Murmurs of agreement, and a lone voice of dissent.
Gusta Davison threw off her husband’s hand to step behind the chair and grasp the headrest.
‘Is this not what the Germans want? To turn us against each other? I haven’t come here tonight so I can start killing Jews. God will decide what happens to these wretches, not me. The Jewish Police took my father and sister. When I see these turncoats do the German’s bidding, of course I want to lash out, to spit in their dirty faces. But what good will it do? More will take their place, and the deportations will continue. Combat operations must be our primary aim.’
Dolek said, ‘But we can consider incidental reprisals as useful training exercises, correct?’
‘Sniping at German patrols is a legitimate act of resistance,’ Gusta said. ‘Lynching your next door neighbour is not. To stop the trains, we need to think like tacticians, not gangsters. Sabotaging railroads and blowing up bridges. That is how we halt the madness.’
The guitarist in the corner strummed a mock-flammenco flourish, and those around him yelped excitedly and began to imitate a drum roll on their knees. As the musician keened in Yiddish, I realised I knew the song. I hadn’t heard it played before, but I had read the lyrics, handed to me by an informer at Jozefinska.
It's burning, brothers! It's burning!
Oh, our poor village, brothers, burns!
Evil winds, full of anger,
Rage and ravage, smash and shatter;
Stronger now that wild flames grow --
All around now burns!
And you stand there looking on
With futile, folded arms
And you stand there looking on --
While our village burns!
After a stately first verse, Mordecai Gebirtig’s finger-picking became more strident,
and the rhythm was soon echoed by hand-claps. When a vicious slash of the strings signalled the chorus, the entire room erupted in song. I felt myself lifted into a state of transcendence by the voices.
47
After July 25th, Gusta and Marek once again became strangers to me. Communication was limited to messages dropped off and collected from the Eagle Pharmacy. Everybody present at the apartment was supposed to have made the same vow; it was too risky to be seen together. The group managed to keep apart, for the first few days. Fellow conspirators passed each other on the street without so much as a nod or wink. But their resolve quickly weakened. Before the end of the first week, clusters of four or five Akiva youths were striding through the Ghetto with heads held high, like the old school gang back on the block. Who could blame them? Everything had been stolen from their lives, leaving only the fleeting joys of fellowship.
My job was to keep the resistance supplied with resources and to allow them to operate below the authority’s radar. Acquiring weapons was Gusta’s top priority. I had access to the Jozefinska armoury store, but was under strict instructions not to touch a single bullet. Frustrating as it was, I understood her logic: my position in the heart of the SS was too valuable a resource to lose. Stealing weapons from under the German’s noses was how the Chaze had finally been caught in Vilno. So the Luger pistol I unholstered and presented to Marek Davison on July 25th was my first and probably last contribution of its kind.
I furnished the resistance with dates of upcoming Aktions and envelopes stuffed full of banknotes from Erich Monhke’s safety deposit box. These deliveries to Magister Pankiewicz were the most gratifying. Gusta’s group had resorted to extorting forced contributions from the few Jews who still had money, which reminded of the raids SS used to lead in Kamierz. I was glad to be able to provide an alternative source of income. If there is time, I will give away every note.
In addition to money, I supplied blank identity papers, work permits and ink-stamps. Marek Davison was an experienced printer and engraver, and ran the group’s forgery operation. It was Marek’s workshop I had raided last December in the abandoned bakery, another reason for his dislike of me. In the Ghetto, Marek had what was called a ‘walking office’, which was a rather grand way of saying he had to lug all his materials through the streets in briefcases, with assistants lugging boxes and even a typewriter in his wake. At the start of each week, I would send a list of apartments recently cleared by deportations. Marek would use each one for half an hour, then move on.
Dolek Liebeskind’s policy of reprisals was first put into practice with the the beating of Karl Mende, loathed for his violence during deportations. Mende was found in the middle of Zgody Square at dawn on the first day of August, reeking of alcohol, with two black eyes and a clutch of broken ribs. It was claimed he had been assaulted by Jews, although there were no witnesses and Mende himself could not recall what had happened.
