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EVENTS APRIL 18, 1943. ENTRY DITTO. N.L. I have always thought that uncertainty was the most unpleasant state of mind for me. Now I wonder. Perhaps certainty is worse. Tonight we have certainty, and I have a feeling that I shall not sleep on it. Tonight we are positive that we face the culmination of all our preparations in a very few hours. I should discover solace, strength, and defiant calmness in this surety. Instead, I find it only terrifying. I suppose it is the lot of every soldier, on the eve of action, to fear failing in battle more than he fears the battle itself. It will be my soldierly duty beginning tomorrow morning to keep a record of all that happens, but I fear that I will only be able to catch a glimpse here, a wink there. My record will be a stammering and a muttering, not a clear recital. I am terrified lest all my preparations, all my training in gathering and processing an archive, will be dissipated in the urgent hours to come, and that my account of our final hours within this wall will be but a mockery of the truth. Thus, fearfully, I approach battle with my armament of paper and pencil.
Hastily, tonight, I must review the events leading up to tonight’s certainty. (For the temper in the bunker this evening, I must wait and try to recapture it another day, if there be another day, from someone else—probably from Rachel Apt; she talks to me honestly and she knows now what I want.) To begin with, it was Mordecai who first warned us of the arrival of the new…
EVENTS APRIL 16, 1943. ENTRY APRIL 18, 1943. FROM MORDECAI APT. The predominant mood among the Fighter Groups in the period of waiting and readiness has been one of irritability. Mordecai Apt and Wladislaw Jablonski, having planted their electrical land mine, sat much of the time in the observation post on Gensia Street, waiting to push home the plunger and trying to live patiently with each other—a meager life in both respects, it seems. Mordecai says he found Wladislaw’s garrulousness annoying, and he was forever impatient to be back in the bunker with his tiny son; yet in the bunker, he constantly found fault with Rutka’s ways of tending the child, and with what he considered Froi Granzelmann’s meddling, and even with the orderly functioning of the bunker’s cooking and washing and sleeping arrangements; as a consequence, he was first urged, and finally commanded, to spend most of his time in the lookout on Gensia. He and Wladislaw tried to play cards together, but they argued over scores and once, very angrily, over a card that was accidentally faced in the deal; so they gave up cards, and lay listlessly on the floor, only occasionally getting up on one knee to look out the peepholes scraped out of the newspapers that had been pasted onto the tiny windowpanes of the attic room. Most of the time the street below was empty. Such unimportant events as the passing of a squad of marching workers or of a couple of S.S. police brought the young men to kneeling attention and entertained them disproportionately much. Every time anyone walked near the mine, Wladislaw pretended to squirt home the plunger, and then, with a wild look, he muttered: Voom! This rehearsal of slaughter never tired Wladislaw; it was just as enjoyable to him when a Jewish labor battalion passed over the little vault of dynamite as when Germans did. He described over and over to a revolted Mordecai, with images as awful as those of Hieronymus Bosch, the scene of spattering man-fragments, of legless feet kicking neckless heads in mid-air.
The two were in this sore condition, with their fraternity chafed hurtfully, when, at about three o’clock in the afternoon day before yesterday, Wladislaw, having heard footsteps in the street and having hauled himself to the window, urged Mordecai to take a look. Mordecai raised himself with a groan, expecting another of Wladislaw’s massacres. But what he saw this time engaged his attention.
A group of German officers and men—perhaps twenty—some of them in a uniform strange to Mordecai, was walking slowly along Gensia Street. One officer in front, a Sicherheitsdienst man, was explaining something, pointing here and there.
Mordecai: —— New Germans.
The knot of men, apparently some sort of staff or headquarters outfit, stopped right in front of the observation post, and several of the Germans stood directly on the bomb scar under which the explosive egg was nested. The conducting officer pointed first one way, then back the other, along the street. Mordecai expected the pumping motion and the wishful voom from Wladislaw at any moment; but Wladislaw was silent. Mordecai saw that Wladislaw was looking down the street, off to the left. He did the same.
