In the night, I heard footsteps. I was far too shaken to think of fleeing. So were the others. Daniel still had so much gas in his lungs that he couldn’t stop coughing. We heard guns being leveled behind a mound of rubble. The skinny fighter who had saved us put his hands up to surrender. The rest of us did so, too. Those of us who had any strength left, that is. Daniel wasn’t one of them. He was sitting motionless in the debris.
People were climbing the mountain of rubble from the other side. Any minute now the SS would be towering over us and either arrest us or shoot us. Who cared! It didn’t matter either way.
“Hands up!” a voice called in Polish.
I looked up. These weren’t Germans, or Latvians or Ukrainians. They were three comrades. Two men and a woman.
We stared at one another.
Seventeen Jews met up in the debris of the destroyed ghetto.
It took a while before we finally realized who they were and lowered our hands. And even longer before anyone managed to speak and we could answer the comrades’ questions. When they discovered that everyone else in 18 Miła Street was gone, their eyes brimmed with tears.
Only Samuel, the leader of the other group, refused to cry for anyone who had killed themselves. “There is no point in killing yourself as long as you can still fight. Their deaths were pointless,” he said.
What death ever made sense?
What life?
Mine?
No.
No one’s.
When another survivor recounted how Sharon had shot herself seven times, Samuel just said, “Six wasted bullets.”
I was too exhausted to yell at him and point out that he hadn’t been there. He wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. He and his comrades started searching the rubble for weapons. But there was no point. The SS had blown up the bunker. The bodies of our comrades were gone.
We headed off through the destroyed ghetto, across mountains of ash and stone, trying to find somewhere to hide. A group of people as destroyed inside as the streets and houses around them.
We got to 22 Franciszkańska Street. Another bunker. Probably the last one left. More a sick bay than a sanctuary. Full of wounded, burned, and dying people.
I didn’t think about food. Or my injuries. Or about Amos. I closed my eyes. I just wanted to sleep. Sleep forever.
Peace.
What kind of a person did I want to be?
One who could be put out of her misery.