Resistance

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

  The soldier aimed a flashlight down the pipes toward us, but we were already around the corner, none of us daring to breathe, except Esther. She had dared more than any of us. “Are you alone?” he asked in Polish.

  “I traveled with a man who was my guide, but he succumbed to a poison gas grenade a few kilometers back. Please, sir, I surrender.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  And she was led away. Her footsteps, then his, louder splashes growing fainter as we waited until it was safe to move again. A few minutes later, the silent darkness was broken by a single shot fired inside the sewer line. I jumped and covered my mouth with my hands so that I wouldn’t scream.

  I wanted to scream, and felt it exploding inside me. I wanted to find that soldier and make him pay. But mostly I wanted to collapse right where I stood. How much easier that would be. The final splash where Esther fell was so … final.

  Time stopped while its echo reverberated in my heart, creating a wound that would never fully heal. I gasped with pain, but choked back any further tears. Much as I wanted to stop here, I had to keep going. Because Esther was right that we were couriers, and this was what we did. She was right that we always knew the risks. And that if these people were not saved, then her sacrifice was in vain.

  A hand went to my shoulder, a girl a few years younger than me, who nudged me forward, and somehow, I lifted a leg and began to walk.

  Every step I took after that felt heavier than the one before it, but I forced myself to keep moving until we found the exit. Yitzchak and an older man climbed the ladder together so that one could pry it open while the other peeked out. As soon as the manhole cover opened, bright springtime sunlight poured in, hurting our eyes. Then I caught the sound of a running engine motor humming down at us. Yitzchak climbed out first to verify the truck driver was our contact, then hissed that it was safe to send the others up.

  The children went first. If their mothers were not here to help, then I boosted them onto the ladder and pushed them as high as I could until Yitzchak took their hands and helped them to the surface. One by one, they disappeared from the sewer. The women went up next. I was included with this group, although I feared that with my injured leg and broken heart, my climb was too slow. When Yitzchak grabbed my hand, he gave it an extra squeeze and whispered, “If only our parents could see us now.”

  If only.

  I reached the surface and pulled in a deep breath of fresh air while peering back toward the ghetto. It was easy to spot from the fires and thick plumes of smoke rising in the sky. I wished Esther were here with me, but I was glad she wasn’t back there.

  Mostly, I just missed Esther. Nothing would ever feel right again without her.

  “I knew you’d make it out,” a familiar voice said. I turned to see Rubin hurrying from the passenger side of the truck.

  My eyes widened in disbelief. “Rubin? How did you know?”

  “We’ve been monitoring coded radio transmissions from your leaders. One indicated that they needed a truck to meet a courier. I knew in my gut that it’d be you. I had to come.” By then, we’d reached the back of the truck. He gave me a quick kiss on one cheek, then said, “We need to hurry.”

  There were no homes at this far end of the street, but that didn’t mean curious eyes were far away. To look at any of us, it’d be obvious where we’d just come from. I climbed into a truck marked for dairy deliveries. For everyone to fit, we had to stand and squeeze together, but no one complained.

  I was soaking wet, and somehow still filthy from black smoke, blood, and sewage, and a thick bandage was tied around my thigh. I had a homemade holster at my side with a German-made gun in it, and a German knapsack that was completely empty except for my false identification papers and a kitchen knife I once bought to free Esther … who in the end freed us. And I was standing proudly among twenty other people who had fought for their survival. By getting this far, they had won that battle.

  As soon as the last of us was in the truck, Rubin shut the doors behind us, and we drove away.

  A beam of sunlight streamed in between the doors, and I remembered the note that Esther had placed in my hand.

  It was signed by Mordecai Anielewicz. He wanted this to be broadcast over the radio to everyone who would hear it. I read aloud, “ ‘Sensing the end, we demand this from you: Remember how we were betrayed. There will come a time of reckoning for our spilled, innocent blood. Send help to those who, in the last hour, may elude the enemy—in order that the fight may continue.’ ”

  I looked around the group. “That is our message to the world, my friends. Our fight must continue.”