There came Schpunt. The famous, ugly little man seemed to be in playful spirits: he half-skipped as he walked, and it was easy to see that he expected some sport with the Germans. He marched right up to them and with the motion of a hen raising its head to let water run down its neck, he threw back his outsized dome, and he raised his right arm and cried out a salute. This is the kind of behavior with which Schpunt has customarily thrown Germans into antic laughter. But this time the Germans—these new Germans—did not laugh. One of the officers, evidently the senior, even returned the salute. Mordecai says he saw a slight stiffening in Schpunt, as if Schpunt realized that things were not going quite right. Then Schpunt seemed to be saying something: one of his queer, abusive jokes, no doubt. But no laugh from the Germans. Schpunt broke into his crazy, water-jointed dance—his most dependable grotesquerie. No laugh. The dance seemed to break apart and Schpunt stood still. The German officer had stepped forward from the group: he seemed to be shouting. Schpunt said something with a screwed-up face—evidently one last effort to make the German laugh. The German drew a revolver and shouted again. Schpunt turned and fled, and he ran with a co-ordination and speed of which his bumptious clogging never would have suggested him capable. As the officer turned back to the group, stuffing his pistol away in his holster, there was not even a trace of a smile on any face in the squad.
Mordecai, again: —— New Germans.
Wladislaw was pale.
EVENTS APRIL 18, 1943. ENTRY DITTO. FROM LAZAR SLONIM. The actual tip-off to the Z.O.B. this afternoon was given by Slonim. I was able to corner him after the meeting this evening, and got the story from him, thus:
Slonim was on duty by the telephone in the office of the Avia plant, where he has been working. It was just before three o’clock in the afternoon. Slonim’s eyes were rather steadily on the fogged glass door of the manager’s private room, at the opposite corner of the office. Three S.S. men were inside with Merck, the German factory manager. They had been there about five minutes.
The door opened. The officers came out and Herr Merck behind them; the manager was wearing his drab grey overcoat and his black homburg hat: going out. The four men moved toward the door, which was near the telephone desk. When Herr Merck came opposite the desk, he said to Slonim:
—— I’m going to the city with these officers, Nudnik. [NOTE. N.L. Slonim gravely explained to me that he had gone to work under this false name, with false papers, because he thought the Gestapo knew the name of Slonim as an active Bundist’s. So this was the Nudnik to whom the outside couriers made their reports! Until I told him who Nudnik is, this evening, Berson had had no idea at all that the man with whom he had talked twice a day under those dangerous circumstances was his old, argumentative acquaintance, his University friend, Slonim. Slonim says that Herr Merck must know the facetious quality of his alias—nudnik means “pompous bore”—yet the German has never alluded to this: perhaps he feels that drawing attention to it would be tactless!] I may not be back this afternoon. Please see that things go along as usual.
“Nudnik”: —— Naturally, Herr Merck.
After the men left, Slonim says he debated with himself whether to go into the shop and tell the workers what had happened: finally he decided against it, since he could not decipher the meaning of Herr Merck’s having been taken off; he could not even guess whether it was a good or a bad portent. The abduction had not been carried out with any sharp words, yet Herr Merck had seemed pale. It would not be fair to elate or alarm the workers inside by announcing this unclear event.
[NOTE. N.L. We have seen very little of Slonim ever since last November. His friend among us was Berson, and from the time when Berson went to the Aryan side, Slonim stopped coming around to the bakery to see us. I therefore had to ask him a little about his situation these days, and especially about his relationship, which seemed to be rather curious, rather confidential, with this German, Merck. First, I should say that I observe a definite change in Slonim. I remember very well his bitterness and even spitefulness in earlier days: I remember the way he almost boasted to Berson about having told Rapaport that he, Slonim, was the cleverer man of the two: I remember his bitter, abused feelings, as he described them, during his hike to Treblinka, when he trailed the deportation trains. Now he is no longer bitter. He seems quite sure of himself, quite mellow. Even his motions are not so jerky and tense; he no longer hauls at his forelock as if trying to lead his baulky self on a halter. He gave me to believe, when he talked later about Rapaport, that at least some of Slonim’s change can be laid to the fact that Rapaport now leans on Slonim in Bund affairs. Rapaport used to treat Slonim with a fatherly condescension: he had the attitude of a not very clever teacher toward a very clever pupil. Now Slonim is Rapaport’s chief counselor. One can understand that Rapaport was disgusted with the man called Velvel for trying to remove Rapaport from the ghetto; and Slonim’s help in hiding Rapaport at the bakery was doubtless not forgotten. At any rate, Slonim was given more and more responsibility in the Bund. I mention this at length because it has had a curious secondary effect. The increased responsibility having made Slonim steadier, cooler, and milder, Slonim has been able, as he would not have been able in his more acid days, to earn the respect and trust of his German factory manager, Merck. Merck is apparently a rather easy-going, kindhearted German who has pretended, at least, that he was horrified by the official German treatment of Jews. He has been softhearted in the factory, and has maintained relatively decent (though still not absolutely good) working conditions. He has also been resourceful toward the Gestapo, the S.S. and S.D., with the result that his plant has had but one selection, in which less than a third of his people were taken. It may be that he was taken off day before yesterday because he was again resisting the S.S. At any rate, he has come to delegate more and more responsibility in shop management to Slonim, who serves as Merck’s only contact with the workers. And much of this increased responsibility in factory business Slonim has calmly abused—he has served as the contact for the couriers on the Aryan side.]