On recovery, he was reassigned from Civil Affairs to the courtyard rts, for his own protection. The cells were largely empty these days, save for a retarded young girl kept as a prostitue for some of the more debased officers. Most of the Ghetto’s non-Aryan criminal element had been shipped to Belzec by now, and the Jews who remained had no wish to follow them. Crime in the Ghetto was at an all-time low. I was baffled then, when one of Gusta’s most trusted lieutenant’s got herself arrested shortly afterwards, for the most trivial offence. Adina Meed, she of dynamite-smuggling renown, had left her apartment that morning without her Blauschein and was stopped by the first patrol. Punishment was a forty-eight hour stretch in the cell next to Karl Mende.
As her second day in the cells was coming to an end, I heard my old partner shout out in anger. Nobody else in the office seemed to hear but since my desk was close to the back door, so I didn’t have far to go and investigate. As I approached the gaol, his shouts grew louder, and climaxed with a single gun-shot.
I found Karl Mende crumpled against the wall outside the cells, shot through the eyeball.
According to my report, the retarded girl had confessed to summoning Mende to her cell and when he was close enough, she’d thrust her hand through the bars, pulled his pistol from his belt and fired at point-blank range.
But in reality, I’d found Mende’s body lying outside Adina Meed’s cell, and it was she who’d passed me the gun and told me where to put it.
The retarded girl was put of her misery on the gallows that evening, and Adina Meed released the next day.
***
Throughout the summer, the resistance forged alliances with like-minded Polish organisations, set up a number of safehouses on the Aryan side and spirited relatives through the walls to escape the August Aktions, including Gusta’s mother and Marek’s nephew. I received only fragments of information from the Pharmacy, summoning me to a particular gate at a particular hour. One night I realised the bearded businessman I was smuggling back inside was Gusta Davison herself; I hadn’t even known she was gone.
The most promising offer of unity came from the Polish Worker’s Party. One of its key members was Gola Mira, a Communinst who’d broken out of prison at the beginning of the war and had been successfully evading the authorities ever since. Gola also happened to be a cousin to Dolek Liebeskind’s wife. After several weeks of negotiations, it was agreed with Edwin Weiss would lead the first armed group of Akiva fighters out into the forest with a guide supplied by the PWP, in order to to unite with the partisans.
But Edwin Weiss’s group were little more than school-children, and four weeks of training inside the Ghetto was all they knew of military discipline. When their appointed guard became lost and abandoned them, the group spent three days wandering around the forest in the heat of summer without food or drink.
Dejected and defeated, they finally found upon a town, where they decided to attack a police station as compensation for failure. But the policemen would not be drawn out to the street. With no fight to be had, Weiss’s group returned in shame to the Ghetto.
***
On October 27th, Wilhelm Kunde gathered the office together and informed us that a major Aktion was scheduled for the next day. The time was fast ap
proaching, he crowed, when the District would be ‘Judenrein’, clean of Jews.
When the meeting broke up, I managed to find a spare Jewish Police uniform, bundled it up in a dry-cleaning bag together with a summary of Kunde’s announcement, and delivered the parcel to the Pharmacy, marked ‘Urgent’.
By lunchtime, news began to filter back onto the streets. Jewish hops closed early, trading ceased, and a scramble for hiding places began. Fights broke out in cellars and attics and those who had found nowhere to stow themselves resorted to scaling the walls in broad daylight. Hardly any managed to dodge the guards, and those who did were shot to pieces on the way down; a patrol of security police had sealed off the Ghetto from the outside, forming a human chain around its perimeter. At the same time, Gusta Davison was hastening back to Cracow to rescue her mother for a second time, the old woman having sneaked back in since August.
