Isaac's Army

by Matthew Brzezinski

  Before embarking on this narrative journey, I imagined myself valiantly fighting the Nazis. I now know that that would not have been the case, because of something Mark Edelman said. To join the Resistance, one had to leave one’s family behind to face starvation, disease, and the roundups. It took less courage, in Mark’s opinion, to pick up a gun than to stay with one’s children and comfort them in the face of almost certain death. It was not a coincidence, he explained, that Resistance fighters were almost all young and unmarried. In fact, one of the bravest scenes Edelman witnessed during the war was the sight of a man entering the Umschlagplatz with his son on his shoulders. The boy was frightened and asking where they were going. “Not far,” the father reassured him. “Soon it will all be over.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have come into existence without the early support of Paul Golob and John Flicker, two of New York’s finest editors. They opened up their hearts and purse strings for the project and I owe them both a lasting debt of gratitude. My agents Scott Waxman and Farley Chase, ably assisted by Beth Phelan, tugged and loosened those literary purse strings—both in the United States and abroad—and I am always in their debt.

  At Random House the brilliant Will Murphy and Katie Donelan acted as surrogate parents, birthing and shaping the manuscript, which at times behaved like a difficult child. Emily DeHuff, Anna Bauer, and Jennifer Rodriguez all raised the book’s standards through its unruly growth spurts, as did early readers Eric Rubin, Allen Feldman, and especially Alan Cooperman, whose trained eye rarely misses a beat.

  In Warsaw, a few people made three long years pass more quickly: Jen and Michael Sessums, Esko Kilpinen, Marina Kotanska, and most of all Dagmara, Anya, and Zbigniew Roman, who give all Poles a good name. At home, Ari, Anna, and Lena heard more about Nazis and death camps than any seven-year-olds ever should, and when they are older I will apologize to them. And as always, the last acknowledgment is reserved for Roberta, my combative chief editor, muse, inhouse censor, and designated adult. There is a lot of her in this book, and she reminds me of some of its characters.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: HANNA’S TRIUMPH

  1 A comedy by the up-and-coming playwright Maria Pawlowska Czeslaw Grzelaka, ed., Warszawa we Wrzesniu 1939 Roku: Obrona I Zycie Codzienne (Warsaw Rytm, 2004), p. 480.

  2 addressed clients as “Your Excellency” Magdalena Dubrowska, Gazeta Wyborcza, April 26, 2008, p. 8.

  3 billed by its architect, Marcin Weinfeld Ewa Malkowska, “Stolica,” Warszawski Magazyn Ilustrowany, no. 4, April, 2008, p. 28.

  4 Built by developers Karol Fritsche, Jacob Lowenberg, and Pinkus Loth Maria Irena Kwiatkowska and Marek Kwiatkowski, Historia Warzawy XVII–XX Wieku: Architectura I Rzezba (Warsaw: Panstowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 2006), pp. 106–11.

  5 Outside the PKO State Savings Bank Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz, Warszawa W. Latach, 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Panstowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1984), p. 24.

  6 “We reported to the officer” Isaac Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 3.

  7 students at Public School Number 166 in upper Warka had raised 11.75 zlotys Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 1.

  8 “Not everyone understood what war with the Germans meant” Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, p. 4.

  9 “blind people discussing colors” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 1.

  10 though pointedly not Yiddish Robert Osnos, author interview, New York City, September 2008.

  11 equivalent to around $100,000 Joanna Olczak-Ronikier, W. Ogrodzie Pamieci (Krakow: Znak, 2001), p. 216.

  12 should send her eight-year-old son, Robert, to join little Joanna at the Mortkowicz country house Joanna Olczak-Ronikier, author interview, November 2008.

  13 “The entire Polish nation, blessed by God” Kurjer Warszawski, no. 741, September 1, 1939, p. 1.

  CHAPTER 2: SIMHA’S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

  1 far superior to models like Pfaff or Kempisty-Kasprzycki Exhibition of Jewish crafts, attended by the author, Kazimierz, Krakow, August 2008.

  2 Between them they could make five or six dozen pairs Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

  3 first cobbled in 1783 Kwiryna Handke, Stolica: Warszawski Magazyn Ilustrowany, p. 24.

