Up one flight, up two. He crouched and shot down on his pursuers.
His own Fighters used that moment to make their escape.
Rodel came to the top floor. The rooms were burning. He retreated to a dead end. Fire lapped all around him. The Germans came up the steps and forced him to break ground with a grenade lobbed at his feet. He reeled back, his machine pistol spewing defiantly. Curses poured from his mouth. The fire caught his shirt and flared up his back. He snarled and moved into his tormentors and fired, and they began retreating down the stairs, awed by his rage.
A human torch spit at them from a landing. His gun went empty. He pulled his pistol out and fired.
A German bullet struck him, two, three. He staggered and crashed out of the building, flaming down to the sidewalk, and his body smashed on the pavement. With broken bones protruding from his body, he kept crawling toward the Germans on the street and firing his pistol.
On the twentieth day the Germans returned with sound detectors, engineers, and dogs. Thirst-crazed Fighters leaped at them with vengeance, but the tide of war had turned unalterably.
While the ghetto burned, Oberführer Funk meticulously planned the block-by-block extermination of what remained of the ghetto. With military efficiency the Germans set up barricades over a block and then took it apart house by house, room by room. They were able to unearth one bunker after another and find people cowering in the rubble. Once a bunker was located, the engineers moved in efficiently and set dynamite charges in them. The blasts were followed up by teams of flame throwers, and finally the last of the “experts” pumped poison gas in.
Manhole covers were thrown open and poison gas filled the sewers. They were flooded to the height of the pipes.
Soon the putrid waters were clogged with corpses entangled in the barbed-wire traps.
On the twenty-first and twenty-second days, bunkers fell by the dozens. Still the pesky, arrogant Jewish Fighters continued their attacks. The Germans detested running into the Fighters because it called for a struggle to the death.
By the twenty-third day a hundred fifty bunkers had been methodically located.
A new tactic was tried.
Five-gallon cans of drinking water and freshly baked bread were set up by the Germans at intersections to lure the starved, thirst-crazed survivors into the open. Once a child was captured, he was tortured before his mother to reveal the location of a bunker. The bestial dogs forced their share of confessions.
Fifteen thousand near dead were uncovered and marched to the Umschlagplatz by the end of the twenty-third day.
On the twenty-fourth day the Germans were certain they had won the hardest battles and it was now a downhill fight. During the night Andrei Androfski, whose job was to reorganize the Joint Fighters after each day, pulled together two hundred sixteen fighters and the entire stock of firearms and waited for the enemy. Fighting out of rubble, they audaciously threw the Germans out of the ghetto in a series of ambushes, captured the planted food and water, and crashed through the Gensia Gate into the Aryan side, where they raided a small arsenal and threw the arms over the wall to their waiting comrades. They had captured enough food, ammunition, and water to sustain them for another angry gasp.
Sylvia Brandel was killed in this action, trying to tend a fallen Fighter.
So great was Oberführer Funk’s frustration, he shot one of his officers to death in a rage.
“German patrol overhead.”
Mila 18 went into a familiar pattern of silence. Deborah Bronski kept the remaining twenty children quiet. The Fighters did not breathe. The wounded prayed silently, daring not to shriek out their pain.
An hour passed ... two ...
The Germans still hovered over them, pressing in to find the elusive headquarters of the Joint Fighters.
On the third hour Rabbi Solomon began to weep prayers. Simon Eden nearly choked him to death to silence him.
Overhead, dogs sniffed up and down Mila Street; sound detectors begged to hear a cough, a cry.
At the end of the third hour the tension became unbearable. Heat added to the stillness. One by one they pitched forward in dead faints. Christopher de Monti yanked Deborah’s hair to keep her awake.
And then a cry!
Simon and Andrei and Tolek Alterman pistol-whipped the weepers into silence before a mass outbreak of hysteria.
Five hours ... six ...
The utter collapse as the Germans left the street.
Journal Entry
Tomorrow our battle goes into its twenty-fifth day. I want death to take me. I cannot stand more of it. Till yesterday I managed, but now Sylvia is gone and Moses is close to death. What has he had? What has he had?
Our boys and girls still fight fiercely. The enemy cannot claim the ghetto. I will die with pride. There is only one thing I wish now. Christopher de Monti must be taken out of the ghetto. He alone knows where the entire works of the Good Fellowship Club are buried. We cannot risk keeping him here any longer. I have not prayed in synagogue since I have been a boy. I have taken a position of convenience by calling myself an agnostic. I therefore did not have to submit to the hypocrisy of dogma, but on the other hand it spares me from exposing myself by saying I am an atheist and do not believe in God. Yes, a true position of convenience. Now I ask God to prove Himself. I beg him to let Christopher de Monti live so that this history will not die.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Chapter Nineteen
ANDREI ROLLED HIS TONGUE over his gritty teeth and peered out from behind the rubble pile. Muranowski Place before him was lit up with arc lights. It looked like day. Andrei thought, this night life is killing me. There was no chance of getting into the bunker from the Muranowski entrance. The square had at least two companies of Germans in it. He scratched his beard. Got to remind Simon to trim my beard tomorrow. I looked like hell in the mirror. Come to think of it, I owe Simon a trim too.
Andrei patted the Schmeisser, “Gaby,” and sized up the opposition. He had only one clip of twenty bullets and a grenade. Poor Gaby, Andrei said to himself. I can’t keep you clean any more. I’m all out of oil. Your pretty little sights are all rusted. Sorry, Gaby, we simply can’t take on a hundred of these whores by ourselves.
Well, they’re not moving, Gaby, so we’d better move, because I’m tired. I’d love to brush my teeth again before I die.
Each night since the beginning of the rebellion Andrei made a round of the Joint Fighters’ positions and reset them with orders for the next day. After the Germans were driven out of the ghetto in the first days the job was not too difficult. He could travel walking upright with runners at his side. During the fires it was nightmarish. Leaping flames, crumbling walls, and those damned artillery shells.
Now the communications between bunkers was all but broken. Two days ago he carried an order from Simon that each group was independent to act and improvise against the conditions in the immediate area. Each commander was responsible for forming his own hit-and-run attacks and, even more urgent, finding the food and ammunition and medical supplies to continue the fight.
Each night Andrei left Mila 18 to regroup the diminishing army. The Germans were getting bolder and bolder. Their night patrols increased. It took Andrei almost all night to find his scattered people, although their area was becoming smaller and smaller. Caution every damned step of the way. The Germans owned the southern end of the ghetto. Now at Muranowski Place they had a foothold in the north. On arterials like Zamenhof and Gensia, they dug in with permanent positions.