by Peter Albano
Jan said, “Perhaps, you should skip the meeting, Josef. We can. . .”
Josef kissed an angry tear from Regina’s cheek and then turned to Jan. “I’ll drop out of the building committee and, perhaps, the Judenrat.”
Regina stepped back, stared into her husband’s eyes, anger fading. Her unsteady voice was conciliatory, “You promise to drop out of the building committee, the Judenrat?”
“Yes.”
“Then go to your prayer meeting—if it’s that important to you.”
Jan said, “It will be a short meeting: He’ll be home early.”
Josef turned to the baby who sat quietly on the floor, smiling up at her father. He picked Rose up, kissed her tenderly, and placed her on the floor again. Then he pulled on an old wool jacket and placed a battered felt hat on his head.
Regina kissed him fiercely before he left.
The meeting was held in the basement of a century-old building on Pawia Street. A combination tenement and storehouse, the old structure had a large basement that had been partitioned into a dozen storerooms. A clandestine classroom that served as a prayer house had been established in one of the small rooms.
As Josef entered the room, which was dimly lighted by four candles, he could see a small pulpit at the far end. Covered with faded material, it had a Star of David embroidered at the top. Beneath the star, the words “God, Torah, Israel,’’ which represent the three cardinal aspects of Judaism, had been stitched in gold. To one side stood a plain crooked cabinet, the aron ha kodesh—the sacred repository containing holy objects, relics, and icons. To the other side stood a Torah with its five Books of Moses inscribed on fine parchment and hanging from its walnut stand in rolls. Josef knew that here on this scroll resided the entire body of Jewish faith, social thought, jurisprudence, ethics, morality, culture. Here was the source of the richness of their life; here, too, was the source of their misery.
A long unfinished table with shelves filled with books stood against one wall. Some had beautiful, richly imprinted bindings; others were so worn their covers were beginning to crumble. There were three child-sized benches and a long table that had been obviously built with adults in mind. Josef and Jan sat at the end of this table.
There were eight other men seated on benches at the table. All were young and very thin. Without exception, their clothing was worn and shabby. Every head was covered. Seven wore dark felt hats while three bearded men wore linen yarmulkes, earlocks, and the black garments of the orthodox. All eyes were on Jan.
Jan opened the meeting. “This is a meeting of the Kosciuskos.” His eyes roamed over the men like daggers. “If you feel you cannot resist the Germans, if you feel that you cannot keep what you hear a secret, even from your wives, leave now.” No one moved except the orthodox who eyed one another curiously. Jan gestured to the end of the table where a stranger sat. “This is Natan Kagan,” he announced. “The last Jew of Kutno.”
Natan Kagan stood. He was a small young man with the face of a ferret and the eyes of a fox who had been driven to ground too many times. He was so thin, his wasted features seemed huge—his nose hooked and angular, eyes swollen, mouth enormous with wide colorless lips. He looked like a candidate for the next morning’s death squad. Baggy and torn, his trousers were filthy, sweater ragged and as foul as his trousers, black hat rimless. He spoke softly, voice reminding Josef of the sound of wind rustling through dead, dry leaves. “The Jews of Kutno are no more. The village is gone.”
“How do you know?” Henryk Laden, a young cantor, asked.
Natan Kagan eyed Henryk with rheumy eyes. “I was born there, lived there until the Germans came.” The haunted eyes wandered over the intent faces. “Have you heard of Einsatzgruppent.”’
The men looked at one another. “A task force,” Zygmunt Warszawer, an apprentice carpenter, said, translating the word literally.
Kagan laughed, a hard, bitter sound that brought a chill to Josef. “Do you know what their task is?”
Silence. Kagan answered his own question, “Their task is to murder every Jew they can find. They are Heinrich Himmler’s special SS exterminators. There were seven thousand Jews in Kutno when Himmler sent them. Some were taken to a camp they’re building at Chelmno. They lined the rest of us up for inspection in groups of eighty and a hundred in front of old Polish tank traps. Then they shot us.”
A rumble of disbelief filled the room. “Didn’t you suspect? Run?” Zygmunt asked.
“I suspected when they made us undress. Then it was too late.”