  4 two-thirds of Warsaw’s prewar physicians were Jewish, as were 37 percent of its lawyers Marian Fuks, Mowia Wieki: Magazin Historyczni, April 2008, p. 14.

  5 “we are strong, united and ready” Stanislaw F. Ozimek, Media Walczacej Warszawy (Warsaw: Fundacja Walczacej Warszawy, 2007), p. 12.

  6 tram line 17 Handke, Stolica: Warszawski Magazyn Ilustrowany, no. 4, April 2008, p. 24.

  7 either sweet with “pure sugar” or bitter and “doubly saturated” Jerzy Kasprzycki, Korzenie Miasta, vol. II (Warsaw: Veda, 2004), p. 158.

  8 “Speculators who had money would walk in the courtyards” Harold Werner, Fighting Back: A Memoir of Jewish Resistance in World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 3.

  9 “My father was an observant Jew” Simha Ratheiser-Rotem, author interview, Jerusalem, March 2009.

  10 “was never overly political” Ibid.

  11 where 40 percent of the residents were Jewish Michal Pilich, Warszawa Praga (Warsaw: Center of Europe Foundation, 2006), p. 67.

  12 3,870 workers streamed out of the Lilpop, Rau & Lowenstein plant Marcin Jablonowski, Polski Przemysl Wojenny z Perspektywy 1938 (Koszalin: PMTW, 1988), p. 48.

  13 the three hundred workers of Samuel and Sender Ginsburg’s BRAGE Rubber Works Pilich, Warszawa Praga, p. 97.

  14 “Today a total of 16 enemy airplanes were destroyed” Grzelaka, Warszawa we Wrzesniu 1939 Roku, p. 377.

  15 “My parents only associated with other assimilated Jews” Robert Osnos, author interview, New York City, September 2008. TO COMPLETE VICTORY Czas-7 Wiezcor, September 1, 1939, no. 242, p. 1.

  CHAPTER 3: WOLSKA STREET IS COVERED WITH BLOOD

  1 “the firm resolve of returning once the war has been won” Ozimek, Media Walczacej Warszawy, p. 22.

  2 “Warsaw was going to surrender” Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

  3 the Bund “was about Jewish pride and dignity” Ibid.

  4 “the injustices and hatred of the Polish state against the Jews” Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, p. 5.

  5 made Poland the world’s eighth-largest producer of steel in 1939 Andrew Hempel, Poland in World War II: An Illustrated Military History (New York: Hippocrene Books, 2005), p. 6.

  6 of children burned alive Czeslaw Luczak, Dzieje Polski 1939–1945 (Poznan: Wydawnictwo Poznanskie, 2007), pp. 12–14. 21 “Anti-Semitism has spread all over the nation” Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: HarperPerennial, 1998), p. 470.

  7 “We worked hard and the Poles were nice to us” Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, p. 6.

  8 “It was crazy, it was chaos” Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Motreal, November 2007.

  9 “Go, I will stay with Robert” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 3.

  10 Simha felt frightened and helpless Simha Ratheiser-Rotem, author interview, Jerusalem, March 2009.

  11 “Wolska Street is covered with blood” Dunin-Wasowicz, Warszawa w latach 1939–1945, p. 29.

  CHAPTER 4: ROBERT’S PAPER AIRPLANES

  1 “I don’t know why they went off and left me” Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, p. 7.

  2 “There would always be a dozen bodies lying on the road” Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

  3 flew at only half the speed of the far more advanced Messerschmitts Hempel, Poland in World War II, p. 10.

  4 the Warsaw Fighter Brigade had knocked out 72 German craft Ibid.

  5“They began bombing the woods” Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, p. 8.

  6 “I didn’t know whether to walk at the head of the line” Ibid., p. 9.

  7 “No one gave any thought to serious fighting” Marian Por
wit, Obrona Warszawy, Wrezesien, 1939 (Warsaw: Panstowe Wydawnicywo Naukowe, 1979), p. 51.

  8 82,000 civilian and military defenders Grzelaka, Warszawa we Wrezesniu 1939 Roku, p. 106.

