by Peter Albano
Suddenly, the sergeant stood, grabbed the terrified girl’s arm and pulled her against his erection which was clearly visible beneath the huge bulge of his stomach. “You a virgin, Judin? I’ve never had a Jewish virgin. I’ll give you something to make you happy. Make you cry with joy.” He grasped the screaming girl by the buttocks and thrust his hips hard against her pelvis while his companions roared with laughter and pointed.
A flash of lightning struck Irving’s brain. Madness possessed him; no fear, no doubts, not even conscious thought. With his mother’s and father’s horrified shouts in his ears, he launched himself at the sergeant, smashing one fist to his jaw, followed by the other into the huge stomach which yielded like a giant bowl of gelatin. Spittle flew from the policeman’s thick lips and he twisted away from the girl doubling over and gasping like a man who had been garroted. Irving brought up a knee, catching the man in the crotch, followed by another smash to the nose, and he felt cartilage pop under his fist with a sound similar to that of a man biting into a crisp apple.
He heard his mother scream “No!” just before the stock of the carbine hit him. The metal base plate caught him at the base of the skull. There was an impact as if he had run full-tilt into a wall, a sharp pain that shot down his spine to his toes, his vision starred and broke up into patches of blackness and his knees became butter. A fist to the side of the head sent him sprawling into the gutter and the black universe overwhelmed the stars.
Irving awoke in the Tlamatzka Synagogue. Because David was a physician, he and three other doctors and their families were assigned to the east wing of the old synagogue which was at the northern end of the new ghetto — a walled-in part of the central city two and a half miles long and a mile wide surrounding the old medieval ghetto. An area that normally housed a 150,000 people, it now had a half-million Jews crammed into it.
In the synagogue, each family was assigned a single room and a surgery was established in an old storeroom. Rachel had not been raped but her eyes were dimmed by a haunted, fearful look they would hold for the rest of her life. Life in the ghetto was harsh. The wall grew to ten feet and was crowned with barbed wire. There were twelve exits guarded by Polish Blues and by vicious Lithuanians. Almost all traffic to the outside ceased and only those few who held “labor permits” were allowed to leave. Rations were short and immediately half the population began starving. Fortunately for the Bernsteins, the doctors were provided for but they were faced with an impossible task; ministering to starving people without the proper medications and equipment.
There were glimmers of light in the darkness. Schools met regularly and Talmudic law studied. Drama groups organized and a fine symphony orchestra gave weekly concerts. Primitive crystal radios were built, a newspaper printed and secret religious services held. The Bernsteins continued to observe all important holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Simchas Torah, Passover.
But rations grew shorter and by the end of 1941, people were dying by the thousands, corpses littering the sidewalks and gutters every morning to be picked up by “death squads” and burned. Overworked, the Bernsteins despaired. David was aging and bent with fatigue: Bernice showed new lines on her tired face, her once chestnut hair now turned a stringy gray shot through with white. Then Irving met Solomon LeVine.
Sol was a soldier in his early twenties who had shed his uniform and fled to the ghetto when his division had been annihilated outside Warsaw. His father, an army colonel, had been captured by the Russians in Bialystok and disappeared in the Katyn forest where, it was rumored, thousands of officers, teachers and intellectuals had been shot by the Bolsheviks. Packed with sixty others in an open gondola car en route from Breslau to Warsaw, his mother had died of pneumonia.
Over six feet tall, Solomon LeVine was a powerful young man with close-cropped blond hair, sharp yet handsome features, and a jaw fashioned by a stonemason. The first time Rachel saw him, Irving noticed the haunted look in her eyes vanish, replaced by a warm glow he had not seen for over a year.
“It’s organized murder. They’ll kill us all,” LeVine said in a soft husky voice to the Bernstein family seated around his chair in their tiny room in the synagogue.
“How can you be so sure?” David asked. “People are starving, but to kill us all?”
“You’ve heard of Treblinka?”
“Of course. It’s in the Warsaw District near the Bug River. A work camp. Thousands have volunteered…” Sol interrupted David. “And none return. It’s mass murder. They’re gassing our people — burning them. They’re calling it ‘the final solution to the Jewish problem’.” The women gasped with horror.
