28 Days

by David Safier

  Daniel came over to me and said, “The old and the sick will never make it out.”

  We let the civilians go first and helped them as best we could. Even Amos, though he stared back at the flames that had engulfed Esther’s body every other minute. I tried not to look.

  At last there were about a dozen people still left in the bunker: old people, the sick, the wounded, the weak. Including the skeleton woman and her child.

  “We can’t leave them behind,” Daniel said.

  “We have no choice,” Rachel insisted.

  The people in the bunker were calling, “Don’t abandon us! Please don’t abandon us!”

  Some were weeping. Some didn’t move at all. Would they have hidden here for so long, survived for so long, only to be burned to death now?

  The fighters climbed up the plank, one by one, and so did Daniel, who had decided to remain alive for his little sister’s sake instead of staying with the doomed people we had to leave behind.

  There wasn’t a moment left to grieve for them, or for Esther. When we got into the yard, the fire-lit sky was glowing red. Towering tongues of flame devoured the houses all around us.

  “This is what hell must be like,” Ben Redhead said.

  We went through hell. Twenty fighters and maybe forty civilians. We ran through the burning streets. The Germans had retreated so as not to be caught in the inferno themselves. Buildings collapsed. The surface of the road beneath our feet started to melt. I was certain my shoes would stick to the ground. The roar of the flames was deafening. Any moment now, I feared the pandemonium would make my head explode. Burning timber rained down on us. One civilian was killed when he was struck by a falling beam. Another was hit by a barrage of falling roof tiles.

  Daniel didn’t let go of Rebecca the whole time, and she held on to her glass marble. She knew that if it were to fall onto the road, her treasure would melt.

  The things people cherish in the face of death.

  We made our way to a part of the ghetto that wasn’t burning, and which might be spared as long as the wind didn’t shift. In the early evening we reached a courtyard where about a hundred civilians had gathered, all of them with the few possessions they had been able to save from their burning houses and which still seemed to mean as much to them in all this madness as Rebecca’s marble did.

  This time, no one swore at us. It was the reverse. They begged us to help them. “Get us out of the ghetto!” “Save my child!” “Help!”

  Everyone gathered around us. But we had no idea what to do, either.

  “We can’t take all these people with us,” Avi said.

  “Well, we certainly can’t leave them!” Rachel retaliated.

  And I realized they were both right.

  “We’ll have to find a new hiding place.” Rachel said what we were all thinking. “A bunker large enough for all of us!”

  “And just pray that the Germans don’t come back tonight!” Avi added.

  “I don’t pray!” Amos and I both said at the same time.

  The fighters split up into groups of scouts. Amos and I headed off at once. The night sky was glaring eerily above the ghetto. I stared at Muranowski Square and could still see the flags flying there. But they were a small comfort now. We had seen people die. Seen Esther die!

  Amos didn’t say anything as we walked through the streets.

  “Esther…,” I said.

  “Died honorably,” he said curtly, stopping the conversation at once.

  Honorably! To be torn to pieces by a hand grenade didn’t seem like an honorable way to die to me. No matter how hard I tried to think otherwise, I felt she had died as miserably as any other Jew in the ghetto.

  We didn’t say anything else. We combed through the houses in silence, hoping to find a bunker. We just stopped once when we found water in an abandoned flat and drank. We drank until we weren’t thirsty anymore. It took about another hour, and then we found a bunker under the rubble of a half-demolished house.

  “There is no way we can all fit in here,” I said while I stared at the squalor. The bunker was already crammed with people. Sweating. Despairing. Terrified.

  “There’s enough room for our unit,” Amos said.

  “We can’t leave the others behind,” I shouted.

  “Let’s let Rachel decide,” he said, and I agreed. I had no idea if Rachel would leave the civilians behind or not. What about Daniel and Rebecca? I couldn’t stay with them, could I? No. One fighter would not be able to help them, anyway.

