The rains limit our movement, but we’re not just sitting around. Patrols and ambushes continue every night. Progress into the forest is slow but at a steady pace. If, as it now appears, we’ll be staying here for the winter, we’ll have to build bunkers. The winter here is fierce and merciless.
Our meals are regular: morning, noon, and evening. The food is limited but tasty, and on Friday nights we sit up late and sing: folk songs and songs of the Bund and youth movements.
Ever since we brought the books and candlesticks, the spice box and Jewish National Fund box, these Sabbath evenings are different. We see our homes in a new light. True, in most cases Sabbath candles were not lit, but when we visited our grandparents, we saw how bound they were to the God of their ancestors.
As one of the fighters has remarked, we appear to need distance in order to see what we had not seen. Karl is willing to admit that the Sabbath is an excellent Jewish invention. Sabbath removes us from capitalist slavery, and that’s good enough. Any mystical component only damages this noble idea.
It now becomes increasingly clear that the controversies that raged on the Jewish street only a year ago had missed the point. No one imagined what lay in wait for us at every turn. Everyone was certain in his opinion, but no one, apart from a few pessimists, saw what was obvious. One comrade has warned us: “Don’t bring any ideas from there. This territory will not tolerate them. Let’s stick to what we now see and hear.”
THERE’S NO DOUBT that music is good for us. Music, as opposed to speech, elevates the purest part of ourselves, does not sharpen differences but heals them. Folk songs and workers’ songs blend together and instill the sense that life is not arbitrary, indifferent, or evil. Melody lifts you on its wings and takes you back to childhood. This sweetness revives the body, but one mustn’t become addicted. The enemy lies in wait for the opportune moment; he is wily and patient and will not let a single one of us get away.
Not long ago we saw from a distance a unit of Ukrainian gendarmes chasing after a Jewish child who had escaped. The boy was quick and managed to dart into a cornfield and hide there. The German commander did not give up. He brought in more Ukrainian gendarmes, who surrounded the cornfield completely.
In the end, they caught the boy and dragged him off by his arms like a hunted animal.
When Jews are involved, even elderly gendarmes turn into fighters. We stood helplessly, shaking with fury; we were too few to come to the boy’s rescue.
IT HAPPENS SOMETIMES that after a night of singing someone will stand up and speak exactly as his parents did, with the same words and intonation, as if again being the son of his father and mother.
Melodies lead to mysteries. And so, as I said, one must not become addicted. It’s better to chop down trees, reinforce the tent walls, clean the weapons. Activity is preferable to introspection. After an active day, a person drops onto his pallet of twigs and falls asleep.
In the past, my dreams were often full of color. Now I throw myself onto the twigs and I sleep, disconnected from everything that was once mine. When my shift comes, they wake me and I go on guard duty or patrol.
In Kamil’s tent a lamp is always burning. When he doesn’t go on a raid, he sleeps with the squad that’s on call. Truth to tell, he almost never sleeps. Sometimes he naps for an hour or two. He’ll allow himself this only if Felix is nearby.
After a night of action without casualties, everyone is happy, especially Salo. But the medical equipment is running low. We boil the bandages for repeated use, but the iodine and other disinfectants are almost gone. There is a pharmacy in one of the big villages, about ten miles from here, that had belonged to Jews. If it turns out that this pharmacy is active, we won’t hesitate to raid it, Kamil promises. One of the patrols has come very near that village but was unable to ascertain whether the pharmacy was manned and functioning. The village grocery is open, the coal depot is still in business, and there’s also a flour mill that is inoperative during the fall. All of these had been owned by Jews.
Kamil and Felix have mulled this over more than once, but not enough information has been collected yet about the village, its defenders, and their weapons; Kamil would like to capture one of the farmers so he can tell us about the village and the Germans. But as of now that idea has not been carried out.