“No! No,” David cried incredulously.
“Carbon monoxide, Doctor.”
“That would be slow.”
Sol nodded. “It is. They’re looking for something more efficient. There’s rumors of a new one — a disinfectant called Zyklon B, and they’re building a huge new camp at a place called Auschwitz.”
“Yes. I’ve heard of it,” David said. “It’s a rail junction.”
“Of course. They’ll need the railroads for their devil’s work.”
“How can you know all this?” David asked.
After looking around, Sol lowered his voice. “You’ve heard of Zydowska Oranizacja Bojowa?”
“Of course. ZOB. They fancy themselves a combat group.” Everyone remained silent for a moment. “You’re a member, Sol?”
“Yes. We don’t fancy ourselves, we are. We have spies who go under the wall, who bring us information.”
“You’ve been under the wail?”
“Yes, through the sewers. And all I tell you is true. I swear on the word of Moses.”
“I can’t believe it — won’t believe it,” Bernice said hoarsely.
“You must. You must.” Sol said, leaning forward and gesturing with a fist. “We want Irving. We need him.”
“No,” Bernice cried. “We’ve given enough. First Isaac. Now, not my only son…” She was choked by sobs.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Irving said. “Sol’s right. They’re going to kill us all. We must organize — resist. There is no choice.” He turned to LeVine, “I’m ready.”
ZOB headquarters was in a candle-lighted cellar under an old brick apartment building on Grzybowska Street. Seated on boxes around an old battered table, a dozen young men stared at their leader, Solomon LeVine. “We have two new members,” LeVine said gesturing to Irving Bernstein and a sallow young man with cavernous cheeks and wide brown eyes that glowed even in the dim light. Sol continued, gesturing at Bernstein, “Irving is the son of the physician.” Ten heads nodded in the shadows. He turned to the sallow newcomer, “And this is Jonasz Katz from Lwow.” His voice softened. “Jonasz, can you tell the others of the Einsatzgruppen? If you’re not up to it …”
Shaking his head, Katz rose slowly, unbending like an arthritic septuagenarian. Hunched over in the flickering light, he looked like a cadaver dressed in a shroud too large. “It’s all right, Solly. God has given me the strength.” The big, unblinking eyes moved from face to face until arrested by Bernstein’s. Then Katz rasped in a low whisper, dry leaves rustled by the autumn wind, “I was one of the Jews of Lwow. There are no more. The Germans have organized Einsatzgruppen — Special Action Groups — and these special actions are to shoot Jews.”
There was a rumble of horror and anger. He held up his hands in a suppressive gesture. “They marched us — my father, mother, and two sisters to the ravine at the end of Janowska Street — some of you may know it.” A few heads nodded. “A beautiful place.” The feverish eyes found the floor, the voice dropped octaves. Everyone hunched forward. “They made us dig pits, lined us up — old men, women, children, beautiful young girls, and shot us — shot us down.”
“But you escaped — you escaped,” a voice cried from the rear.
“Yes. My father and mother both fell against me — pushed me into the pit. A half-dozen more fell on top of us, screaming, squirming. Then SS jumped down into th
e pit, shot those still moving in the head. My mother’s brains were blown all over…” His voice broke. He sagged back. Irving came to his feet and caught the collapsing Katz. He lowered him onto his box. The man weighed no more than ninety pounds. But Katz continued like a gramophone no one could turn off; as if he had to tell it, relive it to convince himself that it had really happened, that the nightmare was real. “I lay there all afternoon and into the night. The bodies piled on me became cold and stiff. Finally, about midnight, I think, I crawled out. The Germans had gone. I ran into the woods…” He choked, shuddered.
“Enough. Enough, Jonasz,” Sol LeVine said gently. “I didn’t want to put you through this.” Jonasz Katz nodded silently. LeVine turned his eyes to the group. “We must fight — we all know this. There is Treblinka, rumors of others and, I have heard, Auschwitz has gone into operation and soon Einsatzgruppen may be stalking the streets of Warsaw.”
“No! No!” rang through the cellar as every man except Katz came to his feet. “Fight! Fight!” Irving Bernstein was too choked with anger to speak. He could only wave his fist.
