Tears blinded me as I followed Esther down the fire escape. We had to be quiet, but it was equally important to be quick. We were far too visible up here.
The only thing masking the sound of our feet upon the metal was the one thing I wished it wasn’t: gunfire on the streets, followed inevitably by wails of pain and suffering. The next shots ended with silence, which meant something far worse.
This kind of escape was new for me, and horrible. The gunshots and loud cries for mercy were saving my life. The silence threatened it. I was surviving only because others were dying. A choking sob rose in me, but I couldn’t let it out, not here, and not in front of Esther. I shoved it down, all of it.
Ignoring the guilt, for trying to live while others around me were dying.
The pain, for coming here in the first place and inciting tonight’s Aktion.
The confusion. Because I wanted to kill the people who were killing my people, and I didn’t understand how anyone could say that was wrong or that it dishonored God. But maybe it did.
We reached the ground and immediately hid within the shadows of night. The snow had mostly stopped falling, but dark clouds covered what might have been a bright moon.
If only it were too dark to see the violence spreading like a cancer across this ghetto. People were being herded onto the street right in front of us, ordered to stand in lines.
We’d run on by then, keeping to the shadows. But I still heard the shots, each echo like a fist to my gut. And the inevitable, awful silence.
“This is the factory!” Esther grabbed my arm, bringing me back into the moment. Somehow, she’d kept her senses together to find this building, even as my own attention wandered into despair and hopelessness. I’d needed her help just now.
I had needed her.
Still needed her.
And she needed me to pay attention.
Hearing footsteps back on the street, I pulled Esther against the wall of the munitions factory and hoped that whoever was coming didn’t aim their flashlights in our direction. Lights bounced in rhythm with their run, waving back and forth. They were still searching. And they’d continue searching until they found something to justify this Aktion.
I took Esther’s hand and realized that hers was shaking again. In a strange way, this comforted me because it was familiar, and because I knew Esther needed me to be strong and brave and bold enough to guide us through that factory.
The flashlights were coming closer, but just when it seemed they might swing toward us, a call was barked out and the men holding them turned down a different street.
This was our chance.
As quietly as possible, we trudged through the snow toward the back of the brick building, looking for any way in, a door we could test, or a window. We found a couple of each, but everything was locked or closed.
“Up there!”
Esther pointed to a window over our heads, slightly open but too high to reach on our own. A tree was nearby, sturdy at its base but the branches looked brittle, as if the slightest pressure might cause them to collapse.
“They’ll hold my weight,” Esther whispered.
“I don’t know if you—”
Esther spoke more firmly. “I can get into that window, Chaya. Help me, then wait by that last door we passed.”
I wasn’t sure if she was right, but I was absolutely sure what would happen if we didn’t at least try. I locked my fingers together to make her a step, and then when I had her foot, I lifted it as high as I could. The branches would be cold and slippery with ice, but there was nothing I could do for her once she was in the tree. She shinnied along the limbs, moving from the thicker ones to the thinner branches above, and the thinner ones still that were near the open window.
She gripped one branch with her right hand while with her left she pried the window open wider. It moved, but only a little. Even if I had climbed the tree, I’d never have made it through the window’s narrow gap. She released her right hand and I gasped, certain she was falling. But she held on to the frame with both hands and wiggled her body inside.
Just in time too. More soldiers ran down the street, passing me on their way to another part of the ghetto. My mind raced. If they came back this way, when they came back, their lights would aim toward my side of the building. I needed to be inside before then. I tried to estimate how far to the factory floor Esther would have to drop after she was inside. Could she manage that distance? Would there be any light inside to help her navigate the fall? What if she was injured in there?
I glanced down at my hands, clasped together near my chest. They were shaking violently. This level of fear was so unfamiliar to me that I didn’t entirely understand it anymore. I’d spent so long accepting my death that I’d forgotten how very much I wanted to live.
I wanted to live. And for now I was still here, as was Esther, and I wanted it to remain that way.
After the soldiers passed, I retraced my steps to the door. I gave it another gentle tug, in case Esther had already opened it, but it was still locked.
A minute passed, and nothing happened.
Another minute passed.
And another.
Was I at the right door? Had she gotten disoriented inside the factory?
I tried the door again. It was still locked.
Where was she?
The shooting resumed, somewhere in the distance. The cries of the victims were dimming.
Where was Esther?
February 16, 1943
Lodz Ghetto
After several minutes, I remembered a pin in my hair. I’d never picked a lock before, but I needed to try. It was better than waiting out here, increasingly anxious for what was happening to Esther inside that factory.
I pulled it out and straightened it, but before I could stick it into the keyhole, the handle twisted and Esther was at the other side of the opened door.
“Get in, quick!” she whispered.
As soon as she closed the door behind us, I asked, “Are we alone here?”
“I think so.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Then I was free to get angry. “I imagined all sorts of horrible things happening to you. What took so long? Look! I ruined a hairpin!”
