28 Days

by David Safier

  We enjoyed ourselves. In the middle of the war we were baking bread! I even managed to forget what we had done to the boy for a little while.

  Leon was busy weighing dough when Rachel came up to him and asked, “Does it matter if the loaves aren’t all the same size?”

  Leon slapped his head. “Of course you’re right! I’m an idiot wasting precious time.”

  Although we were all lighthearted, time was an issue. The bread had to be done and handed out before dawn.

  “I hope no one sees the smoke,” Rachel said as the first loaves went into the oven.

  Amos and I went outside to check. Of course you could see the smoke rising from the bakery into the sky. If the Nazis decided to search the ghetto tonight, they’d find us at once.

  “It’s worth it, though,” Amos said.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “For once, it’s not just about killing,” he said quietly. He was guilt-ridden about the boy we had shot. After all, he’d drawn his gun first. Before Ben.

  “I thought I would be able to redeem myself in battle,” he confessed as we watched the smoke rise up to the stars. “But fighting the Germans just means there’ll be more shame and guilt every day until I die.”

  I took hold of his hand and said, “Until we die.”

  Three hundred loaves of bread.

  That was how many we had baked by dawn.

  Because there was no sourdough, the loaves were pretty flat, but they still looked amazing. We handed them out to the people in the bunkers who couldn’t wait to eat the warm bread.

  “Look at their eyes,” Amos said, watching a group of children stuffing themselves.

  “Oh yes!” I whispered, hardly able to speak.

  Their eyes were shining.

  That morning we hadn’t given the Jews dignity or honor, we’d given them joy.

  67

  “We should have dug tunnels over to the other side,” Mordechai said regretfully when all the fighters met in the bunker at Miła 18 for our next briefing. It was the first time I had ever heard our leader sounding despondent.

  “If we could just get out of the ghetto,” he continued, “then we could hide in the woods and continue to fight the Germans. What is the point of burning to death here?”

  “The fact that the SS are turning the ghetto to ruins could be a chance for us,” Asher piped up.

  We all turned to look at the mafia boss in surprise. Unlike some of the members of his Chompe gang, he had never once complained that his luxury bunker had been turned into a crowded stifling hellhole.

  “The fire has spread to the workshops,” he continued.

  “We know that, what are you getting at?” Amos asked impatiently.

  Asher explained. “The Germans are using Polish firemen to put out the fires. If…”

  “… we could bribe them, they might smuggle you out of the ghetto!” Avi said, realizing what Asher meant.

  His leg was still badly injured, but Avi was excited by this idea even though he knew that he would never be able to hide in the woods with his injury.

  Mordechai liked the idea, too. So it was agreed that we’d approach the firemen. Rachel, Leon the baker, Amos, and I headed off to a burning factory that same night. We slunk through the destroyed streets quietly, on our guard. The SS had started coming back into the ghetto at night to patrol the streets.

  It took us about twenty minutes to reach the workshop area where Polish firemen—guarded by a handful of Latvian SS men—were fighting a blaze, trying to save what they could. We hid behind a destroyed wall and watched the firefighting operation.

  “Do we shoot the soldiers?” Amos whispered.

  “The firemen would flee, and more soldiers would arrive in a matter of minutes.” Rachel sighed.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Wait.”

  “We just sit here and hope that one of the firemen walks over?”

  “We deserve a bit of luck,” Rachel answered, and smiled ever so slightly. But I was sure we’d used up all our luck over the past few weeks of the uprising.

  We waited behind the wall and only peered out every now and then. The firemen slaved away in vain. After about half an hour, during which Amos had become more and more impatient and checked his pistol over and over, an exhausted fireman came away from the blaze for a cigarette and headed in our direction.

  “I think we might be lucky after all,” Rachel whispered to us.

  When the man was no more than five meters away, she gave us a signal and we rushed round the wall. Leon grabbed the man from behind, and I pointed my gun in his face. The fireman realized what was happening and let us lead him away to a burned-out house without resisting or alerting the soldiers. As soon as we were inside, he groveled in front of us and started whining, “I’ve got nothing against Jews!”

  He would be covering himself in ashes off the floor next, if we weren’t careful.

  “That’s good to know,” Amos said, grinning.

  Rachel told him what we wanted. “Next time you’re deployed here, we want you to smuggle our fighters out of the ghetto in the fire trucks. And you will need to get in touch with the Polish resistance. They can get us to the woods and show us where to hide. We will continue to fight for our Polish homeland from there.”

  I no longer felt as if Poland was my home. I wanted to fight the Germans in the forests, but not for my country.

  “You will be paid well,” Rachel continued. She was telling the truth. Although a lot of the money the resistance had collected was gone by now, we still had more than enough to pay off a few Polish firemen.

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” the man promised. He was clearly relieved that we weren’t going to shoot him. He staggered to his feet and went back to the fire.

  “Are we really going to trust our lives to a coward like that?” Amos asked. “What happens if he double-crosses us?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough if he does,” Rachel answered.

  We stayed in the building. Ill at ease. With our arms at the ready. But no soldiers came. The man hadn’t betrayed us so far.