At five forty-five, the telephone rang. Slonim picked up the receiver.
—— Nudnik here.
A voice, the voice of Herr Merck, said in German only five words distinctly pronounced:
—— Verstecken Sie sich heute abend.
Then there was a click. Herr Merck had hung up.
Hide yourselves tonight.
Slonim put the receiver down. He rose, put on his coat, and carried his hat with him into the shop. There, in a loud voice, he told the workers that Herr Merck was not in the factory; that some kind of crisis could be expected that night or the next morning; that the men should make their way to their billets or bunkers a few minutes before the regular quitting time—in about half an hour; that each man should decide for himself what he wanted to do; and that those who were members of the Z.O.B. should await orders in their mobilization points.
Slonim: —— Leave the factory in your regular marching formations. Please try not to spread rumors.
He turned, biting his lip.
Then Slonim went to Rapaport and told him what had happened.
EVENTS APRIL 18, 1943. FROM CONVERSATIONS MAY 8–10, 1943. FROM HIL ZILBERZWEIG. [NOTE. EDITOR. The following passage is taken from the CONVERSATIONS and is inserted here because it seems to express the state of mind of Zilberzweig on the eve of the battle.]
…Zilberzweig spoke of his feelings the night before the battle; he said he had been a professional Jewish social worker for most of the years of his life, yet in those few moments of sensibility, just after the messenger came to summon him to the meeting of mobilization, he felt the influence of tradition more strongly than he had ever before. This is how he told it.
Zilberzweig walked to the window of his attic crag. The messenger had left. Dusk had come down, and Zilberzweig could just see the profiles of the roofs and chimneys across the street, a dim plateau with here and there squat, forlorn monuments to that warmth which no longer blazed on Jewish hearths and in Jewish stoves. Zilberzweig, seeing those chimneys, remembered the last fireplace fire he had had: a chair looted from a “wild” house back in February; a straight, severe chair; a merry, crackling, thermal chair. What bearded elder had used to sit in that chair, looking out with bulging eyes, munching little three-cornered cakes, speaking, with fanatic jollity and a full mouth, of the holiday Purim, gloating over the way the tyrant Haman was overcome by Jews, and going on to say that the new Haman of Germany would also be destroyed—wait, wait, he would be destroyed; or sitting there with folded hands reciting the prayer of the Nahman of Bratzlav, Annul wars and the shedding of blood; or half leaning, on the Seder night, instructing his beloved with the Hagadah? Had there ever been such a man? The fatted, middle-aged youth leader says he stood in the dark window and thought: My father would not have been afraid tonight. My Uncle Agaron would not have been afraid tonight. How they used to sit and talk! Jewishness—their bread and their meat. Their harsh beards—Hil had imagined them as eagle’s nests! (Tomorrow, he thought, begins Passover; tomorrow night the Seder night.) The short prayer his father taught him, from the Talmud, of a person in danger:
—— Do Your will in the heavens above, and give pleasure of spirit to those in awe of You, and whatever is good in Your eyes, do.
Dusk….
EVENTS APRIL 18, 1943. ENTRY DITTO. N.L. The meeting took place at about 9:15 this evening. I looked around the cavern where we met—Yitzhok’s bunker. Excitement made the younger men look weirdly happy: their eyes flashed and they seemed to be smiling, though really they were only tense around their mouths. (I remembered the smile on the dead face in the snow, the night of the New Year’s party. It’s nothing, friends, Dr. Breithorn said that night.) Here in this room were the best of the survivors—the fittest of Jewry: Yitzhok, Rachel, Jankiel, Aron; that copper wire of a man, Slonim of the Bund; the great brute, Budko, the Communist; the Group leaders, Anselm, Ganzener, Mischa, Peter, Abraham, Mendel, Benz, Ketzl, Nahum; hard, eager faces. In the background, some older men, looking on, shaking their heads but approving really. Why was Zilberzweig weeping? Kurtz, with a face of leather. Rapaport, so kindly and sad….
