For now, the fiercest fighting had moved into the Brushmakers District, away from my area, which allowed me time to find Esther and Yitzchak. I hoped that wherever they’d gone, they were together, helping each other. Keeping each other alive.
I began searching bunkers, apartments, anywhere a person might hide, but it was no use. No one had seen them, and when Esther’s name was mentioned, I got the response that maybe she’d joined the Nazis, like her father had.
“Since the day I met her, Esther has been fighting to save Jewish lives,” I argued. “She could have hidden, could have surrendered, or she could be sitting here in a bunker like all of you. You owe her more respect than this.”
That humbled them. It certainly humbled me. Esther had never been my burden for this mission. Not when I’d learned so much from her.
By four in the afternoon, I’d made my way to Lezsno Street in time to see an advancing tank accompanied by an entire German column. I knew we buried a land mine just ahead, so I wouldn’t waste my weapons here. Instead, I ducked into a nearby building that at one time had been a furniture store, where women in high heels might’ve stood for hours debating which cabinet best displayed their china. Now I waited beneath a hole where a window had once been, crouching on top of shards of shattered glass and empty bullet casings.
“Chaya!” someone whispered.
I turned to see Yitzchak headed toward me. Just Yitzchak.
“Where’s Esther?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since this morning. But I was sent here.” He lifted himself enough to look through the hole above us. When he lowered himself again, his face had darkened. “It isn’t going well. We can’t hold out for much longer.”
The tank had passed us and was nearly to Smocza Street, where we’d planted the land mine. It was one of our key plans, to lure the largest groups of soldiers here.
I put a hand on Yitzchak’s arm and we peeked out the hole again. “Then let’s make each moment count. Now, watch!” The explosion would be massive.
But it crossed the street and nothing happened. Nothing. Not a puff of smoke or a bump in the road or any sign of trouble. A sinking feeling filled the room around me. The land mine had failed. This was a heavy disappointment.
Until someone inside the building said, “All right, then, let’s take it down ourselves. Go!”
Nodding at each other, Yitzchak and I ran back onto the street. I had a gun in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, waiting to be lit. I intended to use both.
From one of the buildings above us, fighters were already dropping lit cocktails onto the tank, just as we had done the day before. The first five or six merely rolled off, but then one fell directly inside a partially opened hatch, and after a contained explosion, smoke began rising. One soldier crawled out, badly burned. The rest didn’t.
The German soldiers on the street responded, firing weapons into every window of the tall buildings around them. The sound of shattering glass came at us in a terrifying pitch, and when larger pieces began falling near us, we ran. I heard an order given in German to shoot any captured Jew on the spot. As if that weren’t already their plan.
Gunfire echoed from every direction. Behind us. Toward us. From above and below. Some must be ours. Most of it would be theirs. A bullet whisked over my shoulder. Too close. A hair’s difference in aim and I’d be dead.
In response, we dropped lit Molotov cocktails as we ran. They’d create smoke to mask our escape, and hopefully enough heat to discourage the soldiers from pushing through the smoke to chase us. I knew why we had to throw them, but hated the waste of what few supplies we had left.
So if I was going to throw mine, I wanted to make it count. I stopped, turning just long enough to light my cocktail, and took aim at an advancing German. He dodged the worst of it, but before I turned back, an explosion lit into my leg, knocking me flat onto the ground. I leaned up and saw blood spurting from my thigh, almost like everything was happening in sudden slow motion. I’d been shot.
I’d been shot, which came with an indescribable pain. But far worse was my anger that I’d let it happen to me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If I died in this battle … when I died, I needed to make my final moments count for something. Not this.
I wrapped my hand around the wound and felt Yitzchak’s hands beneath my arms, dragging me away. “It’s okay,” I muttered, gritting my teeth against the fire in my leg. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
He dragged me inside a building, out of immediate sight of the advancing Germans, but that left a trail of blood behind, a road map to find us. Once we were inside, he tried to lift me, but it was a clumsy attempt that left me gasping and begging him to stop.
I tried to be firm, the bossy older sister he used to know. “Leave me here, Yitz. They can’t help me in the bunkers.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do! If I saw someone with this injury on the streets, I’d have to leave them, and you have to leave me.”
“Stop that! We just need—”
“Chaya?” Esther ducked her head into the building. “They told me you were in here. They told me—” She stopped when she saw my leg. “Oh no.” Without a second’s pause, she knelt beside me and removed her shoulder bag, then used a knife to cut the handle off. “Yitzchak, I need your water.”
He had a half-full bottle with him, but immediately passed it to Esther. She poured it over the wound, then pressed on my thigh, apologizing the entire time if it hurt. I choked back the scream inside me, gritting my teeth while she tied the shoulder bag’s handle over the wound, getting Yitzchak’s help with the knot.
She leaned closer and whispered, “I can see where the bullet entered and then exited. We’ve got to stop the bleeding, but any of the women in the bunkers with a good sewing kit can take care of that. Let’s go.”
