From the afternoon of Sunday 31st, events tumbled after one another in dizzying succession. Any account will inevitably feel like a race, but I shall endeavour to record each development with the clarity it demands. The process started exactly as the Chaze had forecast, but with one minor surprise.
I did not sleep all weekend. According to the Chaze’s intelligence, the Gestapo in Wilno were about to stage an attack - on Germans, no less - in collaboration with Lithuanian nationalists. By an audacious use of propaganda, the attack would be blamed on Jews and used as pretence for the biggest purge yet. The operation even had a codename: The Great Provocation. The Chaze was certain it would happen by the 31st; the ensuring ‘reprisals’ were essential preparation for creating the Wilno Ghetto, which had already been scheduled for the first half of September.
Sunday was a day off in the camp, although there always plenty of work to be done, washing our bedding and uniforms. A little before 4.30, I requested a short break from Lagerführer Nickel and was escorted by Oswald Zgismond to Herr Ritter’s office behind the leather store, to inquire about the Reich Commissar’s rescheduled appointment, my usual pretext. Despite not being able to freely converse – a soldier was on patrol outside Ritter’s open door at all times – it was a comfort to merely be in his presence.
While the three of spoke intently about a visit that none expected to take place, Ritter’s telephone rang.
‘Unterscharführer,’ he said. ‘… I see… Yes, that can be done without too much difficulty… We are under no obligation to help, though, surely… Very good. I will have the list sent up as soon as I am able.’
‘List?’ Zgismond said, checking that the patrolling soldier was not within ear-shot. ‘List of who?’
‘The Jewish Council have been in contact. They’ve got a persistent young chap just walked in trying to track people down. Friends and relatives taken away for labour who never came back.’
‘Ponary.’
‘Probably. Rausch has agreed to check our records to see if any of them ended up here.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why help the Jewish Council?’
‘Think about it.’ Ritter dabbed a handkerchief to his nose. ‘Why wouldn’t he. Today more than ever, no? So thanks to Abba Kovner, that’s another job I’ve got to do. Some day off this turned out to be.’
My face must have betrayed me, because Ritter said, ‘Abba Kovner, you know him.’
‘We met last year,’ I said. ‘Shortly after I arrived from Cracow. He was organising an Independent Jewish Defence Force.’
‘Did you join?’
‘No. I took the coward’s way out.’
‘Don’t blame yourself. It wouldn’t have helped.’
‘Maybe not. But he’s still free, and I’m trapped in here.’
While Abba Kovner was searching for the missing, the process was already underway that would see many more Jews murdered, the condemned marched to Ponary, and when the fuel pits were full, forced to dig up corpses and burn them to make more room. Three thousand would be killed in just four days.
News of The Great Provocation was being broadcast on the evening news when I returned to the stables.
‘At 2 o’clock, shots were fired from a house on the corner of Szklanna and Wieka streets, into a group of German sentries standing around in the square outside the Pan Cinema. Passers-by, together with German soldiers, broke into the house and identified the cowardly bandits as Jews. Their rifles were still slung over their shoulders. The attackers paid with their lives for their act – they were shot on the spot. To avoid such hostile acts in the future, new and severe deterrent measures are being taken. The responsibility lies with the entire Jewish community.’
Immediately after, the mass expulsion of Jews from Glezer, Gaon, Szawelska, Strashun and Niemiecka Streets – the same area that would soon become part of the Ghetto – began, ‘in retaliation’. Germans stormed into each house, into each attics and cellar, and dragged out every person they found: women, men, and children. The streets were coated with blood, and corpses lay everywhere. Herded together into an endless column, the survivors were marched through the nocturnal streets. Nobody knew what would happen to them. The wailing reached the sky.
In order to facilitate the next round of clearances, Hans Hingst, Regional Commissar of Wilno published the following notice on the morning of September 1st.
‘All Jews, men and women, are forbidden to leave their homes from today from 3 o’clock in the afternoon until 10 o’clock in the morning. Exceptions will be made only for those Jews and Jewesses who have valid work-passes. This order is for the security of the population and to protect the lives of the inhabitants. It is the duty of every honest citizen to cooperate in preserving quiet and order.’