  I would find a way to honor Mordecai’s final wish. I would carry on the fight.

  April 25, 1943

  Warsaw

  The truck drove us fifteen minutes from where we had escaped the sewers to a farmhouse on a quiet hill where we were quickly ushered into an attic room. There were no windows up here, but even then, the farmer, a shy-eyed man who couldn’t have been any older than Dolek would have been, lit only a few candles and asked us to keep our voices low, a warning that was hardly necessary. Soon after, a Catholic priest and a pretty girl I assumed was the farmer’s wife entered with trays of hot stew and fresh bread and real milk. The aroma of the food nearly overwhelmed me as I realized for the first time how little I’d eaten all week, surviving on crusts of rusk bread, a bowl of cold soup, and more raw nerve than I thought I had. It wasn’t just me. Most of us accepted the bread and milk, but looked at the stew as if it was too much to manage all at once. I noticed the children broke their slice of bread in half, stuffing the rest inside their coats. One day they would remember again what it is to have enough food. But that would take time.

  We were also provided with new clothes. Polish-looking clothes, though I couldn’t imagine where they’d come from. I was more than happy to get rid of the ones I’d worn for far too many days, stained by sweat and blood, torn and smelling of gunpowder, sewage, and death.

  “We have a few blank identification papers,” the farmer said. “And we’ll find safe houses for all of you until this terrible war comes to an end. There are many of us in Warsaw who want to help.”

  If he’d already arranged for safe houses, then he’d done my job. Which meant it was time to move on. When I walked past the priest, he noticed my necklace with the Catholic crucifix.

  “Ah,” he said. “You are a—”

  “I’m a courier,” I said, proud of the title. Proud of who I was.

  He nodded respectfully. “Then you have seen too much of this war.”

  “I have seen too much of a war that reveals people for who they truly are.”

  “Indeed it has.” He stared at me, the corners of his eyes glistening in the candlelight. “Some are revealed as cowards, others as villains or thieves.” Now the corner of his mouth tilted up, very slightly. “But I hope you have also seen those with uncommon courage, those who will look evil in the face and say, ‘This is where it ends.’”

  In my mind, I saw Esther again. “I knew such a girl,” I mumbled.

  He reached out to pat me on the shoulder. “I believe I am also looking at such a girl now. History will count you as a hero.”

  I stepped back, unwilling to accept the title. “No, sir, I’m not.” Not when compared with those who made sacrifices far greater than mine. Not when I was far too aware of my flaws, my mistakes. My failures.

  “The world will take notice of what is happening in the ghetto,” he said. “Mark my words, it will be a turning point in this war.”

  Maybe, but I couldn’t think of anything that big. I hoped he was right.

  When the priest clasped his hands in front of him, I happened to notice something curious on his forearm. I gestured at it, so he rolled up the sleeve of his robe enough to show me the prisoner number tattooed there. “Auschwitz. Hitler wants no Gods other than himself.”

  It was a reminder that hatred runs deeper and wider than a single race or nationality, and if
love was not stronger, hatred would run through the generations. I intended to be stronger.

  The priest offered me a nod of respect; then I returned the gesture as he turned to help the others. It felt good to use proper manners again, like a civilized person.

  The farmer’s wife pulled me aside and tended to my leg wound properly. Infection had begun to set in, and the sewer waters had only made it worse, but she treated the injury with a generous dose of alcohol and then wrapped a new bandage beneath my pants leg. These were new pants. Designed for a boy, perhaps, but the fit would work after I cinched the waist with a belt.

  “If you are leaving us, then a dress will blend in better around Warsaw,” she said, showing slight disapproval for my choice.

  “I’ll keep the pants,” I said. “I won’t be in Warsaw for long.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Yitzchak looked at me for our answer. Behind him, I saw Rubin sitting with a few of the children, helping to clean their faces with a small towel and bowl of water. He must have felt my eyes on him because he smiled over at me.