  It was almost midnight when we got back to the courtyard. We were surprised to see that everyone was getting ready to leave. Before we could ask, Daniel told me, “Your people have found a bunker.”

  “For all of us?” I asked.

  “That’s what they said.”

  “That … that’s a miracle!” I stammered.

  “I said we weren’t going to die.” Daniel smiled.

  He believed in survival. Against all odds.

  63

  The bunker in Miła Street belonged to Shmuel Asher and the Chompe gang. The mafia boss was a lot thinner than he had been a year ago, and there was a scar across his face, no doubt from his time in prison, but he had been able to buy himself out one more time. With the rest of his money, he and his friends had built this immense bunker. There were wells for water, electricity, a perfect kitchen, stylish sofas, and even glass cabinets. An elegant parlor hidden beneath the city.

  Crime paid. Not just for German industrialists.

  Asher came up to me, having recognized me at once, and asked immediately, “Have you seen Ruth?”

  Should I let him know that she had coughed ashes, that she had been raped by “the doll” in Treblinka, and that she had sung Lulay, lulay, little one, half-crazed?

  “She loved you,” I told him.

  That was all Asher needed to know. He closed his eyes for a moment. He had loved her, too.

  When he opened them again, he went up to our leaders, including Mordechai who had joined us here, and welcomed all the fighters and civilians.

  “We will fight and die together,” the mafioso promised. “We are all Jews, after all.”

  That was something the Germans hadn’t bargained for when they devised their plans of destruction. They had turned people who had never cared so much about their Jewishness into proud fighting Jews!

  Our group was assigned a chamber with the name of Auschwitz, along with a few civilians. Asher had given all the rooms names of concentration camps: Treblinka, Sobibor, Mauthausen …

  Auschwitz had belonged to a man called Izak, who had lived there by himself with his family until now. He was a little man who reminded me of a weasel, and he wasn’t one bit pleased that his boss had opened the bunker for all of us. He had been expecting to die in relative comfort, at least. But there was nothing he could do about it.

  We let him and his wife keep their bed. Amos and I sat against a wall. He fell asleep quickly, but kept twitching in his sleep nervously. No wonder, after he’d seen Esther die today.

  Daniel and little Rebecca were lying opposite. I felt jealous when I looked at them. Not because Rebecca was curled up beside Daniel or anything like that. But because Daniel still had his little sister with him.

  In the world of the 777 islands, the Longear had landed on Mirror Island. Surprisingly, the island wasn’t made of mirrors, it was rocky. In fact it was really just a gigantic mountain that reached up to the sky.

  “Up there, above the clouds must be where the Palace of Mirrors is,” Hannah said. “That’s where we have to go.”

  “Well, that’s bloody brilliant, isn’t it?” the werewolf growled. “I’m no mountain lion, am I?”

  “Which is a shame,” Captain Carrot sighed.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’d be a lot nicer to look at.”

  “I love you, too, ugly butt-face,” the werewolf just growled.

  I was nervous, too. I was terrified of the Mirror King. And I feared that Hannah wo
uld be killed in battle, which would mean that I would lose her forever.

  “We’ve got this far,” Hannah said cheerily. “We’re sure to manage the rest.” She strapped a bag, containing the three magic mirrors, to her back and started to climb the mountain.

  “Sure,” the Captain sighed.

  “Hmm,” grumbled the werewolf, and both put on thick caps. The captain had trouble stowing his ears underneath his one.

  It was great to see Hannah again. I had said goodbye to her, but I was still alive after all, and so she was, too.

  I felt a small ray of hope. What did she just say? We’ve got this far, we’re bound to manage the rest! Perhaps, just perhaps that applied to life outside the 777 islands, too.

  64

  Any hope I had brought back from the 777 islands vanished the next morning. The flags were gone. Our comrades at Muranowski Square had been defeated. Fighters were being killed everywhere in the ghetto. We couldn’t stage any more massive attacks now. We weren’t strong enough and had less and less ammunition. Also, the SS had changed tactics. Rather than marching into the ghetto with troops in formation, they now sneaked through the streets in small units.

