After the success of the first rescue, we redoubled our efforts for a second. The tactic of scheduling Aktions for Jewish holiday worked to our advantage: we always knew when the next one was coming. Following on from the Succott, the Shemini Atzeret was celebrated between October 16th and 17th outside the Land of Israel. It only took the Chaze a few days to discover that the Nazis planned to mark the occasion with the total of liquidation of Ghetto II.
Ritter fabricated new orders, Zgismond oversaw the building of another consignment of bunk-beds, and I took particular care when unloading the baker’s next batch of loaves.
On the afternoon of October 15th, the Chaze and Ritter drove through the Ghetto gates to find the streets full of people, owners of work-passes frantically registering, while whoever could do so tried to hide, to bury themselves in a basement or attic, and hope to wait out the groups of Lithuanian roving from house to house. The Aktion had already begun.
One young boy concealed himself in a warehouse above a closed-up staircase in the courtyard of Shali 4, entering via a hole in the wall of the bordering top floor apartment. Many groups of people with bundles gathered there, sneaking along like shadows by candlelight around the cold, dank, walls. The whole hide-out was filled with a restless murmuring. An imprisoned mass of people. Everyone began to settle down in the corners, on the stairs.
They were like animals surrounded by the hunter. The hunter on all sides: beneath then, above them, from the sides. Broken locks snap, doors creak, axes, saws. The boy felt the enemy under the boards on which he was standing. The light of an electric bulb seeped through the cracks. They pounded, tore, broke. Soon the attack was heard from another side. Suddenly, somewhere upstairs, a girl burst into tears. A groan broke forth. They were lost. A desperate attempt to shove sugar into the girl’s mouth was of no avail. They stopped up the child’s mouth with pillows. The mother of the child was weeping. People shouted in wild terror that the child should be strangled. The child was shouting more loudly, the Lithuanians pounding more strongly against the walls.
When the fist broke through, it was Herr Ritter’s.
‘You are safe now,’ he said, smiling through the hole in the plaster. ‘Come with us and you will live.’
Fifty of them did.
But three thousand did not.
Very quickly, our operation became victim of its own success, if you can forgive use of such a word within this context. The camp’s population had doubled in a month. Apart from the overcrowding, which was a blessed relief for the rescued, compared with what they’d known, there was another problem: the inhabitants of Ghetto II were no craftsmen, and struggled to hold a tool without slicing open a finger. We had to keep this from the SS, and to work twice as hard ourselves, to cover the short-fall. Pockets of resentment grew amongst established Moda prisoners, but most understood, accepting the sacrifice with great magnanimity. But it was clear that we could take no more.
With half the Ghetto already gone, the remaining resistance was preparing for imminent liquidation. Their messages demanded weapons, and only weapons. Incredibly, only one gun existed anywhere within the walls, the Chaze’s single snub-nosed revolver passing from hand to hand of each would-be-fighting unit like an icon. More were needed, they pled, and urgently. Guns, ammunition, explosives.
Within our Council of Four, I alone expressed reservations, and requested time to consider the ramifications. What had guns ever solved? Arming the Ghetto was an act of collective suicide. If the authorities discovered the plan, it would be supressed in an instant, and followed by swingeing retaliations, inside the Ghetto and out. Even if guns managed to find a way in, there was no hope of a tiny band of prisoners fighting off the might of the German army. The venture was doomed, whichever way you looked at it. But the Council took a vote, and the result was 3-1 in favour. I was told that preparations would commence, and I was welcome to rejoin if my conscience would allow.
For three days and three nights, I wrestled with the decision. Was my reluctance to engage in armed struggle - even from a distance - proof of my essential weakness as a man? For two years I had taken the coward’s way out, scuttling from hole to hole, only to end up in a labour camp.
If not now, when?
But the risks to the Ghetto, and to the Chaze, seemed too great. I wanted to continue helping as many prisoners as possible, not endanger the last few who remained.
I realised we had no alternative. It was guns, or nothing. I could not stand by and watch.
Even the rest of the Council agreed that acquiring weapons from the camp was fraught with hazard, and would endanger our own people. The Chaze was convinced he could acquire a small arsenal from Gestapo HQ, where he still enjoyed unrestricted access.
The baker was approached to smuggle a crate into the canteen, but refused to take more than scraps of paper. A second large delivery truck brought vegetables to the camp from a nearby farm at six in the morning, three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I cautiously kept an eye on security measures, and was surprised at the laxity. The soldiers gave a cursory inspection inside, but nothing thorough. The underneath of the vehicle was not checked at all, and there was enough room between the fuel tank and the exhaust to wedge a large suitcase. But it was moot: the farm driver turned out to be a young Lithuanian nationalist, clearly in awe of the SS. He would not help us.
Finally we arrived at an idea that was as inspired as it was dangerous: the Chaze would open an expansion of Moda inside the Ghetto. Even in its depleted form, Wilno I still had dozens of workshops employing hundreds of Jews. Most of it was self-cannibalising: carpentry workshops producing new furniture from the timber taken from Jewish homes, fur workshops making new coats from confiscated garments. But new goods were still being churned out: everything from marmalade, to carpets and sausages. Everything apart from luxury leather. The Chaze believed he had spotted a gap in the market.
