Mila 18 - Leon Uris

The Farber sisters, Mira and Minna, were there, studying to become runners.

“Any news?”

Adam Blumenfeld took one earphone off. “I’ve got BBC. Something about American destroyers being loaned to England.”

“How about the Home Army?” Andrei asked in reference to the quickly growing Polish underground force.

“They keep changing frequencies. Unless we can get their schedule, we can only pick them up hit or miss.”

Andrei grunted. His most urgent job was to set up a solid liaison with the Home Army, but he had been unsuccessful. He turned to Wolf. “Two lessons. First, live with access to the top floor. In danger, we go to the rooftops. Second, this work is neither romantic nor exciting. It is dull and exacting.”

For the next few weeks Wolf learned to stand radio watch and work the printing press. Then Andrei made him memorize the entire Jewish Militia and know which police would “play” for bribes and how much. One by one he learned the secret rooms behind bakeries, in abandoned synagogue basements, where Simon Eden and Rodel, the Communist, and the small nucleus of the underground carried on their sub rosa business.

His prime duty: to distribute the copies of Liberty. Dump them in the market places, drop them at secret rooms, post them on conspicuous walls. As Andrei had warned, it was exacting and tedious work. The streets were more dangerous to travel each day. Piotr Warsinski’s police were pulling people in by the hundreds for the continued feeding of the slave-labor factories.

Dr. Franz Koenig took a quick trip to Berlin to be received by Himmler, personally, and brought back with him a contract for a great portion of the German army’s brushes. The Brushmaker’s complex in the north had to be tripled. When there were no people on the streets, Warsinski ordered indiscriminate raids on homes or the bulging refugee compounds for workers.

Wolf accepted his duties without protest. He envied the Farber sisters. Blond and blue-eyed, they fitted the bill as “Aryans.” Learning the paths of a runner was only a small part of the training.

They had to learn the Catholic Bible forward and backward, how to pray in Latin, how to pray with the rosary. They had to learn to go deaf to the sounds of Yiddish and German, the languages with which they had been raised, in order to “prove” they were not Jewish.

There was one more regular who worked in the loft of the Workman’s Theater, and that was Berchek, a former commercial artist. From time to time “Aryan” Kennkarten, travel papers, and even passports were obtained. These had to be doctored for use by underground members. Berchek taught Wolf the principles of forgery and allowed him to work on the simpler tasks of fixing photographs on the papers.

Andrei was terribly proud of his protégé. The boy learned quickly and responded to orders without question. In one or two tight spots while distributing Liberty, he kept himself out of trouble by quick thinking.

When Wolf went off duty he spent part of the time at home with his parents and his baby brother at Mila 19. Some of the time was with his “adopted” brother, Stephan Bronski. He taught the younger boy his Hebrew and tutored him in basic subjects and played chess and answered a thousand searching questions.

And two or three nights a week he would meet Rachael in Andrei’s flat.

Each time they met, they brought their relationship one step closer to culmination. Each time they chastised themselves and groped and damned. They wanted to try it, desperately. First Wolf, then Rachael took turns in being the stronger to resist. Each time they parted, they parted heartsick but eager for the next rendezvous.

The thought of seeing each other kept them alive. It was able to make them somewhat oblivious of the horror around them. More and more terrible things were happening. So long as there was that electric second when he ran up the final flight of steps into her arms, the rest did not matter so much.

Journal Entry

Last night the Good Fellowship Club met to discuss the latest disaster.

Yesterday morning twenty-five Reinhard Corps Nazis, under the personal direction of Sieghold Stutze, entered the ghetto at the Zelazna Gate. Their barracks are directly outside the wall, so there is little or no warning. They proceeded directly to Nowolipki 24 and surrounded the house. Fifty-three occupants — men, women, and children — were pulled out and loaded aboard two army trucks.

As they drove off, the Jewish Militia posted signs all over the building that it was “contaminated by typhus, rodents, etc. ...”

The fifty-three were taken to the Jewish cemetery. On the north wall they were forced to dig a huge ditch, undress, and stand on its edge. They were shot in the back and, after they fell into the ditches, were bayoneted.

The Militia entered the Nowolipki property and carted off every single belonging.

We have had mass executions at the cemetery before. Usually a group accused of “criminal” activities or intellectuals. Never have fifty-three people been indiscriminately lopped off without excuse.

Although the property was “condemned as contaminated,” I was able to lease it this morning as an orphans’ home. Now I hear that the Germans are going to do a series of legal explanations of their actions to “justify” the executions. “Fear of epidemic” is their main reason as well as the catchall phrase “criminal activities.”

We in the Good Fellowship Club are rather certain this mass execution was a test case.

Other distressing signs. A further ration cut was ordered this morning. Dr. Glazer says this puts us below starvation level. This means that anyone obtaining enough food to live is a “criminal,” according to Nazi logic. Who figures these things out for them?

It is in the Soviet Union where the real terror is going on. More and more word comes back about special SS “Action Kommandos” massacring Jews all over the Baltics, White Russia, and the Ukraine just as quickly as the German army presses forward.

We heard something about a plan to send all the Jews to the island of Madagascar. (It might be a vacation.)

Hans Frank has lost his battle, once and for all. Not only are Jews still pouring into the General Government Area, but criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, “Slavic types,” political prisoners, prostitutes, and others deemed as “subhuman.” So, the General Government Area has become the “cesspool” for Germany’s non-Aryans. Several huge new concentration camps are under construction. One in particular, Auschwitz in Silesia, I hear, is mammoth.

The Good Fellowship Club reasons that this transporting of Jews and “sub-humans” is a burden on the rail system, especially for the German army on the Russian front. It is taking tens of thousands of their manpower also.

Conclusion: The Germans have reached their decision for a “final solution” for us. I fear further executions until they reach the desired level for slave labor.

The phone interrupted Alex.

“Hello, Alexander Brandel, here.”

“Alex. Shalom aleichem,” a voice on the other end said. It was a greeting from a contact named Romek on the other side of the wall.

“Shalom,” Alex answered.

“Alex, I hope you didn’t forget we have a lunch date.”

“Ach, what a stoop I am. I forgot to mark it down.”

“Yetta’s house at two o’clock.”

“Good, good, I’ll be there.”

Alex quickly locked the volume of the journal in the safe and went upstairs to his room. Wolf was playing with baby Moses on the floor.