  9 nearly one hundred battle-ready divisions sitting behind the Maginot Line. The Führer had only twenty-five divisions Richard C. Lukas, Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939–1944 (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1997), p. 2.

  10 “a rain of bombs” Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz, The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1999), p. 73.

  11 “so urgent and important” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal.

  12 saw piles of books shaken from the shelves Olczak-Ronikier, W Ogrodzie Pamieci, p. 267.

  13 “This new reality offered certain attractions” Ibid.

  14 “I don’t recall once being scared” Robert Osnos, author interview, New York City, September 2008.

  15 “The planes swooped so low over the Royal Gardens” Simha Ratheiser-Rotem, author interview, Jerusalem, March 2009.

  16 to her brother-in-law’s spacious apartment Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 2.

  17 five thousand shells fell on the Jewish Quarter and Midtown Grzelaka, Warszawa we Wrezesniu 1939 Roku, p. 488.

  18 astounding donation of $15 million by another Jewish philanthropist, Leopold Kronenberg Fuks, Mowia Wieki, p. 11.

  19 “an ocean of flames” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 5.

  20 “Young Poles and Jews performed miracles of heroism” Emmanuel Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations in the Second World War (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1992), p. 26.

  21 “There were no weapons” Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

  22 The town had had a prewar population of 33,000 and was half Jewish http://www.museumoftolerance.com/site/pp.asp?c=arLPK7PILqF&b=249727.

  23 Poland’s “railroad king” Fuks, Mowia Wieki, p. 11.

  24 “no one knew what to do, or where to go” Boruch Spiegel, author interview, Montreal, November 2007.

  25 too “junior, and not important” enough Ibid.

  CHAPTER 5: HIS BROTHER’S HAND

  1 a million and a half soldiers and six thousand tanks Luczak, Dzieje Polsk 1939–1945, p. 24.

  2 “I wanted Warsaw to be great” Dunin-Wasowicz, Warszawa w latach 1939–1945, p. 35.

  3 “She has the right to be stupid” Olczak-Ronikier, W Ogrodzie Pamieci, p. 263.

  4 Nine hundred howitzers and four hundred heavy bombers, mostly Junkers Grzelaka, Warszawa we Wrezesniu 1939 Roku, p. 492.

  5 “there was dead silence” Simha Ratheiser-Rotem, author interview, Jerusalem, March 2009.

  6 Nearly twenty thousand similar graves Dunin-Wasowicz, Warszawa w latach 1939–1945, p. 83.

  7 “I caught sight of a hand separated from a body” Simha Ratheiser-Rotem, Kazik: Memoirs of a Ghetto Fighter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 9.

  CHAPTER 6: WHERE IS YOUR HUSBAND?

  1 ceremonially cutting a white ribbon W Obiektywie Wroga: Niemiecy Fotoreporterzy W Okupowanej Warsawie 1939–1945, Nazi Propaganda Photo and Film Exhibition, History Meeting House, Warsaw, September–October 2008.

  2 propaganda footage of elderly men—their dark caftan frocks and beards covered with pale dust Ibid., Karl-Friedrich Schultze, Barch Bild 1011-001-025143.

  3 the feminine qualities of Warsaw’s newly inexpensive prostitutes Dunin-Wasowicz, Warzsawa w Latach 1939–1945, p. 45.

  4 Seventy-eight thousand apartment units had gone up in flames Stefan Korbonski, Fighting Warsaw (New York: Hippocrene Books, 2004), p. 263.

  5 Fifteen percent of all structures Katalog der Ausstellung Im Objektiv des Feindes: Deutsche Bildberichterstatter im bessetzten Warschau 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Dom Spotkan z Historia, 2008), p. 4.

  6 “The door was broken” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 7.

  7 They even flanked the entrance to the Julius Meinl coffee shop Kwiatkowski, Historia Warszawy XVII–XX Wieku, p. 76.

  8 the Starbucks of its day www.meinl.com.

  9 ENGLAND! THIS IS YOUR DOING Original poster on permanent exhibition at Pawiak Prison Museum, Valiant Street, Warsaw.

  10 “Anyone approaching a window or the street will immediately be shot” Ksawery Swierkowski, Hitler Widziany przez Szpare, Stolica, 1971, no. 39, p. 6.