  “We’ll join the partisans,” I told her, and beside me, Yitzchak nodded in agreement. The war wasn’t over, and the fight inside me was as strong as ever.

  At sunset that evening, Rubin, Yitzchak, and I returned to the truck, along with a few other refugees who had also chosen to come with us to the forest.

  Before climbing in, Yitzchak and I lingered behind an evergreen tree near the farmer’s home. Farther down the street, a church was just releasing its parishioners from Easter services, a worship to mark their deliverance from death. How pretty the women’s dresses were, how fine the men’s suits. Their children had clean faces and full stomachs and probably hadn’t spared a thought this week for the lives that were still being lost within sight of this church. Their lives looked … normal. I didn’t even know what the word meant anymore.

  But at the end of the exiting group, one couple paused to look in the direction of the ghetto. The air was clear here, but it was impossible to avoid seeing the fires and hearing the occasional round of a machine gun. The wife wiped tears from her eyes and her husband shook his head and held her close.

  “What now?” she asked her husband.

  I was asking myself the same question. Tomorrow we would mark the end of Passover. As Yitzchak and I were saved from the ghetto, we would find a way to save those who could still be saved.

  Rubin crept up behind us, whispering in my ear that it was time to go. He added, “There’s a large group of partisan fighters in the woods outside Warsaw. It’s not only Jews, but anyone who is determined to play a role in ending this war.”

  “We’ll keep fighting,” Yitzchak said.

  We would fight there for the Draengers, and Dolek, and for all of Akiva. We would fight for the mother on the train, and Wit, that kind man in the woods who sheltered Jews on his farm, and for Avraham, Sara, and Henryk, and all who died in the Aktion in Lodz. We would fight for Mordecai Anielewicz and for ZOB and for all those who rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto to defy an entire army of evil.

  We would fight for my mother, who could no longer fight for herself, and for my father, who gave his last breath in devotion to my mother, and for my sister, who was taken too young, too innocent.

  And we would fight to honor Esther’s life. Esther’s courage. I may never again meet anyone as strong as she was.

  Historians might say that the Jews lost every uprising we attempted in this war, that every resistance movement failed.

  I disagree.

  We proved that there was value in faith. There was value in loyalty. And that a righteous resistance was victory in itself, no matter the outcome.

  We got our three lines of history.

  The Cyganeria Café attack on the night of December 22, 1942, was one of the first open acts of armed resistance by the Jewish people in occupied Europe. Although comparatively small in scale, and despite the German response, which eventually destroyed Akiva’s organization in Krakow, it proved to other Jewish groups that resistance was possible.

  As noted in the story, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was never going to result in victory over the German forces. But the effects of what the Jewish people accomplished there, in managing to stave off the Nazis for nearly a month, reverberated through Poland and all of occupied Europe.

  Ultimately, the Warsaw Ghetto fighters held out longer than the entire country of Poland did against the initial German invasion. It inspired other uprisings in ghettos such as those in Bedzin and Bialystok, and in the extermination camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. It also was a foreshadowing and model for the Warsaw Uprising, launched by the Polish Underground army on August 1, 1944. Within the world of my imagination, I picture that Chaya was there for this fight too.

  However, because this is a work of fiction, it’s important to separate my characters from the actual people who chose heroism, courage, and honor in the face of certain defeat.

  Chaya and Esther, their families, and many of the people they meet along the way are fictional characters so as not to intrude upon the personalities or actions of actual people involved. However, many details from their experiences are pulled from true stories.

  In this book, most of those referenced in leadership positions within the resistance movement actually existed, and where it was possible to quote them exactly, this has been done. Where it was not possible, I attempted to preserve the spirit of their message.

  The following are some of the many heroic individuals involved in the Jewish resistance.