Yitzhok: —— A comparison of our forces will clarify what I mean about saving ammunition. We must cherish each bullet as if it were made of gold.
The balance sheet, as Yitzhok presented it, with his sharp lower jaw protruding and his deep cut of a mouth seeming, like everyone’s, to smile, was not as awful as I had expected it to be. Yitzhok somehow—by his inflections rather than by the figures he gave—made it seem almost favorable. The Z.O.B., he said, had all together twenty-two Fighter Groups: five from Dror, four each from Hashomer, the Bund, and the Communist P.P.R., and one each from Left Poale-Zion, Socialist-Zionist, Gordonia, Hanoer Hazioni, and Akiba. These Groups varied in strength from twenty-five to forty fighters apiece. The total of armed fighters was about six hundred and fifty.
According to Z.O.B. intelligence, Yitzhok said, the Germans had ready for action the Third Battalion of S.S. Grenadiers of the line, Warsaw Regiment, and a detachment of S.S. Cavalry, Warsaw Regiment, together eight hundred and twenty-one men; First and Third Battalions of the Twenty-second Regiment S.S. Police, two hundred and twenty-four men; three hundred and sixty-three Polish police and three hundred and thirty-five Baltic troops comprising the First Battalion of the Trawniki; from the Wehrmacht, a light battery of the Third Battalion of the Eighth Regiment of Artillery, a chemical-warfare detachment of the Rembertow Regiment, and the Fourteenth Battalion of Engineers, Gora-Kalwaria Regiment, all together ninety-eight men; together with technicians, sappers, firemen, and security police numbering one hundred and ninety-four. Making a total of just over two thousand men, with officers and headquarters troops probably twenty-one hundred.
Each Jewish fighter, Yitzhok said, now had a revolver and ten or twelve rounds of ammunition. There were also a few rifles and grenades and a fair supply of home-made bottle incendiaries. There were six hundred and fifty Jewish fighters against twenty-one hundred Germans. Each Jew would have to eliminate at least three Germans with, say, a dozen rounds of ammunition. That meant that for every four bullets spent, one German would have to be removed from action.
Yitzhok, perfectly seriously, apparently intending no irony or humor whatsoever: —— Anyone who has studied the science of warfare knows that such a ratio of mortality to rounds expended is very difficult to achieve.
It was also necessary, he added, to mention a disparity in weapons. The Germans had available some tanks and armored cars, some light field guns, probably thirty-five-millimeter anti-tank guns, and various automatic weapons. The aforementioned chemical-warfare detachment, the Rembertows, he said, probably was equipped with flame-throwers and tear gas.
—— But we (and this time he did intend humor; his smile was real), we with our revolvers have a certain mobility.
Finally, Yitzhok said, one had to mention the possibility that the Germans would call upon other units to move up in reserve in case the Jews were successful.
—— We have in reserve only the willing hands of our own people. Many workers outside the Z.O.B. are ready to fight.
Slonim: —— In other words, to sum up, Yitzhok: we are in a hard case.
Yitzhok: —— I wouldn’t say that. (He spoke gravely.) No, definitely not. (Suddenly Yitzhok seemed to be furious. He clenched a fist and pounded his own thigh. Loudly he said:) We will punish them. We will teach them that Jews can be rough. (He relented then and said:) Forgive me, I assume your determination. This was intended to be a review of information and procedures. I had no intention of shouting at you.
Slonim: —— I didn’t mean to sound pessimistic. I am not frightened by your facts, Yitzhok.
[NOTE. FROM RACHEL APT. Not frightened? Rachel says she felt her vitals tremble. If only she could have the men in this room for her soldiers! How would old Granzelmann fight? What about Maksi, only nine years old? Wladislaw, trying to absolve the guilt he felt on his father’s behalf….Mordecai, worried about his infant son….Noach, so nearsighted!]