The Aktions continued until September 3rd, when the area the Jews had been expelled from was fenced in and two Ghettos were set up, a larger and smaller. On the 6th of September, approximately 30,000 Jews were forced into the larger Ghetto, known as ‘Ghetto I’ and 11,000 of the oldest or most infirm into the smaller Ghetto, known as ‘Ghetto II’. Both sections were crowded to the point that they resembled ant colonies. A surplus of 6,000, for whom there was no room or were too frail to survive the relocation, were deported to Lukiszki prison and from there to Ponary.
Judenrat councils were set up in Rudnick Street, in line with Nazi policy of putting the Jews in charge of their own destruction. Various bureaucratic departments were created, providing the illusion of permanence, offices for everything from Food to Health to Lodging to Education to Employment. But the Director of Employment could do nothing for those prisoners unfortunate enough to lack work-pass; they were given jobs as sport for young German soldiers. Men were strapped down with timber then forced to run to the top of Tymin Hill, the soles of their feet beaten for every stumble. Women were yoked to wagons and ordered to pick up horse dung with their fingers.
The able-bodied were marched out of the Ghetto every morning at first light, to labour in factories, construction sites and army units. Workers carried prised white passes, detailing their names, profession and employer addresses. But even these certificates couldn’t stop a one-way trip to Lukiszki if the Lithuanian police decided they didn’t like the cut of a man’s gib. The lucky worker who endured twelve hours of laying train tracks under a guard more brutal than the noonday sun would upon his return to the Ghetto be subject to searches at the main gate, where the Jewish Police checked for prohibited items as food and milk. If a worker was stopped by Lithuanian police outside the Ghetto, even the shoes on his feet could be considered contraband. Even worse when the Gestapo decided to monitor the gate, prying mouths open with crowbars and confiscating the smallest morsel of bread trapped between molars, sometimes the molar itself, if it was filled with silver. For importing food in this manner, a man could be beaten bloody before being sent to his death. By this way, the smuggling of contraband into the Ghetto was controlled.
But still, goods managed to find a way in, and a way out.
Before three weeks had passed, the Chaze had a conduit of his own, a kashariyot, literally, a connector, one of a handful of brave young Jewish women – usually pretty, it must be said - who traversed the Ghettos, smuggling secret documents and underground newspapers, medical supplies and forged identity cards, and whatever else they could conceal about their person. The woman, known only to the Council of Four as X, was a svelte, green-eyed beauty from Warsaw whom the Chaze had used to smuggle his Ponary dossier into Sweden. X was now back in Wilno, and had infiltrated Ghetto I.
A tentative message-delivery system was set up with the help of the baker who delivered our bread, an impassive Lithuanian not immune to the lure of cold, hard Reichmarks. Our first communique was a cautious exercise in information-gathering and read:
‘Please tell us what is happening. Ha’aretz yearns to know’.
Haaretz was short for Hadashot Ha’aretz, News of the Land of Israel, our oldest daily newspaper.
After leaving the
back of our canteen, the baker returned to his shop in the city, where he was later visited by X, who took the message home with her to the Akiva leaders within the Ghetto. Their reply was couriered back to the shop two days later by the same woman. For the baker’s next delivery to Camp Moda, he prepared a special batch of loaves along with the usual pastry delicacies for the SS, with the Ghetto’s response concealed within.
By this time, Ritter had succeeded in having me assigned to the food-squad, in addition to my usual leather-clicking duties, and I was able to intercept the fragments of paper, and pass them on to Zgismond or Ritter and eventually back to the Chaze. To everybody’s surprise, it worked. The Ghetto’s reply read:
‘Situation very dire, but thrilled to hear of your existence?? Much to discuss.’