  “He’s after the money,” Leon said, relieved.

  And I tried to get used to the prospect of maybe getting out of the ghetto alive.

  68

  We spent long hours in the bunker, where the air was getting more and more stifling because of the fires. Amos imagined what it would be like in the woods. We would join the Polish partisans and ambush German troops together with our new comrades, paving the way for a Russian invasion that would hopefully happen next year or the year after.

  When I mentioned that our Polish “comrades” hadn’t exactly supported our uprising and might not be too pleased to have a whole load of Jews joining them, I only boosted his imagination. He talked about a purely Jewish group of partisans who would strike blow after blow against the Germans and who were feared throughout all the SS. A sort of Jewish death’s-head commando.

  He was still planning to redeem himself if he could.

  Looking around the bunker, I couldn’t help thinking that there was no way we would be able to smuggle all these people out to the woods. We would have to leave them behind. And they would end up burning to death either here or in the ovens. More people to feel guilty about, even if it wasn’t my fault.

  They must never know about our plans to escape, but I did tell Daniel. I felt indebted to him somehow, and so I told him about our encounter with the fireman.

  “So you do want to survive,” he declared, and sounded pleased.

  “Survive to fight,” I explained.

  “Till death?”

  “It seems so.”

  “You could hide and try to make it through to the end of the war somehow.”

  “My place is with my comrades.”

  “With your ‘husband,’ you mean!”

  Daniel sounded jealous.

  “With Amos,” I confirmed.

  He didn’t like my answer, but he didn’t pry. Instead he said,
“Take Rebecca with you.”

  “What?” I was astonished.

  “Take Rebecca with you when you escape.”

  He wasn’t thinking about himself, he was thinking about her.

  “We can only take fighters with us,” I said.

  “She’s so small, she won’t take up any room.”

  “How can a child survive in the forest?”

  “You could find someone to hide her.”

  I looked at the little girl who never spoke. She was sitting on the floor playing a game with her marble that only she could understand.

  “I … I can’t see how that would work,” I said, dodging the issue.

  “You’ll find a way.”

  I didn’t think so.

  “If you try.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  All at once Daniel blew up, “All you ever think about is killing people!”

  I didn’t know what to do.

  “All you ever talk about is death, death, death…”

  He stormed off. Back to Rebecca.

  And his words echoed in my head, “Death, death, death…”

  69

  That evening, Mordechai put a new team together to meet with the firemen and finalize the details of our escape. Ben Redhead was joining us instead of Amos, who was to go over to the other side of the wall. His task was to persuade Polish canal workers to show us a route through the labyrinth of sewers. That would give us an alternative escape route if the plan with the fire engines failed.

  Ben Redhead had not gotten over killing the boy. He had started stuttering again, when he spoke at all. He had also stopped eating and hardly drank anything. He was intent on fighting.

  Death. Death. Death.

  Amos came over to me and said, “Get back safe!”

  “Same here!” I said, and we both smiled.

  He kissed me on the lips for the first time since we’d shot the boy.

  It was a short goodbye. Especially considering that it might be our last. Amos’s chances of surviving weren’t exactly great.

  I watched him as he crawled through the exit to the bunker. Then Daniel came up and asked, “Have you decided about Rebecca yet?”

  I hadn’t even thought about it. It was obvious that we wouldn’t be able to take civilians with us.

  “I can’t talk now…,” I said.

  “You’re going to leave her behind,” Daniel realized, and looked weary for the first time. As worn out as Korczak had been in the end.

  I wanted to stroke his cheek, comfort him somehow, but he turned away. He didn’t want comfort, he wanted me to help the girl.

  Without saying anything more, I pushed my gun into my coat pocket and our group headed off to 80 Gęsia Street where we were to meet the Polish firemen. We had to dodge a German patrol on the way, and so we got to the building a few minutes late. The firemen weren’t there.

  “The question is,” I said, “have they been and gone, or aren’t they here yet?”

  “We’ll wait,” Rachel said. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

  So we waited. Five minutes. Ten.

  “They aren’t coming,” Leon swore, “those stinking bast—”

  “Psst!” Rachel hissed. “Footsteps!”

  Let it be the firemen.

  Rachel crept to the window to see what was happening.

  A shot shattered the window and hit her in the forehead.

  Rachel collapsed on the spot.

  I screamed.

  Germans were shooting at us with machine guns.

  Leon pulled me to the floor as bullets flew over our heads and hit the wall behind us. A cupboard hanging on the wall was riddled with bullets and fell down with a crash.

  “That swine betrayed us,” Leon said, outraged. Ben Redhead was lying on the floor, firing back although he couldn’t see the enemy and probably didn’t hit anyone.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Leon yelled above the noise.

  We crawled out of the room, got up, and stood there for a moment not knowing where to go.

  Up the stairs and onto the roof!

  But then we heard the front door being kicked in. The Germans began shooting wildly into the house.

  “Through there!” I said, pointing at a window in a room that was facing the backyard.

