We tied scraps of fabric around what was left of our shoes, hoping it would muffle our heels against the cobblestones, and then we moved to the street. As tired and as weak as I was, I could not allow myself to breathe as heavily as I wanted to, because even the sound of our breathing could give us away. Shallow breathing left me faint, and I wondered if I would just pass out, if that would be the end of me.
The sound of an engine turning over sounded up ahead. Suddenly, the street was lit with headlights. A shot was fired, then another and another. It was dark other than the headlight, and I was momentarily blinded. My whole body jolted as a white-hot, searing pain exploded in my right arm. The next bullet would surely do the job. I didn’t even tense as I waited for it. Instead, I exhaled, feeling the tension of anticipation leaving my body at long last.
Here it is. Peace. Peace at last.
But I’d survived for so long. Self-preservation had become a habit.
“This way! There’s a manhole in the alleyway,” I heard Andrzej hiss, and then Chaim, who was just to my left against the wall, disappeared from view. I followed them, blinded by pain and shock, holding on to my consciousness by a thread. More gunshots sounded, and then, just ahead of me, Andrzej stumbled and fell face-first to the ground. The headlight from the car flashed over him as I approached, and I saw that it was a clean shot—right through his skull.
There was no time to react and no time to grieve. Chaim was still running, and I was stumbling after him into the dark alley. The headlights hadn’t followed us, but we weren’t out of danger yet. Voices and laughter sounded behind us, echoing off the walls in the alley.
The Germans had us cornered. A chill ran down my spine as the seconds began to stretch. No gunshots now meant they intended to toy with us or, worse still, to capture and torture us.
“Your grenade,” I reminded Chaim. He kept running, and I kept following, trying so desperately to keep up. Our time was upon us, and after everything we had been through, it seemed fitting that we would face the afterlife together.
There were boots on the ground behind us—thick, hard boots, so different from the sounds of our worn shoes.
I’m coming, Mother. Samuel, I’m coming. Andrzej, pour me a vodka. We will toast the success of these past weeks.
But Chaim stopped suddenly, and then I heard him groan as he lifted the manhole cover.
“You first,” he said urgently. I hesitated, and he grabbed me, his hands rough. He shifted the fingers of my left hand to press my palm over the wound on my right, then shoved me into the manhole, down into the sewer. My feet found a platform, but it was a small space—not even tall enough for me to crouch, so instead I stretched out horizontally. My eyes watered with the stench, and below me I heard running water.
Suddenly, Chaim’s face was above me. It was dark, but I could just make out the shape of his teeth against the grime on his face.
“Don’t waste it,” was all that he said, and then he looked away.
“Don’t waste—” I started to protest, but Chaim pulled the manhole cover back into place. I tried to reach to stop him, to pull him down into safety with me, but my hand reached only the concrete of the underside of the alleyway. I couldn’t figure out how to pull myself up any higher. The pain in my arm was overwhelming, and my thoughts were growing fuzzy.
As the manhole dropped back into place, I heard Chaim taunting the soldiers. He was using himself as bait, making sure the Germans following us were all close enough that the grenade would take them all out, just to be sure they couldn’t follow me into the sewer.
“No,” I cried weakly, clawing uselessly at the underside of the alleyway with my good hand. “Please, Chaim, don’t do this. I need you—”
The soldiers were right above me now, close enough that I could hear them talking to Chaim. I heard his final, triumphant burst of laughter. This was Chaim’s whole-body laugh, and I’d seen it a million times by then, so I could picture him up there in the alley, head thrown back, mouth open wide, his whole body shaking with the joy of it.
Before his laughter had even faded, an explosion burst above me, and I passed out.
* * *
When I woke, everything hurt, from my head all the way down to my toes. I was hot and dizzy even before I sat up, and there was movement at the other end of the platform. As I reoriented myself, I realized the squeaking, scurrying sound could only be rats. I kicked them away furiously and tried to gain my bearings. Once I had, I wished I could pass out again.
The explosion above me, the bullet in my arm, the hellscape of the weeks that had passed, and everyone else was dead.
I thought about dropping down into the sewer to let the filth wash me away. Then I imagined lying there and letting nature take its course. The wound in my arm would inevitably become infected, and given how weak I was, it surely wouldn’t take long for an infection to finish the job the Germans had started.
But I hadn’t fought for so long and so hard to die an impotent death. I forced myself to find the manhole—feeling the ceiling above me with the fingertips of my left hand, and then struggling, I managed to push the cover away onto the surface of the alleyway. As I struggled to rise, the odor of blood and gunpowder overtook the reek of the sewer.
Chaim’s blood. Why had he saved me?
It was dark now. I squinted, trying to find the shape of the truck, but it was gone, and the street was still and silent.
It took several attempts to drag myself out of the sewer. My injured arm wasn’t strong enough to bear my weight, and my left arm wasn’t strong enough to pull my entire body out on its own. But staying in the sewer wasn’t an option: I was going to die being useful, or at the very least facing the enemy with courage.
I was grateful for the darkness when I finally found myself aboveground again. The alleyway was a mess of bodies and body parts, and some of that mess was Chaim. I stifled a sob and forced myself to start walking, shivering now, hot and cold in alternate measures. Even as I left the alley, I was becoming confused about where I was and what my options were.
I had walked the streets of the ghetto more times than I could count, but the landscape had changed in the past twenty-eight days. Every building was burned or demolished, and the landmarks I’d once used to navigate were all gone. I decided to try to find Franciszkan´ska Street to locate the other bunker, just as Andrzej and Chaim had planned.
I was at the wall before I even knew I was near it, and that’s when I realized how lost I was. I’d walked in the wrong direction and had accidentally stumbled my way to the Krasin´ski Square side, all the way at the wrong end of the ghetto. I groaned, furious with myself, and moved to turn away.
But as I did, my gaze snagged on a small pile of rubble. I hesitated but ultimately walked toward it, thinking I could shelter behind it to gather my thoughts and make a new plan. Only when I stepped around the rubble did I realize that a burned-out building had collapsed, and part of its structure had fallen onto the wall—leaving a small gap.