28 Days

by David Safier

  Ta-ra-la-la, ta-ra-la-la,

  tief in das junge Herz hinein …

  At last, our leader gave the signal by throwing a hand grenade out the window right into the bulk of the men.

  Lore, Lore …

  As it exploded, the soldiers screamed and a barrage of Molotov cocktails, grenades, and bullets rained down on them from the roofs, out the windows, and off the balconies.

  The Germans and their Jewish helpers started to panic and broke formation. The German Übermenschen—the supermen—knocked one another over as they sought cover in empty shops and house entrances, or behind mounds of rubbish.

  All over the place, soldiers were struck by bullets and collapsed to the ground, while others ran through the streets, burning alive, until they fell down on the cobblestones and didn’t get up again. Their screams were barely audible in all the din of the explosions. No one went to help a fellow soldier. And no one was singing now. No more Lore, Lore …

  Amos was standing beside me shooting. It was strange to see him like this. Fulfilled, exhilarated, avenging his friends and himself at last.

  The first Germans started to shoot back. Bullets hit the wall behind us.

  I crouched down beneath the window.

  “Mira, shoot!” Amos hissed at me and threw another hand grenade down into the turmoil raging on the street.

  But all I wanted was to scream. I was so scared of dying. And of killing someone else.

  “Mira!” Amos shouted.

  Black smoke was billowing up from the street.

  “The tank, I took out the tank!” Esther whooped.

  I stood up and stared down at the street. The tank was in flames, and I watched a soldier crawling out covered in blood. There was just a bloody stump where his right arm had been. He fell off the tank and hit the ground. The rest of the crew didn’t get out. They burned to death inside the vehicle.

  A Jewish policeman lay bleeding to death beside the soldier. The two of them shared the same fate. But the Jewish policeman accepted death. He called out, with the last of his strength, “Jewish bullets! Thank you! Thank you!”

  He was able to die knowing that we had given him back his dignity in the final moments of his life.

  “Mira!” Amos was outraged.

  I couldn’t shoot. Until … until I spotted the fat pig from the guardhouse in all the chaos, standing beside the burning tank. I remembered what he nearly did to me, what he had likely done to so many other girls. I pointed my gun at him and my hand shook.

  The window next to ours was hit by a volley of bullets. It burst into thousands of pieces, but I didn’t duck away again, because the fat pig from the guardhouse was aiming his gun at someone. He’d shoot one of our comrades throwing Molotov cocktails from the roof. Or Ben Redhead, maybe, who was up there, too. I envisaged Hannah lying in the pool of blood in the pantry. And shot.

  The SS man fell to the ground.

  It was the first time I’d shot someone deliberately, not in self-defense but in battle. I kept on shooting, shooting, shooting. As if I was intoxicated. And I didn’t feel guilty, at all. Every soldier I killed was one SS man who would never kill children again or sing while he was doing it.

  55

  After about half an hour, any soldiers who could still run fled out of the ghetto past their dead comrades and the burned-out tank. It didn’t matter if they had been ordered to retreat or had simply fled in panic. What mattered was that German soldiers were running away from the Jews! It was unbelievable! They were running away from us!

  And there was something even more amazing; once the chaos abated a little, and we got the reports on losses in from all the groups positioned at the crossroads, we discovered that there weren’t any! All the fighters had survived.

  We couldn’t believe our victory, our luck, our survival. We fell into one another’s arms. Hugged, laughed, cried, whooped for joy. A few fighters even started singing and waltzed round and round.

  I’d have loved to dance with them but I still didn’t know how.

  Mordechai gave me a huge hug. So did comrades I hardly knew because they had joined us while I was in the Polish part of the city with Amos. Even Esther threw her arms around me.

  “Did you see the tank burn?” she asked, beaming.

  Our triumph was bigger and more important than anything that had gone before.

  Ben Redhead looked even happier than everyone else. Still holding his rifle, he came up to me at the shot-up window and shouted, “Eight!”

  He had been counting.

  “I got eight of them!”

  He’d stopped stuttering. He had probably always felt guilty because his father had collaborated with the Germans, and now he felt free. “For Hannah,” he said seriously, and he seemed grown-up all of a sudden.

  I wasn’t sure if I should reply, “For Hannah,” even though I had joined the resistance to give her death a purpose. But my sister would be forgotten forever when Ben and I died. And we would be dead very soon—tomorrow or the next day—despite today’s triumph. No, we weren’t doing this for Hannah. Amos was right. We were doing this for future generations. We would live on in their thoughts.

  I stroked Ben Redhead’s cheek. Even if he seemed grown-up and had stopped stuttering—maybe for the rest of his life—I would never forget the boy who had been kissed by my sister.

  Amos came up to me, laughing. “We’re alive!”

  “Yes, we are,” I agreed. It was a miracle.

  And we kissed each other as if we hadn’t been fighting for future generations at all, but simply for this one kiss.

