Most of us who had trained and prepared for the rebellion felt the same. We had no expectation that any of us would escape the ghetto. There was no chance a ragtag bunch of skeletal men and women with a handful of makeshift weapons could ever overcome the might of the German forces. We harbored no secret dreams of saving our own lives or even saving the lives of the women and children and elderly folk still trapped within the walls.
No, the goal of the rebellion was simple: we wanted only to die with dignity. We wanted to achieve something like revenge and to leave this life with courage.
“This year we are slaves. Next year may we all be free,” Andrzej murmured, just as he might have recited from the Haggadah. I’d heard those words every year at Passover, but they had never resonated with me the way they did that night.
* * *
As we adjusted our positioning on the rooftop, I saw the wisdom in Andrzej’s decision to have us lie low. The Germans positioned themselves so they had cover from our fighters in the buildings, but they didn’t know we had a station on the rooftop. Chaim and I positioned ourselves behind one barricade, with Andrzej and the others just a few feet ahead of us. Crouching low behind the roofline, adrenaline coursed through my body. I looked down, and my hands were shaking violently, but I wasn’t scared. It was anticipation.
Soon, Dawidek. Soon I will avenge your death.
“Look between the gap in the barricade, boys. Do you see them?” Andrzej hissed. When we nodded yes, he said, “Take the pair on the far side of the road.”
“You take the one on the left,” Chaim murmured. “I’ll get the one on the right.”
I had trained for months for this moment, and now, habit took over. My hands steadied as I raised my rifle and lined the sights up. When Andrzej gave the signal to fire, I pulled the trigger without hesitation. My target fell immediately. It took Chaim several attempts, but soon his fell, too. Within a few minutes, the street was completely silent. Blood drained from the corpses on the street, running down between the cobblestones, dripping into the sewers.
There was no time for us to pause, to reflect upon what we had done. We could hear the drone of planes coming near, the first wave of the bombing raids we expected, and so our unit fell into step behind Andrzej as we retreated.
“How do you feel?” I asked Chaim, as we ran down the stairs toward the basement.
“Alive,” he said, and I knew exactly what he meant. For so long we had endured an oppression that felt insurmountable. It felt good to see German blood in the streets, but it wasn’t enough for me, and that was curious.
I had expected that the minute I fired that gun, I would feel relief, but the reality wasn’t nearly as simple. Frustration and fury and aggression charged through my body, locking the muscles in my arms and setting my teeth on edge.
They had to pay. I would make them pay.
By two o’clock that day, the Germans had entirely retreated from the ghetto. We lost only a handful of men and buildings in the bombing raid, but all in all, the first day of our rebellion had deeply embarrassed the Germans. To me, that made it an unexpected and resounding success.
20
Emilia
“Can you believe it? The Jews are fighting back!”
It seemed as though the whole city was abuzz. I was on a tram with Uncle Piotr, the morning after we awoke to sounds of gunfire and explosions from the other side of the wall. As the violence continued into a second day, I couldn’t bear listening to it for another minute. I’d prayed so many rosaries the day before, my fingers were sore, and I’d tried covering my ears with a pillow, but the sounds pierced it. Truda was impatient with my fretting, and Mateusz had gone to work, so I’d pleaded with Uncle Piotr to take me on an outing.
“The Ferris wheels are set up at Krasin´ski Square again,” he suggested. I stared at him in disbelief.
“But the Jews are rebelling on the other side of that wall!”
“I know. But there are plenty on this side of the wall who are curious to peer over the top—those who enjoy seeing the Jews humiliate the Germans, and then of course there are those who enjoy seeing the remaining Jews suffer.” Piotr sighed, but then he brightened. “But we could ride the Ferris wheel and just look at the sights on our side of the wall. That was fun last time we did it, no?”
“Anything but that,” I said flatly. “Take me as far away from the Jewish Quarter as you can.”
In the seven months since I’d lost my supposed job, my world had shrunk all the way back down to the size of the apartment, and all that kept me sane was evenings with Uncle Piotr and Sara. They had obviously grown close, and although Sara assured me they were just friends, I saw the way they looked at one another. I decided it was adorable to watch old people falling in love, and when I told Uncle Piotr this, he reminded me in no uncertain terms that they were both only just forty, which hardly counted as old.
In any case, Uncle Piotr agreed to take me out to a café on the other side of the city. Now, on the tram, I realized my mistake. I could no longer hear the gunshots, but I could hear the incredulous whispers of our fellow countrymen. As the passengers on the tram got on and off, snippets of conversation bombarded me.
“Why now?” one man asked his traveling companion. “I heard it’s almost empty in there, that most of them have been moved to labor camps out of the city where conditions are less crowded. If they had it in them to fight back, why wait until now, when the Germans are trying to help them move to more comfortable accommodations?”
I looked at Uncle Piotr, who was reading his newspaper, apparently unperturbed by the comments behind us. I clenched my hands into fists so tight that my fingernails dug into the soft skin of my palms. I focused on the pain hoping it would drown out the sounds of the conversation.
I told myself that it was entirely possible these men had no idea about what life was like behind the wall, and I tried to remind myself that they, too, had probably suffered under the occupation.
“I heard this fighting is not about conditions at all, but that the Jews are concerned they will no longer be able to make money in the work camps. You know how Jews love their money.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Piotr,” I whispered urgently.
“What for?” he asked me, startled.
I spun around and faced the men, and I hissed, “The walled district has been a cruel prison since it was established, and those left inside know they aren’t being removed to a work camp but to an extermination camp. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
The entire tram fell silent. I looked around, frantically checking to see if there were any soldiers on board—not that this was our only threat. We had no way of knowing how many civilians on the tram would be eager to turn us in.