  AKIVA

  Aharon “Dolek” Liebeskind would have been twenty-seven at the outbreak of World War II. He was described as charismatic and loyal. He was key in organizing the couriers and forming connections with other resistance groups. His motto was to “fight for three lines in history,” even when the outcome was already known. He died in a shootout at the Akiva bunker on December 24, 1942.

  Abraham “Laban” Leibovich is not mentioned in this book but was heavily involved with the Akiva raids in the fall of 1942. He died during an attempted prison escape on April 29, 1943.

  Hillel “Antek” Wodzislawski stepped into the leadership of Akiva after the organization’s collapse following the Cyganeria attack. He died in October 1943 during a retaliation strike for the murder of a Jewish child in hiding.

  Justyna “Gusta” Draenger was the young wife of Shimshon Draenger and it is thanks to her that we know as much of Akiva’s story as we do. After her arrest, she dictated the story of the resistance to the other women in her prison cell. Five copies each were made on pieces of toilet paper, which were then smuggled out of Montelupich Prison. Most of the narrative survives and was compiled into a book titled Justyna’s Story. She was killed in November 1943 after fulfilling an agreement with her husband that if either was ever captured by the Nazis, the other would surrender too.

  Maniek Eisenstein was the youngest Akiva leader and hid in the Tarnow Ghetto after the Cyganeria attack. He was killed on March 20, 1943.

  Shimshon Draenger was twenty-two when the war began, and caught the attention of the Germans early on because of an anti-Nazi newspaper he published. He was the head of the Kopaliny Farm and had a talent for forgery. He was the husband of Gusta Draenger and had an intense focus on the cause of the resistance. He was killed in November 1943 after fighting with the partisans in the forests of Poland.

  ZOB

  Mordecai Anielewicz was twenty years old at the beginning of World War II but quickly began to understand the threat of the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people. It took time to persuade the various resistance groups within the Warsaw Ghetto to unite, but once he did, and became their captain, he fulfilled the dream of many resistance fighters to prove that “not all sheep go like lambs to the slaughter.” He died on May 8, 1943, in the ZOB bunker at 18 Mila Street in Warsaw.

  Mira Fuchrer was nineteen at the outset of the war and eventually became a courier through the Warsaw Ghetto. She was the
girlfriend of Mordecai Anielewicz and fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising until her death on May 8, 1943, in the ZOB bunker.

  Zivia Lubetkin was a leader during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and acted as a liaison between bunkers. When it became clear that the resistance headquarters was about to be raided, Zivia was sent through the sewers to find a connection on the Aryan side. She escaped but continued to run resistance operations from outside the ghetto. She died in Israel in 1976.

  COURIERS

  After the war, many of the young people who had been involved in courier work spoke little of their accomplishments, preferring to let those who died in their efforts be named as the true heroes. Thus, there is no complete list. However, I wish to mention a few couriers whose work saved countless numbers of lives and gave hope to a people in an otherwise sealed-off world.

  Anka Fisher was a courier in attendance at Akiva’s “Last Supper” meal. She had recently been released from prison following a brutal questioning and torture but never surrendered any information, remaining true to her oath of silence. Her fate is unknown.

  Chajka Grosman was nineteen when the war began and almost immediately was asked to take a leadership position within her resistance group. Much of her courier work involved warning the residents of Warsaw about extermination plans for the Jews. She was actively involved in the uprising at the Bialystok Ghetto in August 1943, survived the war, and died in Israel in 1996.

  Chavka Folman Raban was fifteen at the outset of the war. She became well trained in the use of weapons, helped smuggle many Jews out of the ghettos, and was directly involved in the Cyganeria Café attack with Akiva. She was eventually arrested and sent to Auschwitz but survived. She died in 2014.

  Frumke Plotnicka was the first courier in Warsaw to smuggle weapons into the ghettos inside a bag of potatoes. She joined the Bedzin Ghetto Uprising and was killed on August 3, 1943, in a basement with a rifle clutched in her hands.