  56

  When it got dark, we went out onto the street and looked at the dead, bullet-riddled, broken bodies of our enemies. The air smelled of smoke and charred flesh. Not just here, but all over the ghetto. Everywhere, fighting units of the resistance had forced the SS to retreat. And you could smell alcohol. The Jews were celebrating. Fighters and civilians alike came up out of the bunkers in the safety of the dark.

  Esther climbed onto the burned-out tank. It was her trophy. Mordechai and the others collected the weapons of the dead soldiers.

  I was starting to hope that tomorrow wouldn’t be my last day on earth, that we would be able to hold out for one or two days longer or even a week, perhaps. I knew that we could never win the physical battle in the long run, but we had already won morally today.

  Amos came to me. “Mira…,” he said, but his voice broke.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, confused.

  “Look!” he said quietly, and he was fighting back tears.

  He pointed toward the roof of a house at Muranowski Square, and I realized he wasn’t sad; he was deeply moved. Two flags were being hoisted. The red and white Polish flag and the blue and white flag of the resistance.

  There were tears in my eyes, too. The flags made me think of the one carried by the children from the orphanage on their way to the cattle trucks.

  The tears for the dead children mingled with tears of joy. Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians—all our enemies and our few friends beyond the wall—could see these flags.

  I’d never been prouder than at this moment when those flags fluttered in the gentle breeze and hundreds of Jews started cheering. I had always thought that the story of Masada was about Jews dying in honor.

  But it wasn’t. It was about being alive. We had driven the soldiers away. The ghetto belonged to us. Maybe just for this one night. But we were free. And we would be free for the rest of our lives!

  57

  At first, we were all far too excited to fall asleep at our posts in the various houses. Everyone had stories to tell of their own and other people’s acts of courage and heroism, “Did you see Sarah throwing the hand grenade that hit that officer?” “All the workers in the brush maker’s district have gone into hiding; they are refusing to be resettled. One of the fighters shot the owner of the brush factory in the hand.”

  But bit by bit the voices grew quieter and people became more serious.


  “How long will we be able to survive?” “What are the Germans going to do next?” “I hope I get shot and don’t die in the flames.”

  Amos and I lay side by side. Holding hands. We didn’t say anything, we just looked at each other in the light of the moon. On top of the world because we’d been granted a little bit more time together. No, not granted—we had won this in battle.

  Amos smiled at me. “I can die happy now,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt happy, and free, but I didn’t want to die. I did not want him to die!

  I was so energized that I thought I would never get to sleep, but I was overwhelmed in the end. I slept deeply and didn’t dream a thing, which was a blessing for me.

  When I woke up toward the end of the night, Amos was still asleep. He looked so peaceful. I’d never seen him like that before. He seemed to have been released from the pain he had been carrying for so long. His friends were avenged.

  Mordechai came over and woke Amos up. He opened his eyes, and it didn’t take a second before he was wide awake and jumping up. As I struggled to get up, too, Mordechai called Esther and Ben Redhead over to join us and said, “You four must go over to Nalewki Street and support our people there. We think there will be even heavier fighting than in Miła Street.”

  A few moments later, the four of us left the building. The air felt colder than it had yesterday—the day of great triumph—but the sky was still clear and cloudless. The sun was rising over the ghetto, and I tried not to think about whether this was my last sunrise. I just wanted to enjoy the beautiful play of colors. Then Ben Redhead laughed. “They are even more beautiful in daylight,” he said.

  He pointed over to the building at Muranowski Square where the two flags were flying.

  It was still amazing. At this moment, the ghetto wasn’t a prison anymore; it was home.

  58

  We reached the junction where Gęsia, Franciszkańska, and Nalewki Streets met up, and heard music coming from 33 Nalewki. A fighter was playing the accordion, and the beautiful sounds filled the ghetto. A home with music. Could there be anything more wonderful?

  “Schubert,” Esther said.

  “The Germans can compose almost as well as they can kill,” Amos said, and opened the door of the house on Nalewki Street. We climbed the stairs, past shot-up windows, and reported to Rachel Belka in the top flat. She was a woman so determined, strong, and harsh, even Esther looked like a little girl next to her. Rachel was one of the oldest fighters. At twenty-nine, she was actually five years older than Mordechai.

  We gave her the latest news, and she told us where our posts were. Amos and I were on one of the top balconies. From there we could see the Germans gathering at the ghetto gates. Jewish policemen were with them again, acting as human shields this time. Each bullet that struck a collaborator couldn’t reach a German. Two tanks took up position in front of the gate.

  “They’re going to fire at us,” I said, stating the obvious.

  “They’re going to try,” Amos replied. “They are too far away, and they won’t dare come any closer.”

  That must have been the worst thing for the SS: Jews had destroyed one of their tanks, the Germans’ favorite weapon.

  “Are you sure they can’t get us?” I asked.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Amos smiled.

  I took a pair of binoculars, looked through, and realized that in the Polish part of the city, life was going on as normal: Just a few hundred meters away, people were on their way to work, traders had opened their shops, and cars were driving through the streets.

  There was a war going on right under their noses, and the Poles were behaving as if it were happening on a different planet. Mars. Jupiter. Uranus.

  If anyone had still been suffering the illusion that our actions would inspire the Poles to join us and resist the occupiers, he or she would have been disappointed now at the very least.