“But how could you escape?”
“My whole family held hands in a tight group. My mother, father, and two sisters fell on me. I wasn’t scratched but almost drowned on my parents’ blood. My father wasn’t dead. They shot him in the head. Blew his brains into my face. I lay under my dead family until night. . .” He stopped, reeled back and forth, and grabbed the table with bony, white hands. Two men leapt to their feet and steadied him.
“Sit. Sit, Natan,” Jan said.
The Jew of Kutno shook his head. “There is more.” He threw back his shoulders and took a deep breath. Shook off the supporting hands and seemed to find new strength. “There are rumors they’re going to kill us all. Chelmno is to be an extermination camp and so is Treblinka and there are rumors of others. . .”
“Treblinka!” “Extermination!” chorused through the room in horror. Thoughts of his family sent an icy hand to grip Josef’s heart, cut off his breath.
“It can’t be true!” Zygmunt Warszawer cried. There were shouts of protest, wails of anguish. Warszawer continued, “It’s one thing to kill a few thousand Jews in a remote village, quite another to exterminate a population of nearly one-half million in a big city like Warsaw. It could never be kept secret. World opinion. . .”
Kagan interrupted with a dismissive wave, “Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Frank, Eichmann, don’t give one matzo ball for world opinion. They believe they’re going to rule the world, anyway. Remember, ‘Tomorrow the world,’ they say. The Jews, Poles, and Slavs are untermenschen to them.”
“Subhumans fit for slavery or extermination,” Josef offered. Natan Kagan nodded. Josef continued, “We’d heard of exterminations at Minsk and Vilna. But those were only Russians. Russians murdered my father. I wouldn’t miss one of them.”
The Jew of Kutno laughed bitterly. “And Jews. Jews!” Placing his hands on the table and leaning on them, Kagan stared around the room. “Oy! Are you blind? Can’t you hear? Can’t you read? Haven’t you read Mein Kampf! He tells it all there. Look around you. You’re all starving to death, thousands of you have already died. Do you think any of the Jews of Warsaw will be spared?”
A heavy silence crept through the room and hung in the air like the cold musk of a tomb. Finally, Jan Tyranowski broke the silence, “We should arm?”
“Yes,” Kagan agreed.
Henryk Laden, the young cantor, came to his feet. “From the time of the end of the Second Temple, the goyim have tried to exterminate us. We’ve been accused of being witches, sacrificing Gentile children, bringing the Black Death. We’ve been slaughtered by Crusaders, Spanish Inquisitors, Cossacks, and dozens of others.” He pounded the table for emphasis. “But the “Chosen People’ are still here and our faith is stronger than ever.”
“Ha!” Kagan scoffed. “You’re chosen, all right—chosen for death.”
“I don’t believe that,” the cantor said.
“You believe I do not tell the truth?” Kagan asked, voice sharpened by hostility.
Laden the cantor looked the Jew of Kutno up and down, and said, “Except for the word of God, there is no truth, there are only varying degrees of lies.”
“You call me a liar?”
“I agree with Zygmunt Warszawer,” the cantor said. “They wouldn’t dare kill every Jew in Poland. Why that’s three and a half million people—ten percent of the entire populat
ion.’’
Kagan sighed. “If God exists, my words are truth.” There was a gasp at the near blasphemy.
Laden said to Kagan, “We should wait. Obey the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ which is a cornerstone of our faith. We have no right to take lives. We should resist with our faith, not guns, as we have down through the ages. We must wait for the Red Army to liberate us.”
“The Red Army is kaput. We will all die,” Kagan said. He dropped into his chair.
Jan Tyranowski came to his feet. He spoke slowly and deliberately. “There have been rumors of other exterminations and all of you have heard them. Natan Kagan has not told us anything we had not heard—suspected. We have just been deluding ourselves, refusing the truth when it has been here to see in Warsaw for over a year. Thousands of our own people have starved to death or been murdered in this ghetto, already. Last week the Germans shot one hundred fifty-seven people from that building on Gensia Street because they had lice.” His eyes roamed the intent faces. “We all have lice. I believe we’re marked for death. I believe we should prepare to resist. I, for one, will not die like a dog at the feet of my executioner.” He raised a fist and his strident voice filled the room, “I will die facing him, fighting him, if only with a rock in my hand.”