And so the dialogue began. It was through these messages that we first contacted family members on the Ghetto prisoners’ behalves and then began building up a picture of the conditions they were living under. The decrepit water and sewage systems were straining under the demands of a population a hundred and fifty times bigger than ever intended. Regular blockages led out to outbreaks of dysentery, while precious clean water leaked out through burst pipes. Overcrowding and the correspondent worsening of sanitary conditions led to a sharp increase in mortality rates, not to mention swarms of fleas and lice that wouldn’t have been out of place in Ancient Egypt. The German authorities displayed a sign at the main gate: ‘Warning – Danger of Epidemics. Entry to Non-Jews is Strictly Forbidden!’
Very quickly it became apparent that as well as sending messages in, we needed to put our efforts into bringing people out. We could not free anybody, but we could ease their suffering. Camp Moda was no longer the paradise I had first encountered, but it was still about the best we could hope for. And we had Zgismond as Kapo, another useful buffer.
There was no official word from Gestapo HQ, but the Ghetto was never conceived with longevity in mind; it was a holding bay on the road to Lukiszki and Ponary. Rescue became our overriding preoccupation, and the sole subject of discussion at the next Council of Four meeting, five snatched minutes behind the din of the lasting machines on a wet Wednesday morning, September 24th.
‘I’m a glorified leather goods salesman,’ the Chaze said. ‘They only put me in charge of this place because they appreciate fine shoes, and we make a lot of money. A guy like me doesn’t get to start sniffing around a sealed Ghetto, not unless he’s found the next Bruno Magli.’
Silence, or what passes for it behind a row of 1,500 kg lasting machines.
‘So you find him,’ Zgismond said.
‘Do you even know who Bruno Magli is?’
‘Even better,’ Ritter said, ‘you find ten of him.’
‘Oh, just like that?’
‘Just like that.’ Ritter threw his fist open like a triumphant magician.
‘And why do I need ten more shoemakers?’
‘Because our production lines are already going flat out. Because we’ve got orders flying in left, right and centre.’
‘Have we? Why haven’t I seen them?’
The corner of Ritter’s moth twitched into a sly smile. ‘Because I haven’t concocted them yet.’
It was ingenious, but there was a problem: work-passes. If Edith Liebgold had a white card in her pocket saying she was a cook, how was the Chaze going to convince her jailer’s otherwise? But, of course, every problem was an opportunity in disguise. We might not have figured out how to help Edith Liebgold yet, but she already had a job, and a degree of security. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of poor souls trapped inside without work-passes, forced to endure the most obscene daily degradations. These were the very people who needed our help the most.
We put in a request via our baker, and names of the jobless started flooding in, hidden in the usual way. So great was the uptake from the Ghetto that we had to increase our order from three deliveries a week to five, citing spoilage of loaves caused by the prolonged heat-wave.
This increased traffic did not go unnoticed by my bête-noir, Lagerführer Nickel, who was already suspicious of my continued requests of meetings with Herr Ritter to discuss a another meeting that never seemed to take place. When I was transferred to the food-unit, Nickel had started showing up to check on me, convinced that I was stealing rations. Of course I wasn’t, and he soon lost interest, or so I thought. But Nickel was a more sophisticated creature than he let on, and had been monitoring deliveries from a discrete distance.
Early one morning, as I was fetching a tray of loaves from the back of the baker’s van, I heard the spring-loaded click of a metal tab dropping into position against a firing pin, and squirmed as the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed into the back of my neck.
‘Turn around very slowly and put the tray on the floor,’ Nickel breathed into my ear.
The pressure eased from my skin and I complied, setting the tray on the ground between us.
‘I don’t care who it is you’re writing love-letters to, your whore or Joseph Stalin.’ Nickel waved his pistol at the bread. ‘But it doesn’t matter. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to hang for this. If you’re lucky.’
‘No, no. There’s - ’
‘Silence!’ he screamed. ‘Push the tray towards me.’
I had no choice.
Nickel squatted on his haunches, lifted the tray, tipped the loaves onto the dirt and peeled out a sheet of baking paper from underneath. Handling it as if he’d found the Shroud of Turin, he examined both sides, then held up to the light, but could see no writing, not even a watermark.