Amon Goethe and his Sonderkommando arrived early on the 28th to take charge. Today was their sixth major Aktion, and I wondered whether it might be the last. A decree had been issued ordering all bearers of labour cards to appear at Jozfinfksa at 10.00 o’clock for inspection.
Unlike previous occasions, German police began shooting from the start. All pretext of civility was gone. I waded through corpses to conduct house to house searches while all around me victims were struck down and executed. Surviving deportees were driven to Zgody Square and from there we marched to Plaszow station.
On the Aryan side of the city, residents were out in number enjoying the autumn sun. Our caravan of misery across the river Visutla had become a regular sight in recent months, and few even bothered to stop and gape. Two gaunt Polish housewives who did walk alongside us for a while turned out to be Gusta Davison and Dolek’s younger sister, the raven-haired Mira. They were scanning the line for somebody they knew. When they found Toshka Stark amongst our number, I was not able to let the prisoner slip away with them, but did allow a minute for the three to exchange information.
I overheard mention of the safe-house on Wiapola Street, where Marek, Dolek and Romek had managed to get to, and were now marooned. The rest of Akiva were trapped inside the Ghetto. I was relieved to hear that the policeman’s uniform I’d delivered to the Pharmacy had already found its way to Yehuda Maimon, and had helped bring out a few children before the human chain sealed them in.
Although the Aktion didn’t quite fulfil Wilhelm Kunde’s lofty expectations, the
Hospital and the House of Orphans were the first public buildings declared ‘Judenfrei’. Medical staff who insisted on staying with their patients were shot on the spot. The directors of the orphanage, Anna Feurstein and Dawid Kurzman, had been given permission to stay in the Ghetto, but chose to set off to the railway station with the children, on one final class trip.
The October Aktion was the bloodiest yet. Overnight, the human chain withdrew and the wall once again regained it porousness. The surviving members of Akiva seeped back in to find blood-spattered walls, burnt-out apartments and piles of corpses.
Approximately 6,000 Jews were transported to Belzec that day.
***
The resistance regrouped in the first week of November to agree a new strategy. With the organisation diminished, it was impossible to operate on the same scale. The plunging depths of a Polish winter was only weeks away, which ruled out any idea of joining the partisans in the forest, not that the first attempt had met with any success. The time for grand plans was over. From now on, they would be a tight-knit unit, based in the city.
The Davisons’ swathe of safehouses were reduced to a core that ran along the Cracow-Lwow and Cracow-Warsaw railway lines, principally for the benefit of the kashariyots. Ghetto resistance groups were beginning to coalesce under the umbrella of the Jewish Fighting Organisation, commanded by Mordechai Anielewicz in Warsaw.
Some of Gusta’s leaders reluctantly agreed to move out of the Ghetto, to preserve the power structure. Dolek and Rivka found refuge in Visnicz, with Halina Rubinek. The sleepy-eyed giant Romek Liebowicz preferred to stay in the German quarter of Cracow, where he was joined by Juda Tenenbaum. Gusta and Marek remained in the Ghetto, sleeping at the apartments of friends and Dolek’s parents. Gusta had not been able to save her own mother a second time.
Husband and wife spearheaded a month of thrilling nocturnal surveillances and ambushes. It was exhausting work for all, but Gusta thrived, exhorting Marek and I ‘to strike terror into the hearts of those who presumed to be our lords and masters, the arbiters of life and death for millions of defenceless people’. While they lived on frugal rations, Gusta’s words could have fed an entire army.
Although I took part in the majority of these operations, the most audacious one was not led by the Davisons. I knew nothing about it until I arrived at Jozefinska the next morning.
The first sign that was something was amiss was Amon Goethe crashing through the front doors at 10.00 o’clock. Goethe only came to the Ghetto for an Aktion. As far as I knew, none had been scheduled since October 28th. Yet here he was, pasty-faced and sweating, sweeping past the front desk and up the stairs. The shouting started before he’d even reached Kunde’s door and only stopped five minutes later when both descended and disappeared into the limousine.