A sewing kit. They’d stitch me up like a wool skirt. I was already feeling nauseous at the thought of it. Then I remembered what the Germans did to Esther’s hand, how much more that must have hurt, and I vowed not to complain anymore about my injury, at least, not aloud.
Once the column of Germans passed, Yitzchak carried me out a back entrance of the building and down into a nearby bunker. By the time they lowered me onto a bed, my stomach was in knots. Yitzchak held my hand while Esther explained what needed to be done. That wasn’t necessary. An older woman with a kind face and a nearly threadbare head scarf was already pulling out a needle and thread.
“My name is Rosa Kats,” she said. “I can help you, but you must be a very different kind of brave down here.”
Rosa Kats. Why did that name sound familiar?
The question soon escaped my thoughts, especially when alcohol was dumped over the wound and I wanted to leap from my skin. I was determined not to yell or cry out, but when she stuck the needle in, it hurt almost more than being shot. Esther had my hands and Yitzchak held my leg down, but that was to keep me still, not to comfort me.
I felt each stitch, and stars swam in my vision, but Rosa continued to work, mumbling phrases the entire time about how I needed to be strong. Minutes later, the thread that was meant for darning socks and patching holes in pants closed a gash in my flesh. She wrapped the leg with one of the bandages I’d brought in here when we first came and offered me an aspirin. I wanted as many as was safe to take, but these too were rationed. I got one, only one. It would barely touch the pain I felt, but I swallowed it anyway.
“You’ve got to stay in the bunkers now,” Yitzchak said. “And we’re needed out there.”
“I can help.” I wasn’t sure how, but I was useless in here.
Esther smiled. “Remember the advice you gave me once? Sometimes the best help you can give is to stay out of the way.”
She was right, and besides, I couldn’t stand on my leg right now, much less fight on it. Ripples of pain ran in currents throughout my whole body and I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.
Outsid
e on the streets, the fighting continued amid shouts and screams, explosions, and the sound of vehicles that seemed to roll almost on top of our underground bunker, crowded entirely with women and a few children. Together we prayed, held one another close, and talked in soft voices about what would happen when we were discovered.
When, not if.
A pretty young mother leaned in to me and whispered, “Those who are captured up there, are they being arrested, or is it … worse?”
For the first time since I joined the resistance, I lied to my own people. “They’ve been arrested, nothing more. For now, they’re fine.”
Everyone who heard me breathed an audible sigh of relief and the tension in the bunker calmed. I shouldn’t have lied; these people deserved to know the truth. But the truth would do them more harm than good. And as they settled in for the night, so did I.
The sound of gunfire and explosions above me became nothing more than a backdrop for my dreams.
April 21, 1943
Warsaw Ghetto
I slept all night and for most of the next day. At some point during that time, I got up long enough to try balancing on my injured leg, but it collapsed. When I tried again that afternoon, I could stand and even hobble about with a little help, which was good enough for me. I asked for my knapsack.
“You’re not going back out there,” the older woman who stitched me up said. What was her name again? Rosa Kats?
I remembered! With a smile, I touched her arm. “I met your son, in Lodz.”
A spark appeared in her eyes. “My son? He’s still alive?”
“He wants you to know that he loves you, and that you were right.”
It was all I had to say. She nodded. “Mothers always are.” She put her hand over mine as it rested on her arm. “Our children never know how much we love them.”
I thought again of my parents. Did they know that I loved them? Did they think of me in their last moments? I wished they could have known Yitzchak was still alive. It would have given my mother so much peace.
“Now you must get back in bed.” Mrs. Kats was already leading me there. I started to protest, but she added, “You’ll only get in the way out there. Back in bed.”
Thirty people were crowded into this bunker with only one bed available. Whoever was supposed to have their turn in it right now, I doubted they wanted me still using it. At the same time, it felt good to have a mother again, even for one more night. And her advice must have been wise. Within minutes, I was asleep again.
I awoke later that same evening to the sound of static filling the air. The women in here had my radio and were trying to find a signal to connect them to the outside world. Finally, they caught a broadcast in English from the BBC in London, and the young mother began translating for the rest of us. The reporter was describing some sort of conference with several European and American leaders. They were discussing what should be done for the Jews still trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Allies had almost completely ignored us thus far. It was astonishing that they even bothered to meet on our behalf.
For two minutes, the reporter blathered on about the complex issues surrounding our situation, and about Allied priorities and disagreements. But he said nothing about solutions, about the death camps, or even about basic compassion.
I scowled. “It sounds like the only thing these leaders agree on is that there are Jews in Europe.”
“And that’s probably all they will agree on,” another woman added. “What more must happen for them to help us?”
They wouldn’t help. Not when the American president spoke of “spreading the Jews thin” and dismissed the atrocities against us as “sob stuff.” When Canada responded to the question of how many Jewish refugees they would accept with “none is too many.” At least the British government seemed more sympathetic.
I sat up, again reaching for my knapsack, but the older woman pushed me down. “It’s gone quiet for now. There’s no one out there for you to fight.”