Yitzhok: ——…And now, on operations. You all know your own communications facilities: use them. The defense zones should be clear to you. As to tactics, at the beginning, since we do not know exactly what the Germans intend…
EVENTS APRIL 18, 1943. ENTRY DITTO. N.L. Rachel and I entered the bunker through the furnace and the passage descending from it. When we jumped down into the “front room” of the bunker, we heard the baby crying, and old lady Granzelmann came flying at us, waving a broom, squealing:
—— Be careful! Be careful! Tracking all that dirt in here! Can’t you see that we’re trying to get the bunker clean for Passover? Stay there! Let me brush off your clothes. There. That’s better….Did you forget that we have Seder tomorrow night?
Rachel, in a loud, clear voice, stepping away from the fussy woman: —— Now, I want you all to listen to me.
Faces turned toward Rachel from every corner of the bunker. Several people came in from the “back room.” Some got out of bunks. Most of the faces were in shadow: they seemed truculent, weary, worn; cheekless and huge-eyed. The baby stopped crying, as if repressed by the atmosphere of the bunker. I saw Rachel look at Berson standing beside his bunk: he had that tight-mouthed look that was nearly a smile: he looked like those others in Yitzhok’s bunker: he could be depended upon. Rachel herself looked unusually strong: the Little Mother!
—— Listen to me, my bunkermates. I have something to tell you.
Slowly, clearly, and with a restraint that was sufficient to keep emotion out of her choice of words, out of her mode of expression, but that was insufficient to mask it altogether from her voice, so that what she said was deeply affecting, Rachel explained to her fighters what was expected and what she wanted them to do if the expected came. She did not tell them all the things that Yitzhok had said; she did not mention the flame-throwers. But she did make it clear that danger would be available to all. She outlined and explained and repeated all the plans.
When Rachel was finished speaking, there was silence in the bunker for a few moments. Then the Granzelmann woman, the homebody, said:
—— Nu, in that case, we certainly have to finish our sweeping and dusting tonight. Klara! Miriam! Get busy, children.
In time the people in the bunker settled down. Several of the fighters cleaned and oiled their clean and oily pistols….
INSERT. FROM ENTRY APRIL 21, 1943. FROM RACHEL APT. I promised myself to ask Rachel for her impression of the mood of the bunker the night before the battle. Now I have done so. She talked mostly about her own thoughts, thus:
Berson, before he went to bed, went to Rachel’s low bunk, knelt beside it, and whispered in a queer, formal, broken way:
—— When the difficulty comes, Rochele, please feel free to call on me….I shall be delighted…an honor….
And he drew back into the darkened space.
Rachel lay on her bunk and could not sleep. Her mind was in a whirl of rehearsal and reminiscence. Safety catch, cock, elbow bent, down on the target…the passwords, the communications channels, the names of the couriers and reserve couriers, points of rendezvous, zones, places to go in case the bunker should fall, the electric mine—in a high, dark window far across the street the face and hands of a small boy pressed against the glass: Dovidl!—gasoline bottles stored in the cellar at Wolynska 19, the stiff overarm delivery for a grenade or bottle bomb—Rapaport and Zilberzweig standing leaning across the table shaking hands, and tears in old Rapaport’s eyes—Froi Mazur’s look, penetrating, protective, oh, unbearable!—safety catch, God, remember the safety catch—Pavel Menkes, so frightened—useless to fire from more than five or six meters—the big, mild, gentle, good-minded man kneeling there in the dark and whispering: Please feel free…—the passwords again, the passwords yet again, the electric mine—the smiling dead face on the pillow of snow….
A long procession of these thoughts, and of hours, passed, Rachel says she thought, despairing: I must sleep, I must sleep. Else what sort of commander will I be?
There were sounds of coughing. Soft involuntary moans. One great cavern of a nose snoring—old lady Granzelmann? Was Berson awake? Somebody whispering—prayers….The safety catch. Names of couriers, names of reserve couriers….
Rachel was waltzing. Elegantly, the dress flowing, clinging, smoke-blue, and she herself as light as smoke. With Dolek Berson…with a big…with an…that hairy face! Turning, turning…oh, oh, oh, oh….A flame fifty feet long from a nozzle coming in, sweeping in. Look out! The pretty dress! The waltz isn’t…Look out for the pretty dress!—
Had she screamed?…Apparently not; the snore, the normal coughing. Strange: that same dream.
The sound now of Rutka’s tender murmur, and now of the infant’s mouth at Rutka’s breast: that most exquisitely gratified and gratifying sound. It must be about five in the morning. Names of couriers, names of reserve…passwords…safety….Wait! Wait! What was that?
In the distance, far, far away, Rachel heard the sounds of Diesel engines and a certain type of clanking noise.