Shouts of “Hear, hear!” and “No, no!” resounded from the walls.
Jan silenced the uproar with raised hands. “Any of you who feels he cannot in good conscience resist to the death, please leave.” Henryk Laden and the two other orthodox came to their feet and turned toward the door. Jan’s harsh voice stopped them like the blade of a sword. “Silence! This I demand. If any of you betrays us, I will have that man’s life.” He stared at the trio with death in his cold eyes. “Do you understand?”
“We promise on our faith,” the three men chorused and left.
The door had just closed, when Solomon Katz, a young painter, shouted anxiously, “The arms, where do we get them? Buy them?” He shrugged in a gesture of hopelessness. “We don’t have ten zlotys among us.”
“We must collect valuables—jewels. Trade them for weapons,” Jan said.
“But where? Where? What goy would help us?” Zygmunf Warszawer cried.
Josef raised a hand. “I know a Pole named Bogdan Koz. Koz is an importer—deals in weapons. He lives on Bilowski Street and my father said he had a gun hidden under every brick.”
“It would be dangerous to contact him,” Katz said.
“It’s dangerous to live,” Josef said. “I’ll go under the wall. If Bogdan Koz is alive, he’ll deal with us. He’ll dc anything for money.”
“No,” Jan said. “You look too Juden, Josef. I’ll go. After all, I have the look of the ideal Nordic, not an untermenschen.” There was a brief chuckle. He continued in a serious mien, “We need recruits—fighters. Screen them carefully and see me before you bring anyone here. And start collecting valuables. Hound your families—your friends. Steal, if you must. We must barter.” The blue-green eyes searched each face and there was a warning in them. “But be very careful. There are traitors in the ghetto and you know it.” He gestured to a small young man slouching at the far end of the table, “Markus Lang, you’re our electronics specialist. Before we leave, can you tell us of any news you’ve heard on your wireless?”
Lang, truly a genius, had built the ghetto’s most powerful receiver in his basement. There were dozens of hidden wireless sets in the ghetto. Most were primitive crystal sets with limited range. But Lang had built a receiver with stolen tubes and transformers he had wound himself. When weather conditions were right, he could pull in stations from as far away as Switzerland, Turkey, Italy, Sweden, and England.
Markus Lang came slowly to his feet and spoke in a soft, almost effeminate voice filled with sarcasm, “As you know, international Jewish bankers started the war, Bolshevik Jews in Russia are helping to persecute Poles, Jews are traitors who have sucked the very life from honest Poles. Jews are ‘Shylocks’ profiteers. . .”
“Yes. Yes, we all know Hans Frank’s old slogans,” Jan said.
“Polish radio is still filled with them,” Lang said defensively.
Jan drummed the table. “What do you hear from England? From neutrals? How is the war going?”
Every man hunched forward eagerly. “The news from Russia is all bad,” Markus Lang said. There was a sigh. He continued, “The Germans took Lwow and are nearing Kiev and Leningrad. The Red Army seems to be disintegrating.”
“What can you expect?” Solomon Katz asked bitterly. “That maniac Stalin murdered all of his best officers in his stupid purges.”
“The other fronts—the English?” Zygmunt Warszawer asked.
Lang said, “I have been picking up the BBC regularly. England seems to be safe from invasion. Hitler is too busy with the Russians. But things are not going well for them in North Africa. A new German general named Rommel has driven them all the way back into Egypt and a large force is besieged in a place called Tobruk. No, indeed, things are not going well in North Africa.”
A dismal hush fell over the room and Jan gestured to the door “We will meet here in one week,” he said.
Slowly, the men came to their feet and shuffled out of the room. Josef and Jan were the last to leave.