“I’m feeling better—”
A woman waved at us to be silent, then turned the radio a little louder. This time it cut to a different message. I heard only the end of it in English, but the announcer repeated it in Polish. Then before anyone could translate, he spoke in Yiddish. “This message is from the Allied armies to our Jewish friends in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland.”
“Our friends?” a woman began. “A minute ago they couldn’t even agree we need help and now we’re friends?”
She was quickly hushed in time for the announcer to continue, “We know what is happening there, but we also know you are dying as heroes. For every one of you who falls, we will take revenge.”
He quickly moved on to another story, but here in the bunker, each of us was still pondering every word in our heads. It was the first time I’d heard any of the Allies acknowledge our situation, and certainly the first time they’d called us heroes.
If only that were true. The fight here had nothing to do with heroism. It was about taking a final stand, defending our dignity and honor, and drawing the world’s attention to us, even if only for a brief moment. Nothing about that was heroic, but still, I liked hearing the word.
The old woman offered me a bowl of cold soup and caught the lingering smile on my face. “You want to be a hero, child, then eat with us now, and take one more night to rest. I’m sure plenty of trouble awaits us tomorrow.”
I listened for any sounds of gunfire or tanks, or shouts of orders. Hearing nothing, I was satisfied. One more night.
April 22, 1943
Warsaw Ghetto
As it turned out, I didn’t have the entire night. Rounds of gunfire erupted early in the morning, echoing throughout the ghetto. Even with my injured leg, I knew I had to be out there.
I clumsily rolled my pants leg down over the bandage, avoiding the looks from the other women, everything from disapproval to respect and appreciation, none of which made it any easier to leave. It hurt terribly to walk on my leg, but I could walk on it. Running was another matter.
I left the bunker and heard them immediately seal it again from inside. That was good. Those women had probably saved my life. I wanted them to remain safe too.
I hobbled toward Muranowski Square, ignoring the protest in my leg and walking much slower than I wished I could have done. Hopefully, the fighting would still be there when I arrived.
It was, and that was awful news. The exchange of gunfire in the square was worse than my darkest imaginings. Bullets flew from every direction, explosions burst without warning, and no one seemed to be in command of either side.
A square-faced SS officer suddenly turned and our eyes locked. His hand unfolded, revealing a grenade. From his widening smile, I knew I was his intended target. I started to run, knowing full well I wouldn’t get far enough away. He pulled the pin and raised his arm to throw it.
Then a bullet whizzed past my ear, hitting the grenade itself, which exploded in his hand. I didn’t know whose gun had just saved my life, but I owed them something better than running away from the fight.
Because of my injury, I would have no chance in any hand-to-hand combat. But I dug into my knapsack for a Molotov cocktail, lit it, and threw it at a soldier who held a machine gun aimed upward at the nearest building. When he fell, I saw some of our own fighters moving in to get the gun. A double victory.
But it was one of the last victories I’d see that day. More soldiers continued arriving, dozens of them replacing every single man we’d brought down. For every bullet of ours, they had unlimited rounds for machine guns. For every small explosion we could create from old light bulbs and petrol, they had tanks with firepower to cut through buildings and bombers that could level them.
Yet we fought.
I pushed through pain and exhaustion and a mounting death toll that surrounded me on every street, down every alley. Throughout the day, I caught occasional glimpses of Yitzchak, who had joined up with a group of other teen boys to fight. But I never did see Esther
, and that bothered me more and more with each passing hour.
By afternoon, I’d emptied my supply of grenades and then did as much damage as I could with my gun. As evening approached, I still had half of my rounds left when a new sound entered the ghetto, somewhere behind me. It turned my stomach and made me retch.
Only one thing could create a sound like that. My worst fears were confirmed when I saw enormous flames shoot into the sky, accompanied by smoke as black as midnight.
Flamethrowers.
The Germans brought in flamethrowers. The ghetto was about to burn.
Orders were shouted for any fighters to move deeper within the ghetto, anywhere to escape the buildings, already glowing with fire.
I found a temporary shelter in a bunker built on a building’s rooftop, which was filled with other fighters whose faces probably mirrored my own, where dirt had become encrusted to the brow from sweat, with lips dry from heat and worry, and eyes that had finally accepted what the mind did long ago: It was no longer about knowing how the battle would end. We felt down to our bones how near the end was.
Still, I nearly cried out with joy and relief when a coded knock came to the bunker door and both Yitzchak and Esther were admitted inside. Yitzchak had blood on his shirt, although I didn’t think it was his, and Esther had lost a shoe, but they were both on their feet and I couldn’t pull them into a hug fast enough.
When we separated, Yitzchak simply said, “We heard you were here.” On any other occasion, they would check on my leg and I would ask about their adventures while I was recovering.
Not tonight.
Now we only looked at one another, empty of any further conversation. Drained of hope. The flamethrowers had gone quiet for now, but their earlier targets inside this ghetto were still burning, and they’d return tomorrow.
The pungent odor of fire filled the air, burning our nostrils and making our eyes water. We headed outside to where we might have a chance for some air, when, above the gunshots and crackling of fire, the strangest noise caught my attention.
Resistance Page 23