  A black limousine stopped outside the ghetto gates. The driver got out and opened the car door for a stiff-looking German wearing an SS uniform. The huge man put on a pair of leather gloves once he had got out of the car, as if he didn’t want to get his hands dirty.

  Amos turned to me. “Give me the binoculars,” he said.

  I did so.

  “SS Major General Jürgen Stroop.”

  So the head of the SS in Warsaw had arrived to supervise the mission personally. His first name was Jürgen now, but we had heard that his real name had been Joseph and he had changed it several years ago because he hated the Jews so much.

  Stroop was the closest thing to Hitler, Himmler, or Goebbels that I’d ever seen face-to-face. Himmler had visited the ghetto a couple of months ago, but none of us had actually met that monster—apart from a few Jews working in the acquisition department, and none of them had had the guts to attack the beast.

  Amos got up to leave the balcony.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. “We’re supposed to stay here!”

  “Not anymore,” Amos said, and grinned before he disappeared.

  I didn’t understand. I had thought the two of us were going to fight side by side on this balcony and maybe die together. But Amos had been so energized, he hadn’t even said goodbye.

  I debated whether I should follow him or not, but only for a second.

  Just as I was heading out of the flat, Esther tried to stop me. “Why are you two abandoning your post?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know, too,” I said, and pushed her out of the way.

  As soon as we reached the roof, Stroop commanded his soldiers to invade the ghetto.

  This time they used mattresses that had once belonged to Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to make a barricade and opened fire from there. We fighters on the roof shot back. I still didn’t know why Amos wanted to be up here, but didn’t bother asking. I’d stopped asking myself or anyone else questions. Shooting and being shot at wasn’t something I had to think about anymore. I was just full of adrenaline.

  Some of us lit gasoline bombs and threw them at the soldiers. The mattresses caught fire and the men lost their cover. We shot at them.

  Then the tanks started firing at our positions from the Polish side, but they missed. As Amos had predicted—they weren’t close enough. And I found myself thinking: The “master race” can’t hit us because they are so scared of us.

  Amos jumped up and ran over to the comrades throwing the bombs. Below us the soldiers were hiding in doorways and shooting and shooting and shooting, just like yesterday. Unlike us, they didn’t have to save on ammunition.

  Amos didn’t care if he was an easy target. He pointed his gun and fired. Not at the soldiers or the tanks, but precisely in the direction of SS Commander Stroop, who was sitting behind a command table. So that was why Amos had run up to the roof. He wanted to kill the leader of our enemies all by himself.

  The bullet struck less than two meters away from Major General Stroop. The giant SS man jumped up from his chair and hurried away from the table as fast as he could. It was almost funny.

  Amos cheered loudly and so did I. Although he hadn’t actually got Stroop, seeing this man flee was more humiliating for the Germans than the burning tank had been.

  Then I heard Ben Redhead calling from the balcony below, “The house is burning!”

  59

  Down on the street, soldiers had thrown incendiary grenades into the entrance of our house, and the first flames were already shooting out of the burst windows on the ground floor.

  “We can’t stay here,” Amos said, and everyone agreed. There was no point in dying in the flames. We would have to flee and look for a new position to continue fighting.

  We hurried down from the roof and ran out onto the stairs. Of course there was no way we could just run out the front door. Even if we managed to get through the flames unharmed, the Germans would be waiting to mow us down outside. Rachel’s fighters had prepared a retreat, though. We would escape into the house at 6 G�
�sia Street through the holes in the attics and continue the battle from there. Rachel had sent someone to see if the coast was clear.

  It wasn’t.

  The scout was a man called Avi, who used to be a Jewish policeman. He had joined the resistance when the first trains started out for Treblinka—why, oh why had my brother not had the decency to do the same? Avi was standing in front of us sweating and stroking his red beard nervously. “The Germans have occupied 6 Gęsia.”

  We all stared at one another in desperation. The flames were creeping up the stairs step by step, and there was no way out.

  Rachel was the only one who stayed calm. “You…,” she pointed at Avi, “and you,” she pointed at Ben Redhead, “try to find an escape route that’s safe.”

  She probably didn’t realize that she had picked the only two redheads among us to get us away from the fire. The two of them ran off, and the rest of us gathered in a dark attic room. The heat of the fire made us all sweat; the smoke made breathing difficult. We smashed the little attic window but that didn’t help at all. In fact it only made matters worse. The smoke from outside poured into the room. We coughed, and I was so scared that I blurted out, “Now we are going to be gassed and burned after all.”

  Amos grabbed me. Instead of trying to calm me, he shook me hard and said sharply, “Shut up!”

  He was right. I needed to pull myself together and not infect the others with my panic. At that moment, Avi returned.

  “Well?” Rachel asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, defeated. “There’s no way out.”

  The smoke got thicker and thicker every second. Our eyes were streaming. But Ben Redhead wasn’t back yet, so there was still a chance.

  Like everyone else, I couldn’t stop coughing. Even Amos, who was trying not to show any kind of weakness, was gasping for air.