Mila 18 - Leon Uris

A few steps inside the wall Chris was challenged by a pair of huskies in long gray coats and mirror-polished boots of the Jewish Militia.

Chris oriented himself quickly. He knew from Rosy where Deborah was most likely to be. His best chance to see her alone would be at the orphanage on Niska Street. The ghetto was filled with spies and informers, yet he felt that Horst von Epp was both too clever and sophisticated to use the crude tactics of having him tailed. Horst had Chris boxed in, anyhow. If he were to force his luck, the German risked scaring his prey to cover.

Chris walked along the wall beyond which the “Polish corridor” split the big and little ghettos. The streets were sticky with unswept dirt, and the pungent odors of filth filled his nostrils.

He approached the bridge which ran over the “Polish corridor” to the big ghetto. He stopped. There! On the foot of the bridge steps. The corpse of an emaciated woman. Enormous ghastly circles formed on the skin pulled taut by protruding bones. Chris backed away. He had seen corpses on the eastern front by the thousands—he remembered the massacre—but ... here ... dead of starvation. It was different. Foot traffic moved around the dead woman with no one paying the least attention.

Chris edged up the steps to the top of the bridge. He was imprisoned in barbed wire. He looked down into the “Polish corridor.” He had stood down there on the street so many times, looking up to where he now stood, hoping for a look at Deborah. He had been caught down there and beaten. He continued quickly over the bridge and down the steps into the big ghetto.

High barbed-wire walls surrounding Dr. Franz Koenig’s uniform factory greeted him. Slow movement on the other side of the wire by half-starved slave laborers. Brisk, arrogant movement along the guard posts by the Jewish Militia.

Each step now made him catch a vignette of squalor, of pain. Each step churned his queasy belly close to a vomit. A lice-riddled ragged remnant of what had once been a human being lay in front of him.

The mosaic of misery, the montage of horror became blurred. He was walking on a small square.

“Armbands! Buy armbands!”

“Books for sale. Twenty zlotys a dozen.” Spinoza for a penny, Talmud for a dime. A lifetime collection of wisdom. Buy it in gross lots for kindling ... keep my family alive one more day.

“Mattress for sale! Guaranteed lice-free!”

Two children blocked Chris’s way. Warped, inhuman. “Mister, a zloty!” one whined. The second, a smaller brother or sister too weak to cry for food. Only the lips trembled.

“Do you want a lady’s company? Nice virgin girl from a good Hassidic family. Only a hundred zlotys.”

“My son’s violin. Imported from Austria before the war ... Please, a beautiful instrument.”

“Mister, how much for my wedding ring? Solid gold.”

A long line of scraggly, ragged humanity getting a dole of watery broth at a soup kitchen. The line pressed forward, stepping wearily over a corpse of one who had died en route to the soup.

An old man collapses in the gutter with hunger. No one looks.

A child sits propped up against a wall, covered with sores and lice bites and burning with fever, moaning pitifully. No one looks.

Loudspeakers boom. “Achtung! All Jews in Group Fourteen will report tomorrow to the Jewish Civil Authority at 0800 promptly for deportation for volunteer labor. Failure to report for volunteer labor is punishable by death.”

The “kings” from the Big Seven with flour and meat and vegetables make their barters quietly, in whispers against the walls, in the alcoves, in the courtyards.

A Nazi sergeant from Sieghold Stutze’s Reinhard Corps stands in the middle of Zamenhof Street. Bike rikshas, the basic mode of transportation, swirl around him. Each riksha comes to a halt before the “master” and doffs his cap and bows.

Clang! Clang! The bulging red and yellow streetcar with the big Star of David on its front and sides.

“Achtung! Jews, listen! Green ration stamps are hereby ruled invalid.”

Another corpse ... another ... another.

Billboards filled with directives, BY ORDER OF THE JEWISH CIVIL AUTHORITY the building at Gensia 33 is declared contaminated.

Walls hold torn corners of posters and publications of the underground press ripped down by the Jewish Militia.

The Jewish Militia. Fat and brutal, beating a herd of hapless girls with their clubs as they push them north to their destination in the Brushmaker’s factory.

Chris doubled over in the seat before the desk in Susan Geller’s office at the orphanage. His face was chalky, his stomach churning, ready to rebel at one more sight, one more smell.

Susan closed the door and stood over him. He stumbled to his feet.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” Chris said. “I got back from the front and ran into a pile of trouble. You know it’s very difficult for me to get in here.”

Susan was immobile, wordless.

“I tried to get Rosy back.”

“I’m sure you did everything you could,” she said coldly. “It is just as well for him to be in the ghetto. With Ervin’s Jewish nose, the hoodlums would always attack him, even with his fancy immunity papers.”

“Where is he, Susan?”

“We live at Mila 19 with the others.”

Chris grunted. “Lord, I didn’t even bring you a wedding present.”

“It isn’t necessary.”

“Susan, is there anything I can do? Anything you want or need?”

She walked to the glass door which overlooked a sea of cots jammed together holding a hundred typhus-riddled children. Do? “Surely that must be the understatement of all time.”

Her coldness reached him. “Susan, what have I done?”

“Nothing, Chris. There is one thing you can do. It will be a very fine wedding present for me and Ervin. You know what kind of work Ervin does. I beg you not to betray him to the Germans.”

“I am sorry that you feel it necessary to say that to me.”

Susan turned on him. “Please, Mr. de Monti. No lectures about honor and humanity.”

“Rosy is my friend—”

“Horst von Epp is also your friend.”

Chris sank into the chair, shattered.

“I am sorry for the unpleasantries, Chris. These are unpleasant times. When a person is trying to survive he is apt to be rude to an old friend. Now, if you’ll let me go back to work ...”

“I want to see Deborah Bronski.”

“She isn’t here.”

“She is here.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

“She is going to have to.”

“I’ll give her your message.”

“Susan, before you go ... You’ve been close friends for many years—”

“We were the only two Jewesses allowed to study in a class of fifty nurses. We clung together for self-preservation.”

“Do you know about—”

“Ervin is my husband. He confides in me.”

“I have a chance to get her and her children out of Poland.”

Susan Geller turned from the door. Her homely face was clearly puzzled. There were many things she did not like about Christopher de Monti. There was something about him that reminded her of a Polish nobleman despite his loyalty to Ervin. The one thing she had no doubt about was his love for Deborah Bronski.

“Can you influence her?”

“I don’t know,” Susan answered. “Strange things happen to people under this pressure. Most people will do anything to survive. Many completely lose their souls, their sense of morality is shattered, they turn to weak masses of jelly. A very few seem to find sources of unbelievable strength. Deborah has become a single symbol of humanity to many dozens of children. I would say that a lesser woman would grab the chance to flee. ...”