  “But we’ll be trapped out there,” Leon argued.

  “Not if we can manage to get into another flat first.”

  I opened the window and jumped out into the yard. Leon and Ben followed.

  “Search the yard!” We heard an SS man barking orders at his men.

  “Oh hell!” Leon swore.

  “I … I … I’ll h … h … hold them off,” Ben Redhead said, and stopped running.

  “But that’s suicide!” Leon shouted at him.

  I realized that that was exactly what Ben Redhead had in mind. He wanted to die a hero. He couldn’t stay alive racked with guilt any longer. There was no way we would be able to stop him. No matter how much we wanted to.

  I grabbed Leon’s arm and charged on without looking back.

  Behind us, I heard Ben Redhead shouting at the soldiers, “Die, you bastards!”

  He shot in the direction of the staircase, and the soldiers shot back.

  I grabbed a stone and smashed open a window.

  Behind us, Ben stopped shooting.

  He had fallen.

  Don’t turn round, I thought, don’t turn round. Don’t waste another vital second!

  The soldiers shot at us.

  I climbed through the window and jumped into the flat.

  Behind me, Leon screamed.

  Twice.

  And then he was silent.

  Don’t waste a vital second!

  I charged through the flat. Opened a window into the next street and leaped out. I landed badly and twisted my left ankle. I swore, but tried to run on regardless. The pain was terrible, and I could only hobble along. The soldiers would come out onto this street any minute now, and I would never be able to get away.

  “Damn, damn!” I gasped, but then I reminded myself that I was only wasting valuable time by swearing. And that could be the difference between dying or seeing Amos again.

  I disappeared into a house and started to limp up the stairs. Maybe I could get away over the rooftops.

  The front door was forced open.

  I stopped, hardly daring to move. I could hear footsteps, but it couldn’t be more than two soldiers. My pursuers had obviously split up to search the houses. And that meant they didn’t actually know I was here.

  As quietly as possible, I opened the door to one of the flats and crept inside. I started to move down the hall, but I had only gone a few steps when the door slammed behind me with a bang. I hadn’t thought about the draft!

  I heard the soldiers charging up the stairs.

  I tried to think. What could I do now? I was on the fourth floor so I couldn’t jump out of a window. I’d break my neck. I had to hide. But where? I rushed through the flat. It was practically empty. The acquisition squad had done well. Every single bed, cupboard, or decent piece of furniture had been hauled to the depots. They had taken everything.

  The footsteps stopped outside. The soldiers had reached the flat.

  “Come out with your hands up!” one of them shouted through the shut door.

  I would never surrender. Surrender meant certain death.

  I pulled my gun, hobbled toward the door, and started shooting in the desperate hope that I might hit the bastards, although I couldn’t see them.

  The soldiers screamed. I threw myself to the ground to duck any return of fire, but no one shot back. Did I get them?

  I stood up carefully. I couldn’t stay here. Other soldiers were bound to have heard the shots and would surround the house in a few minutes. I had to get out of here.

  I hobbled to the door and pulled it open. Two soldiers lay on the floor in front of me. One was dead, the other was holding his bleeding stomach, unable to shoot. He was in
agony. If I’d been merciful, l would have put him out of his misery. But the SS hadn’t done that with the old woman on the burning balcony. I stepped over him. Let his comrades give him the coup de grâce.

  I limped up the stairs to the attic and climbed onto the roof from there. When the soldiers reached the house, I was already four buildings away. At the next street corner. All I had to do was simply get round that corner, then I’d be able to get away. Unfortunately, the two corner houses weren’t adjoining. There was a gap of about three meters. I could normally jump that far. But I wasn’t sure I’d make it with a sprained ankle.

  I’d rather fall to my death than be shot by a German bullet.

  I jumped as best I could, but my aching ankle hindered me and I wasn’t fast enough. I fell through the air …

  And realized that I wasn’t going to make it.

  I missed! Instead my body crashed against the edge of the roof. I was winded but, instinctively, I fell forward while my legs dangled in the air unable to get a grip anywhere on the house wall.

  I used the last of my strength to pull myself up and lay there gasping for air. It took me a moment to come to and then another one before I could manage to get to my feet and duck away across the roofs.

  A few houses farther on, I saw a mound of feathers in a backyard. A good hiding place at last.

  I climbed through a skylight into the attic and nearly screamed in pain when I landed on the floorboards, but I bit my lip instead, so hard it started to bleed.

  I reached the heap of feathers in the yard and managed to hide. But that was all. I had no strength left. Physically or mentally. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t even stay awake to see if the soldiers would come.

  70

  I woke up to the smell of someone smoking a cigarette. Someone was here in this yard. Another Polish fireman? Pausing for a break while putting out the fires? Or a German taking time out from the hunt? Or was it a fighter? A comrade? A friend? Not likely. I’d used up all my luck for today.

  Judging by the light that fell through the feathers, dawn was breaking. So I would have to get back to Miła 18 quickly or else stay hidden where I was for the rest of the day. With nothing to eat or drink. And what would I do if the Germans decided to set fire to the buildings here?