She stared at it for a moment, trying very hard to care about the pin. Trying too hard. A smile tugged at her mouth and soon I was smiling too. Forgetting how furious I was and only overwhelmed with relief that she was okay.
But gunfire echoed outside the factory again, and I remembered there was nothing to smile about in here. Esther and I locked eyes. Then she said, “I looked around before I opened the door. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t leading you into a trap. I found the stairs into the basement.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
She led me through a maze of long metal tables covered with tools and parts of weapons, and large wooden crates between them. My eyes weren’t fully adjusted to the darkness in here, but I saw enough to know we were surrounded by a whole arsenal of weapons.
For a while, Akiva had focused on breaking into munitions factories near Krakow to sabotage the weapons ready for shipment. The cell assigned to that task would bend the firing pins or stuff salt into the barrels, or do whatever it took to ensure the weapons would be useless on the lines. But their mission was eventually changed. It turned out those who were forced to labor in the munitions factories were already doing plenty to sabotage the weapons when they could.
Another form of resistance.
But I doubted that was happening here. The Judenrat had its thumb too firmly on these people. Anyone cruel enough to send an entire ghetto’s children away to their deaths certainly would not hesitate to quash even the smallest of rebellions.
“Stop!” I grabbed Esther’s arm and we froze at a clicking sound at the front of the factory. The main doors were flung open and flashlight beams began scouring the room.
We ducked low, but the flashlights offered enough light to
see the distance we still needed to cross to get to the stairs, and how little cover we had for it. Also, for the first time, I saw that Esther had found another bag here, one that she now wore over one shoulder and crossways on her body. It was empty, but it was ours now, and I hoped we’d get the chance to make good use of it.
“The doors were locked,” an officer said. I instantly recognized his raspy voice as the same OD who stopped us before. “Why should we search a place those girls couldn’t go?”
“Because it keeps us away from the Aktion outside.” His companion’s accent sounded Russian. “Why did you have to tell the Germans about those girls?”
The two officers were moving deeper into the factory, so this wouldn’t be a cursory search, as I’d hoped. They’d spend as much time as they could here because the alternative—being outside—was worse.
“The Aktion is a mercy compared to what’s coming,” the raspy-voiced man continued, still trying to justify reporting us. “The lists are already being prepared for the next deportation.”
“More lists!” The officer cursed in Russian and moved to a far wall to search there. Another few steps forward and he’d be parallel to Esther and me. “The Judenrat can speak of how they’re tortured by having to choose who gets sent away, but those lists are power. If the people knew how well they live off bribes and favors to keep certain names from deportation, they would revolt.”
“Well, I’m not saying anything. No one in my family has been on a list yet, and I’ll do what I’m told if it remains that way.”
“It’s only a matter of time for us. Eventually, there won’t be anyone left to add to the lists but us.”
If they made it that long. Quietly, I lifted my hand to the nearby bench and located a gun that looked assembled, except it wasn’t loaded. Not yet. Ammunition must be in here somewhere.
I brought my arm down and saw Esther shaking her head at me, eyes widened in horror. “No,” she mouthed.
It was my plan if everything else failed, and we were closer to that than I wanted to think about. Hoping for another chance, Esther raised up just enough to throw something into the far corner of the room. It landed hard and heavy, like a bullet or scrap metal from a gun. If it was a bullet, I’d have liked to use it in a very different way, but her plan worked. The two officers ran to the corner. As soon as their flashlights were ahead of us, we tiptoed to the stairs and hurried down them as quickly and quietly as we could.
It was easy to find the window Henryk had described to us, though it was high up, nearly to the ceiling. One crate was already against the wall, but we quietly carried another over to stack on top, making it high enough to get out.
Esther clambered up first and pried open the window. While she wiggled through the opening, I climbed onto the crate, but I’d only barely secured my footing when the voice with a Russian accent ordered, “Stop!”
I lowered my gun before turning around. I didn’t want to tempt him to shoot, not when my gun was empty. His flashlight was so bright in my eyes, I couldn’t get a good look at him, but I spoke slowly and with a calm voice. “I’m Jewish, trying to live, just like you are.”
“Not like me,” he said. “You’re escaping, after sneaking in here with who knows what contraband.”
“The ‘contraband’ was food, sir. I came to help these people here. Your people. Our people.”
“You can’t help the dead. And if you want to live, then you should have known better than to come to Lodz.”
“We’re both survivors, both of us doing what it takes to get through this war. Both of us trying to do the right thing whenever possible.” He lowered his light enough for me to see a tuft of black hair beneath his OD cap with a red hatband. Lower still, and I saw his eyes, darting from me to where his partner was still upstairs searching. I shook my head at him, trying to keep his attention. “You won’t shoot me.”
“No, but I must bring you to the Gestapo for questioning.”
“You know what they’ll do to me. Can you live with that?”
He shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable with the question. I was sure the answer bothered me even more.
His partner called from upstairs, his raspy voice brushing like sandpaper across my already brittle nerves. “I heard you say something. Everything okay down there?”