They gave themselves the name Hosmonaeans after the ancient freedom-fighting family that gave birth to the famous Maccabee rebels. Jewelry and money were collected. But now, instead of sneaking through the sewers under the wall to buy food, weapons were bought, too. A half-dozen fair, “un-Jewish” looking young men were selected as the primary couriers. Solomon LeVine, Irving Bernstein and four other young men, all fair haired, clean shaven and, preferably, with blue or green eyes, were picked from dozens of eager volunteers. Soon, wading side by side in shoulder high in filth, Irving became well acquainted with this group of new Hosmonaeans: Rafael Adar, Mateusz Kos, Henryk Szmidt and Zygmunt Stern.
Although they could expect no help from the Polish underground, there was a source of supply; an old man known only as “Podwinski” who lived at Okecie 47. For treasures in jewelry and thousands of zlotys, food pistols and rifles were sold to the desperate Jews. Early in July of 1942, on the day of Tisha B’ab — the day commemorating the destruction of the Temples by the Babylonians and Romans in Jerusalem — the Hosmonaeans bought their first machine gun. Soon after, a dozen more weapons were transported through the slimy filth back to the ghetto.
Any Jew caught outside without proper papers was in mortal danger. Roving gangs of Polish hoodlums caught Zygmunt Stern, turned him over to the Gestapo for a thousand zlotys, and jeered as he was hanged from a lamppost. Then it was the turn of Mateusz Kos who was less fortunate; hung from a pole by his feet, he was castrated slowly with the tip of a bayonet. A fleeing Bernstein who was two blocks away heard his screams and continued to hear the screams even as he plunged into the sewers. “Swine! I’ll have your blood,” he swore over and over.
By the end of 1942, the population of the ghetto had been reduced to less than sixty thousand. All of the very young and very old were long gone; shipped off in the first transports to Treblinka’s twelve gas chambers and open burning pits. And there were reports of new death camps; Belzec, Chelmno and Maidanek near Kracow and Lubin were in operation, in addition to the massive new works at Auschwitz.
Then, in January of 1943, there were reports that the last survivors would be rounded up and killed. Preparations in the ghetto were feverish. Under the direction of Solomon LeVine, Rafael Adar and several other ex-soldiers, a series of block houses connected by tunnels were erected in an area 300 yards wide and a half-mile long. Anchored on the north by the Tlamatzka Synagogue and paralleling Nalewki and Grzybowska Streets, the fortified area encompassed a rectangle about 300 yards wide and a half-mile long. Fortifying cellars and first floor redoubts with bricks, blocks of stone and sandbags, the women worked alongside their men. Rachel always seemed to find her way to LeVine’s side and in the evenings, the two managed to steal away together. Irving knew there were a thousand hidden nooks and chambers under the ghetto where couples could still find blissful privacy. He always looked the other way until he met Leja Gepner.
Although thin as all the others, Leja was big-hipped, raw-boned and strong in the thighs like the peasant girl she was. Her full breasts were pink crested and her long chestnut hair tumbled over her shoulders and down to her waist like silk. An hour after Irving met her, they were locked together in an alcove off an abandoned cellar, thrashing and crying with the joy of each other. And there were others; Madja, Elia and many more who had no names but responded to Irving’s frantic thrusts violently as if this act of life could forestall the inevitability of death.
Crouching in a stone and brick bunker built in an alcove just to the left of the entrance to the synagogue, Solomon LeVine taught Irving and Leja how to operate their best machine gun. “It’s a Czch VZ-37,” Sol said, raising the top cover, exposing the feed mechanism. “It’s a good weapon.” He licked his lips. “Seven-point-nine-two millimeter, gas driven, air cooled, six-hundred rounds a minute.” He gestured down Grzybowska Street where the gun had a clear field of fire, “You can sweep the whole damned street clean of schwein and ungeziefer.”
Irving and Leja chuckled at the German insult. Sol stood. “Irving, sit behind the weapon,” he said, a new business-like sound in his voice. “Leja sit just to the right.” The pair took their positions. “Now, Leja, pick up the first brass-tag holder on the belt.” The girl reached into the ammunition box and grasped the brass tag. “Pass it into the receiver and, Irving, take it with your left hand and pull it through until you hear a click.” Irving did as ordered. “Good. Now close the top plate hard until it locks — it won’t fire unless locked down.” Bernstein snapped the plate down.
