67
“We should have dug tunnels over to the other side,” Mordechai said regretfully when all the fighters met in the bunker at Miła 18 for our next briefing. It was the first time I had ever heard our leader sounding despondent.
“If we could just get out of the ghetto,” he continued, “then we could hide in the woods and continue to fight the Germans. What is the point of burning to death here?”
“The fact that the SS are turning the ghetto to ruins could be a chance for us,” Asher piped up.
We all turned to look at the mafia boss in surprise. Unlike some of the members of his Chompe gang, he had never once complained that his luxury bunker had been turned into a crowded stifling hellhole.
“The fire has spread to the workshops,” he continued.
“We know that, what are you getting at?” Amos asked impatiently.
Asher explained. “The Germans are using Polish firemen to put out the fires. If…”
“… we could bribe them, they might smuggle you out of the ghetto!” Avi said, realizing what Asher meant.
His leg was still badly injured, but Avi was excited by this idea even though he knew that he would never be able to hide in the woods with his injury.
Mordechai liked the idea, too. So it was agreed that we’d approach the firemen. Rachel, Leon the baker, Amos, and I headed off to a burning factory that same night. We slunk through the destroyed streets quietly, on our guard. The SS had started coming back into the ghetto at night to patrol the streets.
It took us about twenty minutes to reach the workshop area where Polish firemen—guarded by a handful of Latvian SS men—were fighting a blaze, trying to save what they could. We hid behind a destroyed wall and watched the firefighting operation.
“Do we shoot the soldiers?” Amos whispered.
“The firemen would flee, and more soldiers would arrive in a matter of minutes.” Rachel sighed.
“So what do we do?”
“Wait.”
“We just sit here and hope that one of the firemen walks over?”
“We deserve a bit of luck,” Rachel answered, and smiled ever so slightly. But I was sure we’d used up all our luck over the past few weeks of the uprising.
We waited behind the wall and only peered out every now and then. The firemen slaved away in vain. After about half an hour, during which Amos had become more and more impatient and checked his pistol over and over, an exhausted fireman came away from the blaze for a cigarette and headed in our direction.
“I think we might be lucky after all,” Rachel whispered to us.
When the man was no more than five meters away, she gave us a signal and we rushed round the wall. Leon grabbed the man from behind, and I pointed my gun in his face. The fireman realized what was happening and let us lead him away to a burned-out house without resisting or alerting the soldiers. As soon as we were inside, he groveled in front of us and started whining, “I’ve got nothing against Jews!”
He would be covering himself in ashes off the floor next, if we weren’t careful.
“That’s good to know,” Amos said, grinning.
Rachel told him what we wanted. “Next time you’re deployed here, we want you to smuggle our fighters out of the ghetto in the fire trucks. And you will need to get in touch with the Polish resistance. They can get us to the woods and show us where to hide. We will continue to fight for our Polish homeland from there.”
I no longer felt as if Poland was my home. I wanted to fight the Germans in the forests, but not for my country.
“You will be paid well,” Rachel continued. She was telling the truth. Although a lot of the money the resistance had collected was gone by now, we still had more than enough to pay off a few Polish firemen.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” the man promised. He was clearly relieved that we weren’t going to shoot him. He staggered to his feet and went back to the fire.
“Are we really going to trust our lives to a coward like that?” Amos asked. “What happens if he double-crosses us?”
“We’ll find out soon enough if he does,” Rachel answered.
We stayed in the building. Ill at ease. With our arms at the ready. But no soldiers came. The man hadn’t betrayed us so far.
“He’s after the money,” Leon said, relieved.
And I tried to get used to the prospect of maybe getting out of the ghetto alive.
68
We spent long hours in the bunker, where the air was getting more and more stifling because of the fires. Amos imagined what it would be like in the woods. We would join the Polish partisans and ambush German troops together with our new comrades, paving the way for a Russian invasion that would hopefully happen next year or the year after.
When I mentioned that our Polish “comrades” hadn’t exactly supported our uprising and might not be too pleased to have a whole load of Jews joining them, I only boosted his imagination. He talked about a purely Jewish group of partisans who would strike blow after blow against the Germans and who were feared throughout all the SS. A sort of Jewish death’s-head commando.
He was still planning to redeem himself if he could.