Undeterred, he pulled another sheet, and another, until the metal tray flashed white in the sunlight.
He went through the entire van, ripping open every box, flinging every cake and cream puff onto the growing pile, scouring every inch of cardboard, but of course, there was nothing to see. The Ghetto’s messages were written on tiny scraps of paper encased within the hollowed-out loaves now buried at the bottom of the pile.
***
Meanwhile, Julius Ritter forged the work-orders that the Chaze took to his parties and nightclubs as proof of Camp Moda’s continued need for expansion. His superiors didn’t need much prompting. If the Ghetto contained the highest concentration of Jews, it stood to reason the highest concentration of shoemakers were also to be found within its walls. Jewish craftsmen were skilled, and better than anything, they’d work for soup. The Chaze was given permission to take as many as he could find.
It took less than four weeks from establishing contact with the kashariyot to putting a rescue plan in place, but on this occasion the Chaze had no idea how little time we had. The first Ghetto Aktion took place against both I and II on October 1st, which, by a startling twist of fate, was the day of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
At noon, when the synagogues were full, Germans and Lithuanians under the command of the SS Officer Schweinberger entered Ghetto II, rounded up approximately 1,700 Jews and deported them to Lukiszki. In the afternoon Schweinberger turned to the Judenrat of Ghetto I and demanded 1,000 Jews by 7:30 that evening. Residents found by the Jewish Police to be lacking work-cards were arrested, transferred into German custody and deported. Of all the horrors, one story about an old Jewish teacher forced to dig a ditch stood out. The SS pushed pork into his mouth while he worked. The teacher spit it out. They kept pushing it in, and he kept spitting it out and fighting them. Another SS man took pictures of how they forced a Jew to eat pork on Yom Kippur. Finally the Germans lost patience and shot him and clamped the sausage between his teeth like a cigar.
9
The shock-waves of the strike and its timing reverberated around Camp Moda for days. Many of my fellow prisoners had regarded the Ghetto as a place of safety and refuge, an opportunity for Jews to live amongst their own, free from abuse and persecution. Instead of words of consolation, all I could offer was silence. I alone knew what fate awaited the deported.
The Chaze sunk into a deeper depression than August, and disapp
eared for three days straight on official leave. Not even Julius Ritter knew where he spent them. But he returned sharp and slimmer, with a new determination, and the Council of Four pledged to press ahead with our original plan as quickly as possible. The Yom Kippur sweeps were extensive, but not exhaustive. There were still prisoners trapped in the Ghetto without work-orders, but we knew for certain that they would be taken next. A new list was drawn up in consultation with the Akiva leaders, and Oswald Zgismond started preparing the stables to house another sixty workers.
Renewing the wining, dining and outright bribing of his friends at Gestapo HQ, the Chaze was able to find out the date of the next scheduled Aktion: October 16th. Another Jewish holiday, Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles. This was no coincidence. Every time we thought we understood the depths of the Nazi’s depravity, they found new ways to surprise us. Unfortunately, the Jewish calendar has an awful lot of holidays.
For once, we were ready.
On October 13th, Herr Ritter and the Chaze left the camp in an armoured truck bound for Wilno. According to sixty-four year old Rose Ziekel, when my two friends jumped out inside Ghetto II and started hunting for the names on their list, they were more fearsome than any Gestapo. People were terrified, and fled screaming.
Only later did Rose realise that the screams were the Chaze’s necessary alibi. Any reputation he’d acquired in the SS for being soft on Jews was shed that day.
Amongst all the bluster and panic, eighty-seven prisoners were shoved into the truck and brought back to Moda, twenty-seven more than the approved list of ‘Specialist Artsians’ provided for. What none of the watching gate-soldiers saw during the melee, was the Chaze’s revolver fall from of his holster, to be snatched from the gutter by a young woman who may or may not have been kashariyot X. The Council of Four had taken no official decision on arming the Ghetto, and I could see no good coming from it. But whether by design or chance, the next stage of the struggle had begun.
I Am Juden Page 17