Two battle groups remained in the ghetto. We were in contact with them until the middle of June. From then on every trace of them disappeared.
Those who had gone over to the "Aryan side" continued the partisan fight in the woods. The majority perished eventually. The small group that was still alive at the time took an active part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising as the "ZOB Group". At present the following of our comrades are still among the living: Chajka Betchatowska, B. Szpigel, Chana Krysztal, Masza Glejtman, and Marek Edelman.
In the period preceding the last German extermination drive the Bund's activities were closely intertwined with the history of the ZOB. I think that never before had there existed a similar degree of unanimity and coordination of people of different political parties as during the various groups' collaboration in that period. We were all fighters for the same just cause, equal in the face of history and death. Every drop of blood was of precisely the same value.
However, I should like to mention a few of our comrades, although there were many like them, simply because I came in contact with those particular ones in our daily work.
ABRASHA BLUM. He was the ideological father of armed resistance in our Party. Physically very weak, but of exceptional force of conviction and strength of character, he was always the one to decide about our most momentous moves, and he always sided with the youth. He did not permit the flame of zeal and work to die out. Calm and collected in the most difficult moments, he was forever thinking of and looking after somebody else. He simply considered it his duty, as he always did with the most difficult assignments. Whatever he did was simple and obviously the right thing to do. On several occasions friends concerned about his safety urged him to leave the ghetto and move to the "Aryan side". He did not agree to do so, however, wanting to remain in the ghetto until the very end. And he did remain at his post despite the fact that he was physically unable to fight. He carried no weapons, but he was a partisan nonetheless, at heart. On May 3rd, in the course of the fighting for the brush-makers' base, when the order "All to the attack" was given and Abrasha asked the Commander whether it applied to him too, the latter, in the general confusion and without time to consider, answered "yes". Abrasha, unarmed, went to the attack with the others.
JUREK BLONES. He was commander of a battle group in the brush-makers' area, a young enthusiast. Twice, during the hardest fighting, when everything seemed lost, when everyone around him was already giving up, he remained on his post alone and fought off the Germans singlehandedly, thus saving not only partisan lives, but the lives of hundreds of civilians as well. He did not live to tell the tale.
MEJLACH PERELMAN. As Commander of the Combat Patrols in the central ghetto, he led his men himself on several occasions, penetrating to the very ghetto walls. During the last patrol he was wounded three times by German rifle fire. A severe stomach wound almost immobilized him, but he did not relinquish his leadership. He covered the patrol's withdrawal to its base. When the base was reached, however, he was unable to enter through the narrow passage and had to remain on the outside. His comrades made him as comfortable as possible in one of the outside rooms and left an armed guard at his side. When the Germans approached at 11 a.m., he gave his arms and ammunition to the guard "so it may serve further" and ordered him to join the others inside. He remained upstairs alone, and perished. His voice could be heard from amidst the flames for a long time.
DAWID HOCHBERG. He was a battle group commander in the central ghetto. Almost a child, his mother wanted to save him so badly that she forbade him to join the ZOB. When the Germans approached a bunker where five battle groups and several hundred civilians were sheltered and their death seemed inevitable, Dawid relinquished his weapons and blocked the narrow passageway with his own body. In this position he was killed by the Germans, but before his wedged-in body could be removed, the entire civilian group as well as the partisans had time to leave the endangered shelter.
TOBCIA DAWIDOWICZ. A liaison woman between the Schultz and Tobbens areas during the fighting, she walked that horrible path under fire more than a dozen times. When she led her group for the last time, to the sewer entrance, she sprained an ankle and could no longer walk unaided. Her friends helped her along, but when, the last in line, she was about to enter the sewer trap door, she said: I shall not come along, I do not want to make the difficult passage still more difficult for you...". And she remained in the ghetto, alone, where she perished.
On May 10th, 1943, the first period of our bloody history, the history of the Warsaw Jews, came to an end. The site where the buildings of the ghetto had once stood became a ragged heap of rubble reaching three storeys high.
Those who were killed in action had done their duty to the end, to the last drop of blood that soaked into the pavements of the Warsaw ghetto.
We, who did not perish, leave it up to you to keep the memory of them alive--forever.