Looking around the bunker, I couldn’t help thinking that there was no way we would be able to smuggle all these people out to the woods. We would have to leave them behind. And they would end up burning to death either here or in the ovens. More people to feel guilty about, even if it wasn’t my fault.
They must never know about our plans to escape, but I did tell Daniel. I felt indebted to him somehow, and so I told him about our encounter with the fireman.
“So you do want to survive,” he declared, and sounded pleased.
“Survive to fight,” I explained.
“Till death?”
“It seems so.”
“You could hide and try to make it through to the end of the war somehow.”
“My place is with my comrades.”
“With your ‘husband,’ you mean!”
Daniel sounded jealous.
“With Amos,” I confirmed.
He didn’t like my answer, but he didn’t pry. Instead he said, “Take Rebecca with you.”
“What?” I was astonished.
“Take Rebecca with you when you escape.”
He wasn’t thinking about himself, he was thinking about her.
“We can only take fighters with us,” I said.
“She’s so small, she won’t take up any room.”
“How can a child survive in the forest?”
“You could find someone to hide her.”
I looked at the little girl who never spoke. She was sitting on the floor playing a game with her marble that only she could understand.
“I … I can’t see how that would work,” I said, dodging the issue.
“You’ll find a way.”
I didn’t think so.
“If you try.”
I didn’t say anything.
All at once Daniel blew up, “All you ever think about is killing people!”
I didn’t know what to do.
“All you ever talk about is death, death, death…”
He stormed off. Back to Rebecca.
And his words echoed in my head, “Death, death, death…”
69
That evening, Mordechai put a new team together to meet with the firemen and finalize the details of our escape. Ben Redhead was joining us instead of Amos, who was to go over to the other side of the wall. His task was to persuade Polish canal workers to show us a route through the labyrinth of sewers. That would give us an alternative escape route if the plan with the fire engines failed.
Ben Redhead had not gotten over killing the boy. He had started stuttering again, when he spoke at all. He had also stopped eating and hardly drank anything. He was intent on fighting.
Death. Death. Death.
Amos came over to me and said, “Get back safe!”
“Same here!” I said, and we both smiled.
He kissed me on the lips for the first time since we’d shot the boy.
It was a short goodbye. Especially considering that it might be our last. Amos’s chances of surviving weren’t exactly great.
I watched him as he crawled through the exit to the bunker. Then Daniel came up and asked, “Have you decided about Rebecca yet?”
I hadn’t even thought about it. It was obvious that we wouldn’t be able to take civilians with us.
“I can’t talk now…,” I said.
“You’re going to leave her behind,” Daniel realized, and looked weary for the first time. As worn out as Korczak had been in the end.
I wanted to stroke his cheek, comfort him somehow, but he turned away. He didn’t want comfort, he wanted me to help the girl.
Without saying anything more, I pushed my gun into my coat pocket and our group headed off to 80 Gęsia Street where we were to meet the Polish firemen. We had to dodge a German patrol on the way, and so we got to the building a few minutes late. The firemen weren’t there.
“The question is,” I said, “have they been and gone, or aren’t they here yet?”
“We’ll wait,” Rachel said. “There’s nothing else we can do.”
So we waited. Five minutes. Ten.
“They aren’t coming,” Leon swore, “those stinking bast—”
“Psst!” Rachel hissed. “Footsteps!”
Let it be the firemen.
Rachel crept to the window to see what was happening.
A shot shattered the window and hit her in the forehead.
Rachel collapsed on the spot.
I screamed.
Germans were shooting at us with machine guns.
Leon pulled me to the floor as bullets flew over our heads and hit the wall behind us. A cupboard hanging on the wall was riddled with bullets and fell down with a crash.
“That swine betrayed us,” Leon said, outraged. Ben Redhead was lying on the floor, firing back although he couldn’t see the enemy and probably didn’t hit anyone.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Leon yelled above the noise.
We crawled out of the room, got up, and stood there for a moment not knowing where to go.
Up the stairs and onto the roof!
But then we heard the front door being kicked in. The Germans began shooting wildly into the house.
“Through there!” I said, pointing at a window in a room that was facing the backyard.
“But we’ll be trapped out there,” Leon argued.
“Not if we can manage to get into another flat first.”