“Pull the cocking handle twice.”
Irving pulled back on the wooden handle on the left side of the weapon, felt a powerful spring return it with a hard metallic sound. Sol nodded. “The gib on the extractor has engaged the first round. Now pull the handle again and drive a round into the firing chamber.” Irving did as ordered. “Excellent. Excellent,” Sol said, rubbing his hands together. “Now we have a final solution to the German problem.”
They all laughed.
The next morning, April 19, 1943, they came. Columns of Waffen SS, Polish Blues and Lithuanians, marching in precise ranks, shouting, “Sterben Juden scheisse.” Heart a trip-hammer against his ribs, Irving sat behind the VZ-37, his trembling right hand wrapped around the pistol grip, finger on the trigger, Leja Gepner ready to guide the belt, waiting for Sol’s signal. Finally, with the first ranks only fifty feet away, a flaming Molotov cocktail hurtled down from the top of an old brick apartment house, shattering on a coalscuttle helmet. Bathed in burning gasoline, an officer ran screaming toward the synagogue, tumbling into the gutter, rolling over and over. Eagerly, Irving pulled the trigger. The machine gun bucked and a hammering clatter dinned upon his eardrums. He screamed with joy and he heard Leja’s shouts as his bullets swept soldiers and policemen from their feet like a great broom, piling them in writhing bloody heaps. Other guns were firing and Molotov cocktails rained.
In a panic, the troops scurried for shelter. But there was none, every window and door sprouting machine guns, pistols and rifles. The air was blue with smoke and the reek of cordite burned Irving’s throat and made his eyes run. He traversed the weapon back and forth, playing his stream of bullets like a fire hose, bright brass cases spewing from the extractor, pinging and clattering against the stones and bricks. It was so easy he chuckled uncontrollably as he fired. And then, suddenly, it was over, a handful of troops and policemen fleeing down the street and out of the ghetto.
Cheering and giddy with their victory, the defenders emerged. Standing, Irving could see beyond the piled dead where the wounded were dragging themselves back, leaving dark smears on the cobble stones. One
SS sergeant staggered in a circle, using both hands to hold in his intestines which tangled his feet like gray reptiles. A shot to the head sent his helmet and the lemon custard contents of his skull flying. He collapsed in the gutter like a dropped sack of potatoes and then more shots ran
g out as a score of wounded were dispatched. The dead were stripped of their weapons and clothing and, within two hours, the bodies were dragged to Malanowski Square and dumped in a pit with rotting Jewish corpses. “God be praised. We showed them.” echoed through the ghetto.
“They’ll be back,” Sol said grimly. “Today was a lesson. They’re professional killers. They’ll learn.”
That night Irving and Leja made love with a violence neither of them would ever know again.
And the Germans did indeed learn. Three days later, they came back with artillery, tanks and flame throwers. First the artillery — heavy 10.5-centimeter and 15-centimeter pieces — firing at point blank range leveled building after building. Then the Waffen SS came through the wall following a pair of tanks. From cellars, rooftops, windows and doorways ZOB and Hosmonaean defenders poured small arms fire into the attackers. Gasoline-filled bottles turned the tanks into flaming coffins. With their armor destroyed, the SS troops were forced to flee again.
Yet it went on, day after day, week after week. Hundreds of Germans, Polish Blues, and Lithuanians were killed and replaced by fresh troops. But every ZOB and Hosmonaean fighter lost was gone forever; every weapon destroyed irreplaceable. No help came from the outside despite frantic pleas on ZOB radios. The perimeter shrank and the defenders were forced back onto the synagogue. Half-dead from fatigue, hunger and thirst, still they fought on.
By the end of the third week, Heinkel bombers were dropping high explosives and incendiaries and the artillery fire was continuous. Almost every building had been blown flat and those still standing were burning. Flame throwers roasted screaming defenders in block houses and cellars and hundreds died in the sewers when the Germans poured poison gas down manholes. The smell of death was heavy, the sickly sweet smell of roasted human flesh everywhere. But the Jews fought on, preferring immolation to capture.