  We switched to guerrilla warfare and attacked SS patrols herding Jews to the Umschlagplatz. Sometimes we managed to overpower the soldiers and give the Jews a few more hours to live; sometimes they fought back and we lost comrades. Avi was badly wounded in the leg by grenade shrapnel; we only just managed to drag him back to safety.

  I got used to the fighting on a daily basis, the danger, even killing and the fact that after each mission fewer people returned. But the fact that I survived from day to day was something I could never get used to. At the beginning I had felt exhilarated, but soon I was simply exhausted.

  Our leaders hoped that we would be able to inspire the Poles to join us, and published an appeal for a united struggle, which they smuggled out of the ghetto. But the Poles simply ignored it. Some Poles watched the Jew hunt from the windows of their houses close to the ghetto wall. As if this was a modern version of the Roman circus. They would probably have applauded if the SS had sent in hungry lions, too.

  Instead, the SS was using tracker dogs. When they weren’t busy setting houses on fire, the German soldiers used the dogs to search for bunkers. They were supported by collaborators. Even now, there were still people willing to betray us because they believed they could save their own skins that way. Even children were sent out by the soldiers to search for the bunkers. They were given bits of food as a reward.

  In the crammed bunkers, the people were as quiet as mice all day long. No one dared even speak or cough.

  Ben Redhead, Amos, and I were on our way back from a gunfight near Leszno Street, where we had not managed to take out a single German and had wasted valuable bullets, to the bunker at 18 Miła Street.

  “Look,” Ben Redhead whispered as we reached the cellar steps, and pointed to a boy with a flat cap who seemed to be searching for something in the cellar.

  “He’s looking for somewhere to hide,” I whispered while we watched him from the stairs.

  “The question is, is he on his own or is he working for the SS,” Amos whispered back. “One block away, there’s a patrol.”

  “He’s found the bunker,” Ben Redhead said.

  The boy stood directly in front of the bricks we used to disguise the entrance to the bunker. But he didn’t go in; he hesitated.

  “He’s going to sell us out,” Amos said.

  I wanted him to wait a minute before he judged him. If the boy made a move to go away, then we could be sure that the SS had sent him. But Amos didn’t wait and called, “Hey, kid!”

  The boy looked dismayed. Not like someone who was just looking for a place to hide and had been surprised by a friend. He looked more like someone who was about to betray a secret and had been caught by the enemy.

  We went down the stairs and stopped in front of him.

  Slowly he put his hands up.

  “What … what are we going to do with him?” Ben Redhead wanted to know.

  “Shoot him,” Amos said.

  The boy went white.

  “You don’t mean that,” I said.

  “There’s no choice,” Amos insisted, and took out his gun.

  “Of course there is.”

  “He’ll betray us.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  The boy was too terrified to defend himself. “Please…,” he begged.

  But the fact that he didn’t defend himself didn’t look good.

  Amos pointed his gun at the boy.

  Who couldn’t speak.

  “Are you completely mad?” I yelled at Amos. “You can’t murder a child!”

  Amos didn’t say anything. His hand was shaking, but he pressed the gun to the boy’s head.

  “This makes us as bad as the Germans!”

  Amos’s hand was shaking violently now. There was sweat on his forehead.

  “If I don’t, then everyone in the bunker will die.”

  “We don’t know that!”

  “Can you take the risk, Mira?”

  I couldn’t, of course, but I wanted to so badly that I said, “We’ll just have to.”

  The boy started to cry silently and wet himself in fear.

  “What kind of human do you want to be?” I asked Amos frantically. “Someone who kills children?”

  Amos battled with himself. There were tears in his eyes. His hand was shaking like the hand of a sick old man.

  “Amos…,” I begged, “if we want to stay human…”

  Amos was crying now and finally lowered the gun.