I opened the window and jumped out into the yard. Leon and Ben followed.
“Search the yard!” We heard an SS man barking orders at his men.
“Oh hell!” Leon swore.
“I … I … I’ll h … h … hold them off,” Ben Redhead said, and stopped running.
“But that’s suicide!” Leon shouted at him.
I realized that that was exactly what Ben Redhead had in mind. He wanted to die a hero. He couldn’t stay alive racked with guilt any longer. There was no way we would be able to stop him. No matter how much we wanted to.
I grabbed Leon’s arm and charged on without looking back.
Behind us, I heard Ben Redhead shouting at the soldiers, “Die, you bastards!”
He shot in the direction of the staircase, and the soldiers shot back.
I grabbed a stone and smashed open a window.
Behind us, Ben stopped shooting.
He had fallen.
Don’t turn round, I thought, don’t turn round. Don’t waste another vital second!
The soldiers shot at us.
I climbed through the window and jumped into the flat.
Behind me, Leon screamed.
Twice.
And then he was silent.
Don’t waste a vital second!
I charged through the flat. Opened a window into the next street and leaped out. I landed badly and twisted my left ankle. I swore, but tried to run on regardless. The pain was terrible, and I could only hobble along. The soldiers would come out onto this street any minute now, and I would never be able to get away.
“Damn, damn!” I gasped, but then I reminded myself that I was only wasting valuable time by swearing. And that could be the difference between dying or seeing Amos again.
I disappeared into a house and started to limp up the stairs. Maybe I could get away over the rooftops.
The front door was forced open.
I stopped, hardly daring to move. I could hear footsteps, but it couldn’t be more than two soldiers. My pursuers had obviously split up to search the houses. And that meant they didn’t actually know I was here.
As quietly as possible, I opened the door to one of the flats and crept inside. I started to move down the hall, but I had only gone a few steps when the door slammed behind me with a bang. I hadn’t thought about the draft!
I heard the soldiers charging up the stairs.
I tried to think. What could I do now? I was on the fourth floor so I couldn’t jump out of a window. I’d break my neck. I had to hide. But where? I rushed through the flat. It was practically empty. The acquisition squad had done well. Every single bed, cupboard, or decent piece of furniture had been hauled to the depots. They had taken everything.
The footsteps stopped outside. The soldiers had reached the flat.
“Come out with your hands up!” one of them shouted through the shut door.
I would never surrender. Surrender meant certain death.
I pulled my gun, hobbled toward the door, and started shooting in the desperate hope that I might hit the bastards, although I couldn’t see them.
The soldiers screamed. I threw myself to the ground to duck any return of fire, but no one shot back. Did I get them?
I stood up carefully. I couldn’t stay here. Other soldiers were bound to have heard the shots and would surround the house in a few minutes. I had to get out of here.
I hobbled to the door and pulled it open. Two soldiers lay on the floor in front of me. One was dead, the other was holding his bleeding stomach, unable to shoot. He was in agony. If I’d been merciful, l would have put him out of his misery. But the SS hadn’t done that with the old woman on the burning balcony. I stepped over him. Let his comrades give him the coup de grâce.
I limped up the stairs to the attic and climbed onto the roof from there. When the soldiers reached the house, I was already four buildings away. At the next street corner. All I had to do was simply get round that corner, then I’d be able to get away. Unfortunately, the two corner houses weren’t adjoining. There was a gap of about three meters. I could normally jump that far. But I wasn’t sure I’d make it with a sprained ankle.
I’d rather fall to my death than be shot by a German bullet.
I jumped as best I could, but my aching ankle hindered me and I wasn’t fast enough. I fell through the air …
And realized that I wasn’t going to make it.
I missed! Instead my body crashed against the edge of the roof. I was winded but, instinctively, I fell forward while my legs dangled in the air unable to get a grip anywhere on the house wall.
I used the last of my strength to pull myself up and lay there gasping for air. It took me a moment to come to and then another one before I could manage to get to my feet and duck away across the roofs.
A few houses farther on, I saw a mound of feathers in a backyard. A good hiding place at last.
I climbed through a skylight into the attic and nearly screamed in pain when I landed on the floorboards, but I bit my lip instead, so hard it started to bleed.
