Reinhard Corps has been going into individual homes and taking clothing, pots, pans, lamps, books — which are burned — pillows, blankets.

The Reinhard Corps has emptied supplies from Jewish warehouses, including Zemba’s American Relief supplies. This has created shortages in medicine and food. Then Dr. Koenig sold us back the things that Stutze had stolen at a six-hundred-per-cent markup.

Fuel ration has brought on pneumonia this winter, Emanuel Goldman tells me. He says another cut in food ration was ordered by Schreiker yesterday.

Not to be outdone by the Reinhard Corps, Rudolph Schreiker has hundreds of thugs from Solec and even mobs of children and students to roam the Jewish area and smash store windows, beat up Orthodox Jews on the street, and loot. It is understood that no Pole will be punished for a crime against a Jew. Special rewards are offered to Poles who turn over Jews with “Aryan” Kennkarten.

Rabbi Solomon’s synagogue was burned to the ground, as he was caught by Stutze teaching cheder in his basement. (I could have sworn young Bronski was receiving instructions. Maybe not. He did not show up among those turned in at Pawiak Prison.) Rabbi Solomon’s congregation was fined twenty thousand zlotys to free the boys and to pay for petrol which the Germans used to burn the synagogue. Zemba’s American Relief put up half the fine in American dollars.

All teen-age orphans in our orphanage in Powazki and a dozen other orphanages were forced to donate blood to the German army. Does Hitler know his Aryans will be transfused with impure blood?

Simon Eden says the trade in poison is getting large. Everyone is carrying a capsule for suicide. No one gets more than a few hours’ sleep these nights. Whistles, rifle butts, pounding boots. We sleep with one eye open. A hundred different rape cases reported. “Juden ’raus [Jews, come out]!” is heard every night, all night.

If we are to hand out prizes for ingenuity, Stutze’s Reinhard Corps must win. They force the old Orthodox to scrub sidewalks under bayonets. They have made them dance naked. They make them exercise with heavy cobblestones. They make them beat each other with galoshes. They make them crap their pants. Still, through it all, I am proud of these Jews. They refuse to shave off their beards or earlocks. They walk with their heads erect in great dignity despite the fact that their very appearance will bring them abuses. They are stubborn and honorable and of Rabbi Solomon’s breed, and we Zionists could learn a thing or two from them.

Schreiker, jealous of Stutze and not to be outdone, turned loose mad Gerta, an ethnic with a psychopathic hatred of Jews. She has been allowed to wander through the northern quarters with a lead pipe.