  The boy started sobbing in relief.

  I started to cry, too.

  I wanted to hug them both. Amos. And the boy.

  Then a shot rang out.

  The boy slumped to the floor at our feet.

  Amos and I stared at Ben Redhead, shocked, who was holding his rifle and stuttered, “He … he … w … would h … have b … b … betrayed us all!”

  All three of us started to cry.

  65

  “So, you’ve started killing children now?” Daniel came over as I crouched on the floor of the bunker cleaning a gun we had captured.

  “It was the Germans’ fault,” I said without looking up at him.

  “They didn’t kill that boy,” Daniel answered.

  “Oh yes they did. They sent him to us.” I stood.

  “You killed him, no matter how you look at it.”

  Daniel’s talk made me furious. Amos, Ben, and I were suffering enough because of what had happened. I didn’t want to listen to any more reproaches. I felt like hitting him. Instead, I said, “There was nothing else we could do.”

  “There’s always a choice. In any situation. You made the wrong choice.”

  I knew that, too.

  “I didn’t want…” I tried to convince him and myself.

  But he interrupted me, “You let it happen, didn’t you?”

  Now I did hit him as hard as I could.

  I was only sorry that I hadn’t hit him with my fist instead of just the flat of my hand.

  Daniel stared at me so angrily that I thought he was going to hit me back.

  “I thought you wanted to survive,” I hissed. “Every second you stay alive is because of us!”

  “Thanks a lot,” Daniel said bitterly.

  “The boy would have betrayed us. We would all be dead by now, or at the Umschlagplatz.”

  Daniel didn’t say anything. He knew I was right.

  “Him or Rebecca? Who would you choose?”

  Daniel still didn’t say anything.

  But I wanted him to. So that I could hit him again. And so that I wouldn’t start crying. Above all, so as not to cry. But he still didn’t speak.

  “I … I tried to prevent it…” I battled with my tears.

  Daniel’s anger disappeared.

  “You have to believe me. But I couldn’t…”

  “I … I’m sorry,�
�� Daniel said.

  “Why? Because I didn’t stop it?”

  “Yes … and because you are hurting so much.”

  He wanted to take me in his arms and comfort me.

  And I wanted him to.

  But then Amos suddenly stepped between us and said, “There’s going to be a miracle tonight.”

  “What?” Daniel and I both asked.

  Amos ignored Daniel, like he always did, and pulled me away to another part of the bunker. To a man with a curly beard.

  “This is Leon Katz,” he introduced us. “Leon, this is Mira. She’s just volunteered to help us.”

  I wondered what I’d just volunteered for. A surprise attack on the Germans?

  “Tell her what we’re going to do,” Amos said to him.

  “We’re going to bake bread.”

  “You’re crazy!” I laughed.

  “Leon is a baker,” Amos explained.

  “This is some kind of joke, isn’t it?”

  “No, really!” Amos insisted.

  “I’ve found a bakery in the yard next door,” Leon told me excitedly. “With sacks of flour. And there’s enough water. All that is missing is sourdough.”

  “Sourdough?” I couldn’t quite understand what he was telling me.

  “So we’ll use onions instead.”

  “Onions?”

  “There are still plenty of those in all the flats,” the baker laughed.

  I grinned. His enthusiasm was catching.

  “Tomorrow the whole ghetto will have bread to eat!” Leon promised us. And that really did sound like a miracle.

  66

  Half an hour later, Leon was already charging round the bakery giving us orders. He was wearing a white apron and looked at least as proud as any soldier in uniform. “You’ve got to knead the dough more quickly.” “Chop the onions into smaller pieces.” “That’s not how you stoke a fire!”

  All of us “baker’s apprentices” laughed and joked, “Mind your beard doesn’t fall into the dough.” “Glad you weren’t commanding the Polish army, they’d have lost even faster!” “It’s not the onions making me cry, it’s you!”