For five hours the enemy prowled in Mila 18. In this endless agony the hidden tried to make their breathing soundless and their hearts stop, for surely the detectors would catch a sound of life. Alex raised his head long enough to look at his watch. It was three more hours till darkness.
Oh Lord ... what then? Even when darkness comes they would be locked in this, their tomb, their final coffin. Four hundred lungs gasped for the meager ration of air.
Four hundred of the damned—numbed, sweaty, half naked, half dead.
The sixty Fighters who remained still had enough anger in their hearts to spoil for the making of a gesture of defiance.
Simon tried to rationalize. It was difficult to do that any more. The sewers were deadly and filled with bloated gassed corpses. There was no door open to them beyond the wall. We are finished, anyhow. Why not take my Fighters up and make a final attack? What would happen to the children and the civilians if we went up? What would happen to them?
Either way, doomsday was at hand. Well, Simon, make the choice, he said to himself. Be baked alive in this catacomb or destroy some of the enemy along with us? So hard to think. So hard. I wish Andrei would get back.
The noise above them stopped. For that instant everyone’s heart in the bunker stopped too. They waited ... a moment ... two ... three.
“They’re gone,” Alex whispered ever so softly. “Do you suppose Chris and Andrei got to Wolf?”
Simon didn’t hear Alex. His stomach churned with anger. The instant Andrei returned he would split into two forces. He would take one and Andrei the other, and they would throw every last grenade, fire every last shot in a suicide attack. Goddamn Germans! Dirty bastard animals! Dirty bastard animals!
Deborah Bronski slipped into the cell. They learned to speak and hear the other by barely whispering. “Will I be able to take the children up tonight? They’ve been lying still for two solid days and nights without speaking. They must have some air ... some water ...”
Simon was detached. Alex and Deborah tried to speak to him, but he was in his own fuzzy world of logistics, trying to organize an attack with knives against cannons.
“Simon, don’t do it,” Alex begged. “Don’t do what you’re thinking.”
“At least we’ll die looking at the sky,” Simon said.
Oberführer Alfred Funk’s field headquarters were in the Citadel, a few blocks from the northern gates of the ghetto. His goading obsession for several days had been focused on a blown-up sectional map of the central area filled with markings where sounds had been detected along Mila Street. Trails of underground sounds indicating tunnels, all in the proximity of the middle of the block. He knew it led to the Jews’ main bunker. Two entrances had been located. One in an air-raid shelter on Kupiecka Street, the other in a house on Muranowski Place. But he could not attack yet, for there were certain to be three or four more entrances and the Jews could either escape or hide in the other exits.
A large black grease-pencil mark was drawn around the houses from Mila 16 to Mila 22.
Funk walked to the second-story window and looked at his handiwork. Most of the ghetto had been leveled. Engineers were systematically dynamiting the standing buildings one by one to flush out those Jews who had hidden themselves in sub-floors. It had gone well in the last few days. Since the final action more than twenty thousand Jews had been taken to the Umschlagplatz and another five thousand were known dead. How many were burned or gassed? Impossible to tell, but the total indicated that victory over the invisible army of the Jews was at hand. He could not foolishly declare victory until the Mila Street bunker had been found.
Funk was desperate to find it quickly, for soon the rebellion would be in its second month and that would look very, very bad. Polish Home Army activity had been spurred by the Jewish rebellion, and unrest among the occupied countries could be felt as a direct result. He simply had to finish it off before it went over a month’s duration.
A knock on the door.
“Enter.”
An eager young Waffen SS officer from Trawniki entered, snapped his heels together, unable to contain his joy. “Heil Hitler!” Untersturmführer Manfred Plank crackled.
“Heil Hitler.” Funk grunted.
“Herr Oberführer! We are certain we have located another entrance to the main Jew bunker!”
“Ja?”
“Jawohl!”
Funk showed the man the map. The young officer snapped off his cap and tucked it under his left arm, and his right forefinger shot out and pointed to the location of Nalewki 39. “Here we have discovered a drainage pipe.
It runs in this direction ... so. Along with the tunnel on Muranowski Place and the tunnel on Kupiecka Street, it converges on the same location ... here ...”
“Mila 18.”
“We may also have found the location in Mila 18 itself. A large removable oven on the first floor of the building which still stands is extremely suspicious. We did not wish to take action until we received your personal orders.”
Funk rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Four possible entrances. Good.”
In a few moments Oberführer Alfred Funk emboldened his troops by another of his personal appearances in the ghetto. Surrounded by two squads of sub-machine-gun-bearing Nazi guards, he marched alongside the exuberant Untersturmführer Plank until they came to a place which had once been a building, now a rubble heap. Manfred Plank showed where the drainage pipe had been uncovered.
“We sent a man twenty meters deep into it. It becomes a tunnel at that point and turns sharply toward Mila 18.”
Funk looked at his watch. Two and a half hours of daylight left.
A staff car at the Przebieg Gate whisked him across town to Shucha Street and Gestapo House. Gunther Sauer was in a foul mood. His dog Fritzie had developed a cataract and was going blind. Moreover, his wife wrote complaining letters about the shortages of butter and meat developing at home.
Now Funk. These SS people were impossible. Himmler’s saving grace was his love for animals. Poor Himmler couldn’t bear to see a hurt dog. It was confided to him at one of the gassings at Treblinka that he had attended with Himmler. Himmler despised Goring, who was cruel to animals.
Sauer gave Fritzie an affectionate pat on the head and looked up to Alfred Funk in his grandfatherly way.
“I want to see the three Jews from the bunker. The Moritz Katz man and the others.”
“So?”
“We have located three entrances to their precious bunker. Faced with these facts, perhaps they will talk.”
Sauer reached in the drawer and gave the dog a tidbit. “Can’t see them,” he said.
“And why not?”
“They’re dead. Tried to break them down. Turned them over to the dogs last night. There, Fritzie ... good boy ... good boy.”
“Simon, come quickly.”
He pushed down the dark corridor. Alex opened the curtain to Rabbi Solomon’s cell. The last doctor left in the ghetto knelt over the old man’s prostrate body. The rabbi presented little more than a weightless bag of bones. His eyes were opened like a defiant Elijah doing combat with the wicked priests of Jezebel. His bony fingers clutched Torah scrolls.
Simon lifted his body and placed it on the cot and closed Rabbi Solomon’s eyes, and he looked inquiringly at the doctor.
“Don’t ask me why he died. Old age, lack of air ... grief ... who knows?”
“Last night he told me he would die today,” Alex said.
“And what did he say?” Simon snapped. “To fight tyrants is to honor God?”