If the Chaze convinced his superiors that the Ghetto could make as much money for the SS as Moda, the inhabitants would be reclassified as essential to the war effort, thereby guaranteeing the Ghetto’s survival, which was my overriding concern. But we would also have what the rest of the Council of Four craved, a legitimate pipeline into Wilno I for moving more than just leather. The Chaze commenced his petitioning with more bribery and nights away in the city, restaurants and women and wine. He needed influential friends, and they were not hard to come by.
By the third week of October, Moda’s expansion had been authorised, premises secured within the Ghetto and artisans recruited.
On Tuesday October 21st, Ritter and The Chaze left Moda to deliver a truck full of cordovan leather hides ready to be cut.
When we went to bed that night, the truck had still not returned.
Neither man was seen at breakfast next morning.
Outside on the Appelplatz, there was a new Kapo doing the head-count. I knew then that we were finished: the Chaze and Julius Ritter had been caught, their duplicity uncovered. Oswald Zgismond had been arrested. A rumour murmured up and down the lines that he was already under interrogation. It was only a matter of time before the SS came for me. The guards barked their orders as harshly as the night of Ronen Kesselman’s execution.
People started stepping away from me as if I was contaminated, an Untouchable.
I remained standing after roll call, waiting for the clap of the iron bracelets.
‘What are you waiting for?’ the guard shouted. ‘Return to work.’
I ran into the factory and hid behind the door. After the last soldier left the Appelplatz, I slipped back out and rummaged through the bins and found a good length of leather strap, strong enough to bear my weight. There was nothing left at Moda for me now.
I marched slowly passed the flagpole towards the back of the canteen, with the confidence of a man reporting for duty.
It was 6.10 a.m.
The Lithuanian farmer had delivered his vegetables and was enjoying a cigarette with one of the soldiers outside his truc
k. They were talking about an amateur football game, a Munich derby.
I dropped onto my knees and padded across the tarmac until I was under the front bumper. Turning onto my back, I pushed myself under the length of the vehicle and found the gap between the fuel tank and the exhaust. First I tied the leather round my ankles, then raised my knees and tied the strap to the metal, pulling it tight and hoisting my shoes against the undercarriage. I levered my torso up, pressed my chest against the chassis, and found a way to grip the metal that didn’t serrate my fingertips. The snug intersection of man and machine, I was invisible. I hoped.
The driver finished his cigarette, bid the soldier goodbye and climbed up behind the wheel.
The engine shook into life above me and a great cough rattled through the exhaust next to my head, exploding like a gun-shot in the pipe. Within seconds I was engulfed in thick fumes, but when the truck started rolling, the breeze cleared the worst of it from my face.
We crawled around the courtyard, through the Appelplatz, past the flagpole and gallows, down the long slope to the gate, finally picking up speed, stones pinging off my back.
Stopped again at the gates, the final inspection. The truck’s rear doors creaked open, German soldiers jumping up, the hunter on all sides. Thumps of boots above, inches from my nose, separated by a thin layer of rusting aluminium. Stomping up to the driver’s cabin, back down to the rear. Boots jumped down, the doors slammed shut.
Two knocks on the side panel.
‘All clear!’
‘Thanks… See you tomorrow.’
The truck shook as the driver pushed up into first gear.
The Moda gates swung shut behind us.
Picking up momentum, the flat-bed jumped and rattled over the forest road as the driver flew from second to third gear and a rip of cobalt sky opened up above.
I needed to get as far away from Moda as I could in the shortest possible time, but gripping the chassis was like squeezing razor-blades. My fingers marinated in their own blood.
The truck slowed down again, grinding back through the gears. Deep inside the forest now: no more blue skies, no open road. My world narrowed to one blind bend after another, at five miles an hour.
I worked my left foot free from the leather strap and jabbed the boot heel at the other bind until it broke. As my legs dropped, I unpeeled my fingers from the chassis, blew a goodbye kiss to the razor-blades and fell, twisting in the short drop, taking the full force of the tarmac with my shoulder. Boots last to hit the ground, I sucked myself into a foetal ball as the tyres rolled by, gusting my shaved head.
When the truck disappeared around the next bend, I bumped out of the road into the ditch, landing in a trough of fallen leaves.
Face down, I inhaled the freedom of the forest floor, the dust and bugs and grit.
10
The last of the morning’s stars glinted like pin pricks in the sky.
Low in the east, a pale October sun was beginning its lazy climb. Poland - my sisters and mother – was at my back, south-west. Easy enough to navigate on a clear morning: all I had to do was follow the sun.
I turned round and gazed into the forest, a fortress of oak and lime, bog alder and hornbeam. Noble and wise, their boughs would protect me. The foliage was thick at the side of the road, forming an arch above my head.
I ducked through and ran towards the tree’s knotted arms.
The solitary house appeared from behind a row of silver birch just after noon.
I dropped to my knees, burying myself in the long grass.
