Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Food comes in daily to Transferstelle. There is simply not enough to feed everyone. The Big Seven has shoved prices so high. Orphans and Self-Help is barely able to get bare minimum rations. The Big Seven has a virtual control on the licensed bakeries. The bakers are the “kings” of the ghetto.

Smuggling has become a way of life. No one can stop it. Napoleon tried and failed. The Germans cannot stop it. Even if they were scrupulous and honest, it would be impossible. Every guard is corrupt, Jewish Militia on the inside, the Polish Blues and the Germans on the outside. They all “play” for the right price. Why should the Germans even try to stop smuggling? Payoff money is lining the pockets of their top officials.

Smuggling runs from primitive forms to highly organized operations. In its most basic form, small, quick children dart about and move through small cracks in (or one of a half dozen tunnels under) the ghetto wall. Some of these children are sole providers for their families. They risk going into the Aryan side to scavenge in the garbage cans, barter if they have anything to barter, beg at the squares, or steal. One poor child was stuck in a crack in the wall. He was beaten by police on both sides of the wall.

The main transfer point of smuggled goods is outside the ghetto where the Jewish and Catholic cemeteries have a common wall. It has been breached in a dozen places and is a sort of “free trading zone.” Grave-diggers who work the detail for mass graves are the main contact people. However, one must be in the upper bracket of smugglers to work the cemeteries.

Needless to say, the Big Seven has the most profitable and highly organized operation. They have paid off all down the line. However, every once in a while the Germans put on a show and catch a Big Seven smuggler and shoot him. It makes Kleperman appear not to be in league with the Germans. I’m certain he knows in advance.

The Big Seven built an underground pipe under the wall to pipe in milk from the Aryan side. Sacks of flour and other goods are thrown over the wall at given times in given places. Portable ladders come up out of nowhere, go against the wall, and in three or four minutes, while the guard turns his back, in come the goods. The Big Seven has even constructed a portable ramp and brought in a live cow on it.

Epitome of the smuggler’s art is the large funeral (which only the wealthy can afford). The Big Seven controls the undertaking licenses. Their funeral vans always re-enter the ghetto with a ton or so of goods. When business is slow, I hear the Big Seven stages fake funerals with empty coffins.

To control prices, the Big Seven sells only part of its goods; a shortage raises prices. Food is stored all over the ghetto in basements. I hear that Mila 18, directly across the street from us, holds one of the largest caches. An “independent’ smuggler, Moritz Katz, runs a band from Mila 18.

Oddity. Along Leszno Street is the freak boundary of the “Polish corridor.” The wall slices the courthouse in half, so it can be entered from both sides. Jews enter from the ghetto through a basement. Poles use the main entrance on the Aryan side. Meetings are held in certain chambers, offices, and corridors. Kleperman’s “authorized” representatives have space in the courthouse much like one buys a seat on the Stock Exchange (or a London prostitute has a station). For a broker’s fee, Kleperman’s “authorized” representatives trade gold, dollars, and precious stones.

The most horrible of all sights in the ghetto are the “snatchers.” Starved children prowl near the bakeries and, driven by hunger, grab bread from people as they leave. They eat it on the run. Often children have been beaten half to death while cramming the bread into their bellies.

The Good Fellowship Club appointed a special committee to analyze the always elusive mystery of what the Germans are really up to. Information from the massacres in the east. There are definitely four main groups of “Action Kommandos,” SS men trained for massacre.

Group A. Commanded by SS Major General Franz Stahlecker in the Baltic-Leningrad area.

Group B. Commanded by SS General Artur Nebe, White Russia.

Group C. Otto Rasch (rank?) in Kiev on the southern front. The Babi-Yar massacre of thirty-three thousand in three days seems to be his brain child.

Group D. SS Major General Otto Ohlendorf (is he the noted engineer of pre-war times? Hard to believe) in central Russia.

The method is basic. Roundup, victims dig their own graves, are stripped, shot in the back. This apparently amuses the local populations, who are giving full co-operation. The SS have augmented their ranks with Ukrainians and Lithuanians. Reports of massacres so far at Rovno, Dvinsk, Kovno, and Riga. They say seventy thousand have been shot at Wilno.

We are trying to determine what the shifts in general German policy are and how these massacres will apply to us in Warsaw and the General Government Area. Have the Germans established the number of people they will need to run their slave-labor factories? Obviously the action groups were formed in advance of the invasion of Russia.

Ervin Rosenblum develops the theory of the German “apologetics.” They go to extraordinary lengths to prove their “innocence” and establish their “justifications.” This, of course, means they know they are doing something evil and feel they must cover their tracks.

The German language has been bastardized by the Nazis with their “joy through labor” ... “Aryan-master race” ... “land to live” ... “German destiny” ... “the true ones” ... “folk people” ... “führer” ... “inhuman treatment of ethnics,” etc., etc.

The whole text on behavior toward Jews also has been compounded in this new “language.” The basic “theory” is that the Jews have always been the enemies of the German people and are therefore trying to destroy them, so the Germans must destroy the Jews purely out of “self-defense.” They point up to the economic competition with classic portraits of the cunning Jew who has “always hated the German” and robs the German of his right to make a living.

Here are examples of their new double-meaning language:

Reservation — ghetto.

Legitimate war booty — wealth stolen or confiscated from Jews.

Contaminated — to be confiscated.

Sanitation measures — an excuse for mass executions.

Unpleasantness — the carrying out of mass murder.

Shot while trying to escape — a common phrase for someone killed in prison.

Resettlement — deportation with confiscation of all property.

Voluntary labor — slave labor.

Sub-humans — Jews, Slavs, gypsies, political and criminal prisoners, clergy, homosexuals (other than German), and others unfit to breathe Aryan air.

Mongrelization — the excuse to “get rid of sub-humans” who will contaminate the pure German blood lines.

Bolshevik-profiteer-warmonger — almost always used before or behind the word “Jew” to pound in the identification.

Now then, theorizes Silberberg, the playwright, the Germans go to fantastic trouble to make themselves truly believe what they are saying. The verbal acrobatics are played out. Basis: In order to live in the ghetto, one must break the law. Therefore, everyone who is alive is a criminal in the German lexicon and can legally be executed. Incredible?

Here are some of their “proofs”: