1943, a New Year—Warsaw’s Minirebellion
Zivia and Renia
JANUARY 1943
At six in the morning, a few weeks after the inspiring uprising in Kraków, Zivia was awoken with news: Nazis had infiltrated the Warsaw ghetto. A surprise Aktion.
The ZOB had assumed the Nazis were distracted with a large-scale manhunt on the Aryan side, where they’d been arresting thousands of Poles. In fact, the organization had asked all its couriers to come back to the ghetto, which seemed to be safer. Even the Polish underground had hidden in the ghetto.
It had been a late night of planning and meetings, but Zivia rushed to get dressed, then went downstairs to examine the scene. The streets were surrounded. A German sentry was posted in front of every house. There was no way to get out, no way to contact the other units. All of yesterday’s scheming was worthless; their battle plans could not be carried out. Would the Germans destroy the ghetto altogether?
Zivia panicked. How could they be so unprepared?
* * *
Over the past months, despite the massive death toll of the summer Aktions, the ZOB’s progress had stirred hope. As in Kraków, the youth groups were composed of people who already trusted one another and were primed to become secret fighting units. The ZOB recruited new members to add to the several hundred comrades still alive in the ghetto, careful to scour for informers. They reattempted alliances with other movements. Again, they were not able to agree on terms with the better-armed Revisionist group Betar, which formed its own militia, the ZZW (Jewish Military Union). The Bund, however, finally acceded to collaborate. Along with the “adult” Zionist parties, they joined the ZOB and formed a new alliance.
With this fresh credibility, the ZOB was able at last to connect with the Polish underground, made up of two rival factions. The Home Army (known in Poland as the Armia Krajowa or AK) was affiliated with the predominantly right-wing government in exile in London. The Home Army had an antisemitic leadership, even though many individual members were liberals who helped Jews. (Jan Żabiński, the now famous zookeeper of Warsaw, was an AK member.) The People’s Army, on the other hand, was affiliated with the Communist group (PPR), and, at the time, was the weaker of the two factions. The leadership of the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, or AL) cooperated with the Soviets, and was more willing to collaborate with Jewish ghetto and forest fighters—frankly, with anyone who wanted to topple the Nazis. But they lacked resources.
The Home Army had been reluctant to help the ZOB for various reasons. Its leaders felt that the Jews didn’t fight back; what’s more, they feared that a ghetto uprising would spread, and they did not have enough weapons to sustain a citywide rebellion. They worried that a premature revolt would be detrimental and were hoping to let the Germans and Russians bleed each other before they jumped in. The Home Army had refused to enter into serious discussion with measly youth groups; however, it was willing to meet with the new alliance.
The meeting was a success. The Home Army sent ten mostly functional shotguns as well as instructions for how to make explosives. One Jewish woman discovered a formula for firebombs: take electric lightbulbs collected from abandoned houses and fill them with sulfuric acid.
Hot with fervor, the ZOB began to act broadly. Just as Frumka was sent to Będzin, members were dispatched across Poland to lead resistance units and maintain foreign connections. (Zivia later mocked herself for being so naïve as to think that they were not receiving outside help because the world didn’t know.) Rivka Glanz went to Częstochowa. Leah Pearlstein and Tosia sought weapons in Aryan Warsaw.
The Bundists strengthened their fighting units. Vladka Meed was approached by the Bund leader, Abrasha Blum, and invited to a resistance meeting. Because of her straight, light-brown hair, small nose, and gray-green eyes, Vladka was asked to move to the Aryan side. The thought of leaving the ghetto, where most Jews toiled in horrific conditions as slave labor, filled her with elation.
One night in early December 1942, Vladka received word that she was to exit with a work brigade the following morning and to bring with her the latest Bund underground bulletin, which featured a detailed map of Treblinka. She hid the pages in her shoe, then found a brigade leader who accepted her 500 złoty bribe and slotted her in with the group as they awaited inspection at the ghetto wall in the freezing cold. All was well until the Nazi inspecting Vladka decided he didn’t like her face. Or, perhaps, liked it too much. She was pulled out of the formation and directed to a small room lined with splatters of blood and photographs of half-naked women. The guard searched her and made her undress. She just had to keep her shoe on . . .
“Shoes off!” he barked. But just then, a Nazi rushed in to inform her tormentor that a Jew had escaped, and both jetted off. Vladka dressed quickly and slipped out, telling the guard at the door that she had passed inspection. She went on to meet comrades on the Aryan side and began her work establishing contact with non-Jews, finding places for Jews to live and hide, and procuring arms.
Most important, the ZOB was determined to eliminate collaborators, who they felt made the Nazis’ job so much easier. Throughout the ghetto, they hung posters declaring that the organization would avenge any crime committed against the Jews—then promptly made good on the threat by killing two leaders of the Jewish militia and council. To Zivia’s amazement, the assassinations left an impression on the ghetto Jews, who began to respect the ZOB’s power.
A new authority ruled the ghetto.
The fighting group was a few weeks away from launching a full-scale uprising. According to one of the Bund’s leaders, Marek Edelman, they had set the big date: January 22.
* * *
When the Nazi Aktion began on January 18, Zivia was shocked. The comrades had no time to convene and decide upon a response. Several members weren’t sure where they were supposed to be stationed. Most units had no access to arms except for sticks, knives, and iron bars. Each group was on its own, unable to connect.
But there was no time to lose. Two groups improvised and launched straight into action. If anything, the lack of time for committee discussion pushed them to mobilize.
Zivia didn’t know it at the time, but Mordechai Anilevitz quickly commanded a group of male and female Young Guard fighters to go out into the streets, let themselves be caught, and then slip in among the rows of Jews being led to the umschlagplatz. As Anilevitz approached the corner of Niska and Zamenhofa Streets, he gave the command. The fighters whipped out their concealed weapons and opened fire on Germans who were marching nearby. They threw grenades at them while screaming at their fellow Jews to escape. A few did. According to Vladka Meed’s account, “The mass of deportees fell upon the German troopers tooth and nail, using hands, feet, teeth, and elbows.”
The Germans were stunned. “The Jews are firing at us!” In the confusion, the Jewish youth kept shooting.
But the Nazis regained their composure and retaliated quickly. Needless to say, the rebels’ handful of pistols was no match for the Germans’ superior firepower. Reich soldiers chased down the few ZOB fighters who’d managed to run off. When Anilevitz ran out of bullets, he snatched a gun from a German, retreated into a building, and continued to fire. A Jew in a nearby bunker pulled him in. Only Anilevitz and one female fighter survived. The results were tragic, but the influence of these actions was tremendous: Jews had killed Germans.
The second group was Zivia’s. Commanded by Antek and two other men, this unit took a different tactic. Most of the remaining Jews were in hiding, which meant that the Germans had to enter buildings to find them. Instead of an open-air battle, which they were sure they’d lose, they decided to wait for the Nazis to approach and shoot from inside. Zivia figured that ambushing the Germans would inflict the most casualties.
She stood on the alert at one of the Freedom bases in an apartment building on 56-58 Zamenhofa Street. Forty men and women took up positions. They had four hand grenades and four shotguns among them. Most were armed with nothing more than iron pipes, sticks, and the makeshift acid-filled lightbulb firebombs.
Zivia and her comrades knew that they were fighting to their deaths, but waited eagely for the Nazis to arrive so they could do their damage and go down with honor. For six months, the Germans had been systematically murdering Warsaw’s Jews, and not a shot had been fired at them.
Absolute silence, except for a few piercing cries of people being forced to the umschlagplatz. As Zivia stood waiting for the confrontation, anxiously gripping her weapon, she felt terrifically adrenalized—and yet, at the same time, deeply sad. Later, reflecting on that moment, she described her inner turmoil as “a kind of emotional stock-taking at the final moments of my life.” The friends she would never see. The aliyah she would never make.
Yitzhak Katzenelson, the poet, broke the silence with a short speech: “Our armed struggle will be an inspiration to future generations. . . . Our deeds will be remembered forever. . . .”
And then: sharp boots beating against the stairs. The front door flung open. A gang of German soldiers burst in.
One comrade pretended to be reading a book by Sholem Aleichem. The Germans rushed right past him and entered the room where Zivia was sitting with others. Miserable Jews, they appeared to be, awaiting their executions. Just then, the young man who was feigning reading sprang up and shot two of the Germans in the back. The other Nazis retreated to the stairwell. All the fighters sprang out from of closets and hiding places and began to brawl using whatever arms they had. A few focused on stripping the dead soldiers of rifles, pistols, and grenades.
The Germans who survived beat a hasty retreat.
Barely equipped Jews had slayed Nazis!
And now they were also rich in weapons.
After a few moments of elation, there was shock. They were confused, truly bewildered. Zivia couldn’t believe that they’d felled Germans and survived. Overwhelmed with emotion, the fighters knew they had to stay focused. The Nazis would be back. What next? “We were totally unprepared,” Zivia later wrote. “We hadn’t expected to remain alive.”
They needed to flee. They helped their one injured comrade, hid him, and then withdrew out of the building’s skylights and crept single file along the sloped roofs covered in snow and ice, five storeys high, to finally make it inside the attic of an unknown building, shaken, hoping for time to rest, to redeploy.
But Germans entered this building as well, boots stomping up the stairs. The Freedom comrades began to open fire. Two members tossed a German down a stairwell shaft. Another threw a hand grenade at the entrance, blocking the Nazis’ escape. The Germans dragged off their dead and wounded; they did not return that night.
The next day, the Nazis attacked the empty apartments and this new “base.” Again, the comrades came out alive. Only one injury. No losses.
As soon as it was dark, Zivia’s troop headed to the Freedom post at Mila 34 to meet comrades who’d arrived from the farm, only to find that “the silence of death permeated the air.” Furniture was broken. Pillow feathers covered the floor. Zivia found out later that they’d been taken to Treblinka. A few, including several brave women, had jumped from the train.
The group settled into the most strategic apartments in the building. Each unit was briefed and assumed position. Lookouts were posted to warn of any surprise attacks. For the first time, they outlined a plan of retreat and an alternate meeting spot. Finally, sleep.
At dawn, the ghetto was still. Zivia figured that the Nazis were now sneaking into buildings quietly. They sent the Jewish police to assess the safety of an area first. The house searches became less thorough. The Nazis were scared “of a Jewish bullet.”
Zivia felt reinvigorated, a new reason to live.
“At the same time as thousands of Jews were cowering in their hiding places, shaking at the sound of a falling leaf,” Zivia wrote, “we who had been baptized in the fire and blood of battle, sat back confidently with almost all traces of our former fear having disappeared.” One comrade went out to the courtyard to find a match and sticks to light the stove. He even came back with vodka. They sat by the fire and drank. They reminisced about their battles, joked, and teased one fighter who had been so depressed, he was about to kill them all with a grenade until their commander stopped him.
They were still joking when the lookout entered. “There’s a large company of SS men in the courtyard,” he warned.
Zivia glanced out the window and saw them yelling for Jews to leave the building. No one budged.
Once again, the Germans entered, and were momentarily tricked by a fighter who pretended to surrender. The others then fired, and “a shower of bullets greeted them on all sides.” The Nazis retreated, only to be ambushed by comrades waiting outside. Zivia saw several wounded and dead Germans strewn on the steps.
Again, she was amazed that she and her comrades were alive. No casualties, even. The fighters collected the dead soldiers’ weapons and left through the attics, where they stumbled upon a camouflaged hideout. The Jews hiding there welcomed them in, and a rabbi sang his praises for their work. “If we still have you left,” he said, “young Jews fighting and taking revenge, from now on, it shall be easier for us to die.”
Zivia blinked back tears.
The Germans returned to the original building. But there were no Jews left for them to kill.
* * *
The January Aktion lasted only four days. Eventually the ZOB ran out of ammunition, the Nazis were sleuthing for their hiding spots, and many comrades fell. Thousands of Jews were snatched from the streets. Even Tosia was caught and driven to the umshlagplatz, but a double-agent militiaman who was helping The Young Guard rescued her.
Overall, however, it was a grand success. The Nazis’ intention to clear the ghetto was foiled by Zivia’s and other fighting groups. A Bundist fired at an SS commander during a selection at the Schultz workshop, killing him. Masked ZOB fighters threw acid at a Nazi at Hallman’s furniture shop; they bound the guards at gunpoint and destroyed their records. One comrade leapt on a Nazi, threw a sack over his head, and tossed him out a window. Another poured boiling liquid on Germans’ heads below. What should have been a two-hour operation took the Nazis days, and they apprehended only half their quota. The Jews had almost no food, but they had new hope. This small uprising helped foster unity, respect, morale—and status. Both the Jewish masses and the Poles considered the German retreat to be a ZOB victory.
The fighters were elated by their success, but also regretful. Why had it taken them so long to act when it hadn’t even been that hard? Regardless, they had no choice but to keep fighting for honorable deaths. The masses, on the other hand, now believed that hiding might keep them alive. The ghetto was becoming a united fighting post. It was the “golden age” of the Warsaw ghetto.
* * *
Despite the excitement and growing hope in Warsaw, and its reverberations across other towns, Będzin was “a literal shambles,” Renia wrote. After Renia’s initial burst of heaven, winter was “torture,” physically, existentially, emotionally. “Hunger was a constant guest in our house. Sicknesses multiplied, there were no medications, and death carved its graves.” Each day, convoys of Jews over age forty, apparently too old to work, were sent away. Any minor infraction was reason for execution: crossing the street diagonally, walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk, breaking curfew, smoking a cigarette, selling anything, even owning eggs, onion, garlic, meat, dairy, baked goods, or lard. Police entered Jewish homes to inspect what they were cooking. The Judenrat and militia aided them, following every German order. They were ruthless in their white hats, Renia wrote, and if they heard that a Jew was hiding something, they’d demand hush money. They fined people for the slightest of infractions and pocketed the cash.
Hantze became ill. Nightmares tortured her day and night. Gripped by the horror she’d witnessed in Grochów and on the way from Warsaw to Będzin, she burnt up with fever. Still, she had no choice but to stand on shaky legs and work in the laundry. The kibbutz barely had provisions. Renia, too, began to feel the effects of hunger: fatigue, confusion, a relentless obsession with food.
Through all this, manhunts ensued, and Renia was a target. She had to be doubly careful, as she was a “nonkosher.” At night, the gendarmes and Jewish militia hunted for her and other refugees from the General Government. Just taking in nonkoshers would lead to immediate deportation for her comrades. Renia, Hanzte, Frumka, Zvi, and another boy spent their nights in hiding places, tortured by night terrors. Without sleep, in the mornings, the group went to work in the laundry, so that the kosher members could do more public-facing chores. “But we took it all with love,” Renia wrote later. “Our desire to live was stronger than all the torture.”
Then, one morning, Renia sat in the main room, overhearing group members discuss how they needed a small piece of metal for their oven. A seventeen-year-old boy, Pinchas, decided to search at work. “Little Pink” saw one, picked it up, looked at it. That was enough. His German employer noticed. He was deported. Killed.
Of all things, this murder jerked the comrades’ resolve, and their sense of purpose began to slip. Why read, learn, work? Live? Why bother anymore?
* * *
It got worse. Rumors began. The Jews would be “resettled” to a locked ghetto, in the neighborhood of Kamionka, on the other side of the train station. Twenty-five thousand Jews were to be housed in living quarters meant for ten thousand. Those like Renia, who had already lived in a ghetto, were all too aware of the nightmare that awaited them. Even those who hadn’t lived in ghettos were dismayed. “In the summer, it will be unbearable,” a Będzin teenager wrote in her diary when she heard the news, “to sit in a gray locked cage, without being able to see fields and flowers.” Frumka and her fellow Freedom leader Hershel Springer walked around as if poisoned, pale and sick. What to do? To move to the ghetto or to flee? Fight or flight.
Heated discussion ensued. Ultimately it was decided that struggle would be futile, even leading to unwanted consequences. The time for fighting had not yet arrived.
Instead, Frumka and Hershel spent entire days at the Judenrat trying to arrange housing for the Freedom kibbutz as well as for the Atid group, now comprising nineteen teenagers from the shuttered orphanage who lived with them. The Judenrat office was packed. Yelling, screaming. The rich, Renia wrote, had an easier time because they could offer bribes. “Without money, you’re like a soldier without a gun.”
The Jews were shoved into the ghetto. Though Kamionka is now a hilly and leafy suburb, during the war, it resembled a crowded refugee camp: poor, neglected, unhygienic. Small stoves were everywhere, exuding noxious smoke. People sat on the ground, eating what they could. Furniture and packages piled up in front of every house. Next to the piles, babies. Those who couldn’t afford apartments built huts in the square, like chicken coops, for protection from the rain. Stables, attics, and outhouses all became homes. Ten people lived in a converted cowshed, and they were lucky. Many slept with no roof at all. There was no room for furniture inside any abode except for necessary tables and beds. Each day Renia saw Jews hauling mattresses outside so that more people could move inside, calling up her horrid memories of living in ghettos with her family. Jews moved around like shadows, Renia wrote, like raggedy living corpses. At the same time, she felt that many Poles were pleased, robbing Jewish homes of possessions and commenting callously, “It’s a pity that Hitler didn’t come earlier.” Some Jews burnt their belongings or chopped their furniture into firewood just to prevent Poles from eventually taking them.
The Freedom members left for the ghetto, packing their bare necessities into a car. Frumka and Hershel had managed to secure an entire two-storey house, half for them, half for the Atid orphans. Though this was much better than most living quarters (“a palace,” Renia called it, happy it was clean), it was small. There was no room to walk between the beds. Their closets and tables stood out in the yard, to be used as kindling.
The ghetto was closed, guarded by the militia. Police walked the Jews to and from work as tailors, cobblers, and metal workers in German workshops. Then workers stopped going to work, saying they needed child care. (Renia proudly noticed the Jews’ sense of rebellion.) The Judenrat created communal day cares where kids were fed while their parents labored. Later, they built shacks in front of the workshops, so that the babies could sleep there at night. Each workshop had its own shack; desperate people moved into them before they were even completed. As Renia recalled, Kamionka was a “disgraceful site.”
Any infraction brought death. The night was so silent, it was dangerous to go outside after eight o’clock. Complete blackout was mandatory. A militiaman stood on each corner, enforcing the curfew, his flashlight flickering in the stale air. Suddenly a gunshot. In the morning, a funeral. A man had been trying to walk to another building.
Every week, Renia watched as groups were sent to Auschwitz to be killed: the elderly, parents who’d hid their children, toddlers torn from mothers’ breasts, young people accused of being politically active, people who didn’t show up for a couple days’ of work. They were brought to the station, beaten, and thrown into cattle cars. A man who took something by accident was flogged, strangled, trampled, and, if necessary, shot. But it was never necessary—he had already died.
Suddenly a sickening scream. A German grabbed a baby from his mother’s arms, held him by his feet, and bashed his head against a brick wall, breaking the baby’s skull in two. Blood was splattered all over the building, the sidewalk. He threw the baby’s corpse to the ground. The sight haunted Renia for the rest of her life.
Renia watched this inhumanity in abject horror. Children witnessed these atrocities and wailed uncontrollably. The ghetto was becoming less crowded as residents were being taken each day, someone from every household. “All the hearts are broken,” she wrote. “It’s a wonder people maintain their sanity.”
* * *
It was in this context that all the cultural activities in the kibbutz had ceased. This is when the fake passports came in and when Freedom held its meeting, with Hershel at one end of the table and Frumka at the other. This is when the youth groups had to decide: fight or flight. This is when Frumka said no, she would not go. This is when they all decided to join the armed struggle that had begun in Kraków and Warsaw. This is when they decided on defense, revenge, self-respect.
This is when Renia sprang up, ready for action.