I reached the heap of feathers in the yard and managed to hide. But that was all. I had no strength left. Physically or mentally. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t even stay awake to see if the soldiers would come.
70
I woke up to the smell of someone smoking a cigarette. Someone was here in this yard. Another Polish fireman? Pausing for a break while putting out the fires? Or a German taking time out from the hunt? Or was it a fighter? A comrade? A friend? Not likely. I’d used up all my luck for today.
Judging by the light that fell through the feathers, dawn was breaking. So I would have to get back to Miła 18 quickly or else stay hidden where I was for the rest of the day. With nothing to eat or drink. And what would I do if the Germans decided to set fire to the buildings here?
I listened for a moment and then decided to risk it. The man seemed to be alone. I leaped out, holding my gun. If I wasn’t wrong, there would still be one or two bullets left.
I was standing in front of an SS soldier. He jumped and dropped his cigarette.
I was startled, too. I knew this man.
It was the officer who had saved me from the fat pig in the guardhouse. The German who could speak some Polish and had more or less resembled a human being.
It was the first time that I had ever stood facing an SS man like this. One who was in my power. I had to make use of it. To try to understand.
“Why?” I asked him.
He was confused.
“Why … what?”
“Why are you doing this to us?”
He thought about it.
“Your life doesn’t depend on your answer.”
I wanted him to tell the truth and not just say something to save his skin.
He nodded. He understood now.
“Do you want to know why I am here, or why my superiors are doing this?”
“Both.”
“Himmler and the others are mad.”
“And you?”
“I wish I could say the same.” He laughed bitterly.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I wanted a better life for myself and my family.”
“They are better off if you slaughter people here?”
“Rubbish!” he snapped. He seemed to have forgotten for a moment that I was pointing a gun at him. Then he remembered and got more factual. “I’ve got a good position in the SS, money—”
“So you murder for money,” I interrupted.
“That was not the plan. I didn’t look that far ahead. Who could have imagined anything like this?”
“Hitler never mentioned that he hated the Jews?” I asked sarcastically.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “My family doesn’t have a better life. Hamburg is being bombed, and I’ll return home with my wife and daughter emotional wrecks. If they are still alive.”
Part of me hoped they weren’t.
“And,” he continued carefully, “if you let me live.”
“Why should I?”
“I saved you from Scharper. You should have seen what he did to the other girls.”
“The ones you didn’t save.”
“I don’t have all that much room to act. I can’t save hundreds of Jews.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“You think so because you’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Thanks to you.”
“As head of a family, I stand to lose a lot.”
The longer I let him speak, the more human he seemed and the more I detested him.
“If you kill me, my family will lose the father, the husband—”
“Shut up!” I snapped, and pointed my gun at his head.
The officer stopped talking. He tried to look calm. But his hands were shaking.
“Turn around.”
He did as I had ordered. He was shaking all over now.
“Bitte,” he pleaded in German.
“I said: Shut up!”
He began to cry.
I wanted him to stop.
He cried even more.
And I struck him with the handle of my gun as hard as I could.
The officer fell to the ground. The back of his head was bleeding; he couldn’t move but he moaned. He wasn’t unconscious yet.
So I struck him again. And again. Until I’d knocked him out.
I let him live. Not because he had saved me from a worse fate in the guardhouse. Or because I felt sorry for him. Or his family. I let him live because the sound of a shot would have alerted his comrades.
71
When I got back to Miła 18, the building had been destroyed.
Dead, they’re all dead, I thought, but I forced myself not to give up quite yet. I’d learned this much. As long as I didn’t find any bodies or signs that they had all been driven to the trains by the SS, there was still hope.
Desperate, I searched for one of the five entrances beneath the rubble, found a hole at last, crawled through, and was overjoyed to find the others still alive. The fire hadn’t reached the bunkers, and the SS hadn’t found them.
The mood in the chambers didn’t match my joy, though. It was like being in an oven; everyone was wearing nothing more than underwear, and Asher was the only one who managed to muster any kind of humor. “I always wanted to have a sauna down here,” he said.
My comrades became even more despondent when they heard that the Polish firemen had betrayed us.
“Now we can only hope that Amos finds a way through the sewers,” Mordechai sighed.
Avi, whose leg had become infected and who was feverish, rubbed his red beard and said, “Others have tried and failed. Shit happens!”