Five minutes passed, in frozen observation.
Ten, then twenty.
No hand pushed open the house’s black shutters, no smoke leaked from the chimney. Nobody stepped out the door and nobody returned. Before me, the grass shimmered proudly in the field, undisturbed by foot traffic. I judged the property to be abandoned.
From the outside, it was a dirty little Lithuanian hovel. The tar roof was pocked with holes. The lime that held the stones together was crumbling to dust. A drain pipe peeled away from one corner. The narrow door dangled askance, moored by a single hinge. Under my hand, its damp wood was soft as fungal flesh. The door yawned open, spilling darkness. Outside, the morning was warming up and autumn bright. There was little incentive to shut the day out but I craved five minutes respite on a wooden seat uncrowded by horned beetles.
I stepped inside.
The crooked door let in little of the day. The window was warped shut. The walls were black with smoke. I was standing in the middle of the only room, that much I could see. Coal husks warmed the grate, and pools of grease solidified on the brickwork. Somebody had been here, last night or perhaps as recently as this morning. I moistened a fingertip and zig-zagged my initials on the wall, blood on soot.
There was one shelf above a table, both empty, two frail wooden chairs and a bench long enough to stretch my spine and raise my injured foot. The room grew lighter as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. Opposite my head in the far corner, I could make out a shadowed square much like a cushion on the floor.
I pushed myself off the bench to investigate and found something even better than a cushion: a pile of neatly folded clothes. Olive green shirt, sturdy black woollen trousers and a pair of thick socks.
I shed my prison uniform, climbed into my new costume and stole out.
I didn’t rest again until late that afternoon, by which time I was well and truly lost. Perhaps an hour of silvery light remained, but the evening chill was already descending.
I stopped at an immense stand of deadwood decomposing into the forest floor, the closest thing to a shelter I’d seen since the hovel. Moss and wildflowers covered the trunks, voles scampered amongst them while a host of woodpeckers flitted in and out, drumming the dusk. There were so many species thriving under the criss-crossed stumps, I believed the stand could take one more. I cleared an oblong allotment of branches from the ground and settled down under a crude wigwam, curling myself like a dog in a basket.
After an hour of fitful dozing, I was awoken by the sound of footsteps disturbing the leaves to my left. I held my breath as the unseen presence picked a way through. The forest was reduced to shadows, and I had hidden myself well amongst the trunks. A dog could have sniffed me out for sport, but there was no panting or excitable canine yelps.
I closed my eyes to sharpen my other senses, but now I was fully alert, I could hear nothing at all.
I was about to exhale a long sigh when the pounding of feet close by kicked up a dry dust-cloud rustle. Then, a second of silence as the feet left the air, followed by a soft hiss not unlike the flight of an arrow. The bough behind me groaned and collapsed as a pair of legs vaulted over. If I had not let out the most almighty shriek, the fellow would have landed on my head.
To my immense relief, the intruder was as startled as I was, and thrashed around on the ground until his shock had spent itself. In the half-light, I could see he was no German: stick-thin and wearing nothing but rags. The feet that had almost cracked my skull were wrapped in filthy, bloodied bandages.
‘It’s alright.’ I raised my hands to show I was unarmed. ‘I mean you no harm.’
The lad was long-haired and bearded like Victor of Aveyron, The Wolf Boy. The skin on his cheeks and forehead was smooth and prone to spotting. Like Victor, he was barely a man. I estimated his age as no more than half my forty years. I wondered how long he had been living out here.
‘Who are you?’ he said, squinting through his tangled fringe.
‘One who travels the same path as you,’ I assured him. ‘I’ve come from a camp.’
‘The family camp?’
I wondered if he meant Moda, and if so, whether news had spread of the Chaze’s capture and my breakout.
I said, ‘What family camp?’
‘In the forest, five miles from here,’ Viktor said. ‘A hundred people, those who cannot fight. Women, children, the sick.’
‘They live in the trees?’
‘They h
ave everything. Shabbat, holidays, prayer, marriage, old-timers gathering round campfires.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
He nodded. ‘They wouldn’t let me stay.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I was alone. They didn’t trust me.’
‘But aren’t you… young enough?’ I didn’t want to offend him by calling him a child. But that’s what he was, I could see now, an adolescent. How could any so-called family camp have sent him packing in those rags?
‘We could go back in the morning,’ he said. ‘Tell them we’re brothers.’
‘We don’t look like brothers.’
‘That’s true. What camp are you from?’
‘An SS camp. Forced labour.’
‘Around here?’
‘I’ve been running all day.’
‘You’re in pretty good shape for a prisoner.’
‘We were lucky there, for a while.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The conditions were quite decent.’
‘So why leave?’
I thought about how or where to begin. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘You got a weapon?’
‘I told you, I mean you no harm.’
‘I didn’t ask what you told me. You got a gun or not?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t kill anyone?’
‘Of course not.’
‘There are partisans close, but they won’t take a man if he don’t have a weapon. If we got but one gun between us…’
‘Looks like we’re out of luck, then,’ I said. ‘My name’s Jozef.’
I Am Juden Page 18