VII
The Western Desert
August, 1941
Brigadier Lloyd Higgins hoisted himself through the hatch of the Matilda II tank, planted his feet on the thin cushion of his seat, adjusted his earphones, and unsnapped the top of his binocular case. Bringing his glasses to his eyes he swept the barren desert that stretched endlessly in every direction. Dug in on the reverse slope of Bir Fuad Ridge so that only the turret of his tank would be exposed to an advancing enemy, Lloyd’s Matilda was the center tank of the nineteen survivors of the Fourth Armored Brigade. At two-hundred-foot intervals, he could see his command’s cast-steel turrets stretching to the north and south like a line of armored pillboxes, two-pounders pointed to the west, commanders standing like statues, most with their binoculars to their eyes. Every man knew this brigade—now reduced to company strength—was the key to the Eighth Army’s rear guard.
Lloyd regarded his Matilda like a man evaluating his longtime mistress—there were many things he liked about her, but, on the other hand, time had revealed many flaws he would change. Since, at the moment, she was the best the newly formed Eighth Army had to offer, he had to live with her. Lloyd liked her turret, which was cast, well-shaped, offering no shot traps to the enemy. Hydraulically driven, it had a 360-degree traverse. He liked her armored skirting protecting the five twin bogie assemblies on each side, the large return rollers, idlers, and sprockets. With seventy-eight-millimeter armor fitted to the front of the hull and turret and a high-velocity two-pounder gun, Matilda was as formidable as most of her contemporaries. In fact, her thick armor had made her all but impervious to any Italian or German guns until the devastating German eighty-eight appeared on the scene. But Matilda was slow; very slow, and as designed, she was incapable of bringing her weapons to bear on attacking aircraft.
Lloyd had personally modified all Matildas under his command. He had begged new high-compression pistons, raising the horsepower of the two Leyland diesels from 190 horsepower to 210. With modifications to the eight-speed gear box and injectors, speed was increased from sixteen miles an hour to twenty-two, which was three miles an hour slower than the Afrika Corps’s Panzer (Panzerkampfwagen) III. The single coaxial machine gun fitted in the mantlet did not provide enough small bore firepower and its field of fire was limited to the plus or minus ten degrees of elevation of the two-pounder. He begged Besa Mark I, 7.92-millimeter machine guns from Supply in Cairo and had every tank in his command fitted with one on a post just outside the hatch where the tank commander could man it. Only 1,125 rounds of ammunition in four boxes could be carried, but the new weapon had an unlimited field of fire. In July the first Stuka was shot down
by a squadron under air attack near Halfaya Pass.
The Italians had nothing that could stand up to the Matilda, but the Germans were a different show. The Panzer III was a formidable opponent, indeed. With excellent armor, a fifty-millimeter gun, and capable of twenty-five miles an hour, it could fight or run and there was nothing Matilda could do about it. It took clever tactics and direct hits on its flat shot traps to stop one of them with Matilda’s two-pounder.
Something was afoot. When he had returned at the end of July, the siege of Tobruk was already three months old. Thirty-five thousand troops—Britons and Indians toughened by the Ninth Australian Division—were too hard a nut for Rommel to crack. With Tobruk denied him, Rommel had no forward base for his advance into Egypt. Axis ships were forced to unload at Tripoli and Benghazi and nearly two thousand tons of water and supplies had to be trucked daily hundreds of miles to the forward units. Nevertheless, in Rommel’s last offensive, the Afrika Korps had smashed to the Sollum escarpment, destroyed the Second Armored Division, and sent the remainder of the Western Desert Force reeling back into Egypt.
Lloyd knew he had to hold Bir Fuad Ridge. New shipments of tanks, guns, trucks, and troops were arriving in Alexandria and the strength of the Eighth Army was growing under its new commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham. Wavell had been sacked and sent to India. Lloyd knew Cunningham had made a name for himself in Abyssinia. But he had fought Italians there. Anyone could beat Italians.
Rommel was building up his forces, too. The coast road was kept in good repair by German pioniers (engineers) and it was crowded with trucks and tanks moving toward Egypt. Lloyd expected to see panzers before him soon. Rommel loved the Western Desert—a plateau 500 miles long and 150 miles wide that stretched all the way from Libya into western Egypt. Here in this barren, hot, featureless terrain, the master tactician could maneuver his tanks like ships at sea. Prodding, he looked for weak spots, always threatening one of his masterfully executed flanking sweeps despite his supply problems. Lloyd knew it was a question of who would be ready first—who would strike first.