So far, no fighter had managed to get through the sewers. Two had even been killed when soldiers had heard them and thrown hand grenades at them through a drain.
“Amos,” Mordechai tried to sound assured, “will find canal workers to show us the way.”
“If he is still alive,” Avi groaned.
“Don’t say that!” I snapped.
I twisted my wedding ring nervously. It meant as much to me now as Rebecca’s marble did to her.
Why hadn’t Amos and I simply stayed on the Polish side and tried to remain alive? But I knew the answer. Because we couldn’t desert our comrades.
“I’m sorry,” Avi said. “Of course Amos is still alive.”
“It’s okay,” I answered, and slipped away to the chamber called Auschwitz. I took off my trousers, blouse, and shoes, and inspected my swollen ankle. It would have been good to be able to cool it, but water was too precious. I lay down and tried to not think about Amos, tried to ignore the pain. Instead, I wanted to travel to Hannah. But before I could set foot on Mirror Island, we heard the sound of footsteps above us.
Immediately, everyone in the bunker was silent. Most of us actually held our breath. Some people started to mumble prayers softly. Fighters grabbed their weapons.
Then the hammering started.
They were using heavy tools to try to drill through the debris. Did the Germans know that we were here? Or were they searching at random? For a horrible second, I imagined that they had captured Amos and tortured him until he had betrayed our hiding place. Ending his life in guilt. Dust trickled down on us.
After an eternity of fear, the hammering stopped.
Had they discovered us?
More and more people were praying, more and more quietly.
The footsteps moved away.
You could see that a few civilians wanted to cheer. We fighters were relieved, too, but now we knew for certain that our time had almost run out. We had hardly any ammunition left, practically no food, and it was almost impossible to find anything to eat in the ruins of the destroyed ghetto.
Even Daniel had lost his courage. He crawled over to me and said, “You were right.”
“What?”
“You said we’ll never survive.”
Daniel looked over at Rebecca. She was staring at her blue and white marble again, as if there was a whole world hidden inside. It was a miracle that this little girl was still alive.
Daniel whispered, “Korczak would start getting her ready, telling her that there is another, better world to come…”
That was what the old man had done with his play on the day when the Germans had come to fetch the children.
“… but I’m not Korczak,” Daniel said sadly.
“Only Korczak is Korczak,” I said kindly.
“I wanted to be like him all my life. And how have I ended up?”
“Daniel!”
He looked miserable.
“I’m not even that,” I said.
Daniel didn’t know what I meant.
“You have achieved so much more than me!”
He looked surprised.
“You gave this little girl almost a year. We fighters could only add a couple of awful days.”
He had made the miracle of her survival happen.
His answer was to kiss me gently on the cheek.
I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say.
Instead Daniel said, “Don’t listen to Avi. Amos will be back.”
And for that I kissed him on the cheek, too.
We were standing in the snow and looking down on the clouds that circled the mountain like a snugly fitting ring. About fifty meters above us the mirrors of the palace reflected the light of the sun.
The crew of the Longear was tired. Not as tired as the fighters in the bunker at Miła 18, but tired enough.
Captain Carrot swore, “These blasted mountains! I know why I chose to be a seaman.”
“You’re a seaman because you won this tub gambling,” the werewolf reminded him.
“Ah yes, I should gamble more.”
“Our whole life is a gamble.”
“In that case, we are the best gamblers in the world.”
Hannah wasn’t part of that conversation. She was smiling at Ben Redhead. The real Ben was dead. The real Hannah was, too. But because I couldn’t bear the thought of death and because Amos wasn’t with me, I surrounded myself with phantoms less and less like the real people they thought they were.
I didn’t want to die by myself.
I was all alone in my corner of Auschwitz. I got up, hobbled over to Daniel and Rebecca, and asked, “Can I join you?”
The little girl rolled her marble over to me. I picked it up carefully, as if it were the most valuable treasure. Which it was. It was incredible that it was still in one piece after all this time. It lay snug in the palm of my hand, and I could suddenly feel that there was more to the world than death.
Daniel pointed at the marble and smiled at me. “That’s an invitation,” he said.
I gave the marble back to Rebecca, cuddled up to the two of them, and felt less alone.