It was left to Rottenführer Ritschak to inform us of last night’s attack. Three Jewish terrorists had thrown sulphuric acid into the faces of a patrol of German soldiers on Adolf Hitler Platz in the Old Town When the rest of their unit came running, the Jews opened up with a machine gun. One soldier disfigured, two blind and four dead.
‘Adolf Hitler Platz,’ I marvelled. ‘Is nowhere safe?’
‘The gun was one of ours,’ Ritschak said. ‘An MG42.’
‘Incredible.’ For once in these situations I was without an ounce of dissimulation. The machine gun had not come from me. ‘There was an acid attack in Nieswiez last month. They hunted down every last Jew, then set fire to the Ghetto. Destroy the lot, it’s the only response.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ Ritschak said. ‘Cracow isn’t some Belarussian backwater. We’re the capital of the Generalegouvernment and the eyes of the world are watching.’
He was right. Anywhere else, and the Ghetto would have been razed by nightfall.
As it was, Hans Frank ordered three ‘proportionate’ reprisals:
The curfew hour was cut back from 11 to 9 pm.
Non-essential staff were deployed to street patrols. This included myself. From now on, Symche Sprira and his informants would report directly to Wilhelm Kunde. Quite apart from the humiliating attacks perpetrated by its supposedly constrained Jews, Jozefinska had another security problem. Large numbers of Poles, mostly teenagers, were getting through the walls to loot whatever they could carry from the mass of vacated apartments. Suits, coats, pots and pans, toothbrushes, chairs and tables, even window-frames were disappearing at an alarming rate.
Hans Frank made one final concession to the families of the Acid Seven, as they were known. Amon Goethe was allowed to take a group of seven Orthodox Jews hostage until the terrorists responsible for the attack were caught.
48
In late November, the circle of Akiva gathered at thirteen Jozefinska to observe the ritual of greeting the Sabbath. In these moments, they were children once again, with no fear of the future, united in joyous prayer that strengthened and healed the wounds of the last week of hardship. But despite their cheer, a shadow was cast upon the evening. Communal life in the Ghetto was coming to an end.
While Gusta uncorked the wine, the rest of the table launched into the first hymn of praise, Woman of Valor.
A woman of valor makes the world change
Her strength is the content that guides through the days
Defined by her actions that bring light to all dreams
Valor is something that's defined by her deeds.
In accordance with traditions for treating the fairer sex, the guests bestowed lavish compliments upon the woman of the house who watched over all. In Gusta
Tova Davidson’s case, every extravagance was hard-earned. Everything in that kitchen was the result of one woman’s ingenuity and drive, her pride and passion. Without Gusta, there was no Akiva. Without Gusta, there were no Sabbath lights or bedecked table, no food or wine.
For many years the candelabra sockets had not been filled with thick heavy candles scented with paradise. Gusta made do instead with the enfeebled flames of left over Hannukha sticks. The table was still laid with two white cloths, one over the other, but the dishes underneath were scavenged substitutions. No grand spread of challah breads resembling the twelve loaves of the Tabernacle, but two finger-sized rolls. Potato and beans in place of meat and fish, seasoned with Gusta’s special sauce.
Tonight, however, there was a special guest. The group was blessed with not just one extraordinary woman, but two.
***
Meanwhile, across the street, drinks were being served to the great and the good in Wilhelm Kunde’s office.
A touch of Christmas festivity was in the air. Despite the chill, the party had spilled out onto the balcony above the courtyard. On leather armchairs that had once belonged to deportees, the Ghetto authorities toasted their success. An entire week had passed without further Jewish attacks. Although the Acid terrorists had not been brought to justice, Amon Goethe believed that taking the Orthodox hostages had been vital in thwarting the terrorists’ ambitions. The prisoners had fulfilled their purpose, and were now taking up gaol space, and consuming rations. Tonight, Goethe said, we’d throw them a release party.
I Am Juden Page 43