“It’s nothing,” he replied. “Rats, I think.”
I smiled, relieved that he hadn’t turned me in … yet. If he wanted to consider me a rat, I could live with that.
If I could live.
“Let me go,” I said. “I’ll never return here, and no one ever has to know.”
After a brief hesitation, he said, “On one condition. My mother is up in Warsaw. I’ve had no word from her. If … if you ever meet a woman named Rosa Kats, will you tell her that her son loves her and that she was right? I never should have joined the OD.”
“I doubt I’ll ever get to Warsaw,” I said, “but if I do, you have my promise. If she is there, I will find her.”
“She would admire your courage,” he said. “So do I. Now go.”
Without another glance back, I climbed to the upper crate, then squeezed through the window. Together, Esther and I pulled it shut and then we ran a safe distance away from the ghetto walls, and just in time too. This was a well-patrolled area.
“I’ve never been more relieved to get away from a place in my entire life,” I said to Esther. “Going there was a mistake.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Chaya. I’m so terribly sorry.”
“We were following orders. And at least our mission is over. There’s no chance of a resistance here.”
She licked her lips, and her shoulders returned to their familiar hunch. “I heard what that OD was saying to you down there.”
“His mother won’t be alive still,” I said. “And it doesn’t matter because we’re not going to—”
“We are going to Warsaw,” Esther said. “Lodz was only the start. There’s a delivery we need to make in the ghetto there, one that Akiva promised to send in the event of an uprising.”
“What delivery?” Other than what was in our pockets, a little cash, our identification papers, and the weapon I grabbed on our way out of the building, we had nothing.
Unless Esther had been secretly carrying something all this time.
“Last month, the Germans entered Warsaw’s ghetto for a major deportation,” she said. “The resistance there is led by a man named Mordecai Anielewicz. He ordered his fighters to fire, forcing the Germans out of the ghetto. They haven’t come back yet, but—”
“But they will,” I said. “They’ll come back with the intention of destroying the ghetto and everyone in it.”
“Yes. The people there are trapped, Chaya. And the Germans are coming for them.”
My eyes narrowed. “Antek is sending us there so you can deliver some sort of package to Mordecai Anielewicz, which will save everyone in that ghetto?”
Esther slowly nodded her head. “It won’t save everyone, but it is important that we get there before the Germans return.”
“What’s the delivery?” I asked.
Her brows pressed together, but she kept her gaze steadily on mine. “I’m supposed to discuss it only with the resistance in Warsaw. Please trust me, Chaya.”
I bit my lip and studied her for any clues, then reminded myself that if I was captured, I wouldn’t want that information forced out of me. It was better if I didn’t know.
“Promise me that this package can help our people in Warsaw,” I said.
“It will, if we get there in time.”
I closed my eyes and thought of what would happen to the thousands of people in the Warsaw Ghetto when the Germans returned. If we were going to Warsaw, it would make our experience here in Lodz seem like a summertime picnic.
Then I opened my eyes, gave Esther a slight smile, and said, “Well then, let’s go.”
February 17, 1943
Lodz
My initial
plan was for Esther and me to return to the train station, to get out of Lodz as quickly as possible. But the dense clusters of Nazi soldiers at the station that next morning immediately shut down that plan.
“Do you think they’re looking for us?” Esther asked as we watched from well over a block away.
“It’s possible.” And certainly not worth the risk of finding out, though my fists were clenched in frustration, and the morning had only just begun. Warsaw was over a hundred and thirty kilometers away, and if Esther was right in what she’d told me, any day now the Nazis would return to that ghetto to finish what they’d failed to do a month ago. No, they would return to finish off the ghetto entirely, a liquidation. I couldn’t be here, uselessly creeping forward one footstep at a time along snow-covered, German-monitored roads. I had hoped to get to Warsaw today by train, to deliver Esther’s package and offer the resistance any help they needed.
We backed away from the train station because we had to. Because it was only a matter of time before a soldier noticed us and compared us to the description of two girls who had entered the ghetto in the moonlight and vanished by dawn.
“Now what?” Esther asked.
“How long do you think it’ll take us to walk to Warsaw?” I mused. “We’ll have to move at night and hope for places to hide during the day. How fast can you go?”
Esther’s eyes rolled upward while she did the calculations. “Realistically, it’ll probably take us a week.”
I cursed under my breath. I knew Esther heard it and that she was probably shocked, but she could add that to the list of my personal failures. She probably didn’t know the full extent of crimes I’d committed over the past year. Endless lies, bribes, thefts from Polish shops, or the occasional ambush of a Nazi soldier. I could spend hours describing my growing eagerness to repeat what we had done at the Cyganeria Café, to take a bigger bite from the Nazi occupation. Passive resistance wasn’t enough anymore. It wouldn’t stop the ghetto liquidations, the deportations to death camps. It wouldn’t shut down the showers at Auschwitz-Birkenau that rained down poison and genocide.
Resistance Page 11