Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Paul’s throat was caked dry as he stood before Dr. Koenig. It was a long way from the university to this forty-foot office. Yet Paul’s presence always had the disconcerting effect of making Koenig remember that he had once been content to read Schiller and listen to Mozart in the sanctity of his study, away from his fat Polish wife.

Paul managed to blurt out the message of apprehension over the deportations.

“You have a militia at your disposal. Use it,” Koenig snapped in irritation.

“But if we use it more than we already have to implement the deportations, it will only serve to confirm the people’s suspicions.”

Koenig rocked back and forth in his outsized chair. He could turn the matter over to Rudolph Schreiker for a flat and brutal closing of all discussion. Was this wise? Only a few days and the stream of volunteers for deportation had all but dried up. There was risk of a hardening resistance with the growing underground. Koenig had a dozen factories both in and out of the ghetto which needed a constant supply of labor. Schreiker had not changed an iota from his blundering, stupid ways. He had learned to manipulate Schreiker, to make his own position firm by the feeling that he was indispensable. Schreiker was deep in his debt through bribes and loans.

Paul Bronski and Boris Presser had been obedient servants. If they were replaced in a swift purge, it could upset the well-controlled balance he maintained over the ghetto.

“It is reasonable,” Koenig said in measured terms, “that the Jewish Civil Authority assure the people of our good intentions.”

When Paul had gone, Koenig went to the city hall to convince Rudolph Schreiker of the importance of having the Jewish Civil Authority make a public proclamation for the continuance of orderly deportations. Schreiker was, as usual, too confused by the issues to do other than mumble for Koenig to go ahead.

The next day Paul Bronski, Boris Presser, and the entire board of the Jewish Civil Authority were whisked out of the ghetto for an inspection at Poniatow, Trawniki, and dozens of eastern labor camps which existed to supply road gangs constructing air strips and manufacturing munitions. The railroads had received their first Russian bombings. Gangs of Jews put them back into working order.

The superficial inspection was parallel to the “inspections” held for the Swiss Red Cross in their investigation of ghetto conditions. Yet it served as a face-saving gesture for Presser and Bronski. At the end of the tour, which showed or proved nothing, Koenig distorted it into Nazi logic. The inspection “proved” that the deportations from Warsaw were for the announced purpose of dispersing and decentralizing industry and moving it closer to the eastern battle line.

Neither Boris Presser nor Paul Bronski was able to allow himself the luxury of pursuing the truth. On their return to Warsaw, Koenig had prepared statements for their signature. They affixed their names to documents declaring their satisfaction that the deportations were for the stated reasons and under tolerable working conditions and further urged co-operation in orderly departures.

Copies of the documents were plastered on a thousand walls, but despite them the streams of volunteers had completely dried up by the sixth day of the Big Action.

“Juden! ’Raus!”

“Jews! Outside!”

Whistles! Sirens! Deserted streets. Taut fear behind the drawn shades.

The Nightingales who sang in such beautiful harmony poured from their trucks in another of the sudden strikes to block off a building and pour in and smash down doors and drag the struggling occupants into the streets.

Wolf Brandel slipped into his trousers and shirt at the sounds of the screams across the way and peered from a corner window in Andrei’s flat to the scene of horror in the courtyard. Rachael wrapped herself in the bed sheet and tried to look, but Wolf held her back at arm’s length.

A drama of violence erupted amid the confusion as a man attempted to break through the cordon of Ukrainians to reach his wife and was bloodily clubbed to the pavement for his efforts. He lay groaning and twitching, drenched in his own blood. Another outburst. A frantic young mother lurched at a huge guard, clawing his face, biting his hand, as she tried to get back her infant. The guard roared with laughter, grabbed her by the hair, and flung her into a circle of flailing clubs. The cordon pushed their captives up the street toward the Umschlagplatz with a steady tattoo of truncheon smashes.

Wolf buttoned his shirt clumsily and replaced his pistol in his belt. Rachael forgot her modesty and let the sheet fall from her, but the blood-burst on the streets had broken the spell of love-making. Wolf braced his back against the iron bedstead and dropped his face on his knees while she dressed. She cuddled up next to him, laying her head on his lap, and they stayed numbed and quiet until the last of the cries faded from their hearing.

“Where are the trains going?” she whispered shakily.

He shook his head.

“My father says they’ll stop soon, but I don’t believe him. There’s talk about death camps.”

She began to tremble, and her face and hands felt icy. He tried to comfort her.

“I don’t mean to be like this ... It was only—I was so frightened when you didn’t come back in time for Stephan’s bar mitzvah. I’m always dreaming of the trains. I dream they’re taking Stephan. Wolf, he’s taking too many chances. Make him stop.”

“How can I argue with him to be against what we are trying to stand for?”

“What do we stand for? What in God’s name do we stand for?”

“I don’t know, really. My father might be able to put it into certain words. So can Rabbi Solomon. I just want to live and I want you to live. I guess that’s all I really stand for.”

In a little while she became calm.

“Someday it will all be over, Rachael. It must end sometime.”

“If I could only be your wife. If I could only have your baby. Wolf, if either of us goes on the trains, I want you to know how very much I love you.”

“We’re going to come through this ... Rachael.” Then his voice saddened. “My father talked to Rabbi Solomon about marrying us secretly, without your father knowing. He won’t do it.”

“Why? It’s only because my father would never agree—”

“To Rabbi Solomon it would mean he would be taking the side of the underground against the Civil Authority. You know how the Orthodox are about finding hidden meanings in hidden meanings. Besides, I would want the world to know you’re my wife.”

“I try so hard to remember my father the way he used to be, but I think I hate him. I swear, sometimes I almost wish he were—”

“Shhhhh ...”

Sounds on the roof sent them into a grip of fear. Wolf rolled off the bed, yanked Rachael off, and shoved her behind him into an alcove. Someone was rattling about overhead. An indistinguishable figure appeared at the skylight in the kitchen ceiling. It tugged at the trap door. Wolf withdrew his pistol, cocked it, and aimed it on the skylight. The trap door groaned open, sending in a burst of light and air. A pair of legs lowered and a figure dropped to the floor.

“It’s Stephan.”

Stephan got to his feet, rubbing his wrist, which was tingling from the impact of breaking the fall. “I’m sorry to have to come here,” he apologized, “but Uncle Andrei needs you right away, Wolf.”

“Where is he?”

“At the loft over the stage, Workman’s Theater.”

Wolf fought his way into his shoes, slapped his cap on, and peered out of the window. Nightingales patrolled the street below.

“You’ll have to go over the roofs,” Stephan said.

“You two get on the roof and stay till after dark,” Wolf ordered.