  11 “They made an incredible impression on me” Simha Ratheiser-Rotem, author interview, Jerusalem, March 2009.

  12 “He passed right under our noses” Jan Nowak Jezioranski, Kurier z Warszawy (Krakow: Znak, 2005), p. 35.

  13 ten thousand train-wagon loads of booty Luczak, Dzieje Polski 1939–1945, p. 54.

  14 “Where are you going?” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 12.

  15 “Where do you live?” Ibid.

  16 He selected the Art Deco mansion of industrialist Gustav Wertheim UKRaport: Gazeta Konstancinska, no. 149, September 2008, p. 7.

  17 her 14,000-square-foot home Ibid.

  18 resurfaced in 2007 at a garage sale in Lexington, Kentucky Wlodzimierz Kalicki, Gazeta Wyborcza, April 28, 2008, p. 2.

  19 a seventeenth-century canvas by the Dutch master Pieter de Grebber Ibid., April 26, 2008, p. 1.

  20 the impressionist collections of Jacob and Alina Glass National Museum, author site visit, October 2008.

  21 “It was one of the only times during the war that I can remember” Robert Osnos, author interview, New York, November 2008.

  22 “Don’t be afraid” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 12.

  23 Jean-Antoine Houdon, whose works today are exhibited at the National Gallery of Art www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/houdon.com.

  CHAPTER 7: MARK’S VOW

  1 “It was terrible,” he said, describing the once prosperous Jerusalem Boulevard Witold Beres and Krzysztof Burnetko, Marek Edelman: Zycie. Po Prostu (Warsaw: Swiat Ksiaski, 2008), p. 40.

  2 the Hilfzug Bayern “help trains” Dunin-Wasowicz, Warzsawa w Latach 1939–1945, p. 44.

  3 were marred by the grim faces of the recipients Tomazs Szarota, Okupowanej Warszawy Dzien Powszedni (Warsaw: Stodium Historyczne, 1978), p. 78.

  4 46 “Sind Sie ein Jid?” Hilberg, Staron, and Kermisz, Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, p. 78.

  5 “I saw a crowd on Iron Street” Hanna Krall, Shielding the Flame (New York: Henry Holt, 1986), pp. 37–38.

  6 “She had never even spoken to a Jewish person before she met me” Martha Osnos, unpublished journal, p. 5.

  7 (staged, as it turned out, by Arthur Grimm) Prussian Cultural Picture Archives, Berlin, series 3001000 and 30032348, shown in W Obiektywie Wroga: Niemiecy Fotoreporterzy W Okupowanej Warsawie 1939–1945, Nazi Propaganda Photo and Film Exhibition, History Meeting House, Warsaw, September–October 2008.

  8 “German propaganda agencies worked ceaselessly” Marek Edelman, The Ghetto Fights (London: Bookmarks, 1990), p. 35.

  9 “We also started hearing about how Jews were turning in Poles” Beres and Burnetko, Marek Edelman, p. 40.

  10 Electricity, gas, and water supplies had not yet been fully restored Andrzej Szczypiorski, “Miezkania I ludnosc Warszawy w Czasie Wojny I Hitlerowshiej Okupacji,” Studia Demograficzne, no. 46, 1976, p. 38.

  11 “to overcome our own terrifying apathy” Edelman, Ghetto Fights, p. 37.

  12 “lazy” Beres and Burnetko, Marek Edelman: Zycie. Po Prostu, p. 20.

  13 They consisted of two small metal pots mounted over each other Bernard Goldstein, Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto (Edinburgh, West Virginia: AK Press, 2005), p. 34.

  14 “Working by carbide light proved extremely strenuous” Edelman, Ghetto Fights, p. 47.

  15 It had a daily circulation of two hundred thousand copies Ozimek, Media Walczacej Warszawy, p. 47.

  16 ten people sentenced to death for tearing down a German flag Luczak, Dzieje Polski, 1939–1945, p. 42.

  17 “All Jews and Jewesses within the General Government” Nowy Kurjer Warszawski, November 30,
1939, p. 1.

  CHAPTER 8: JOANNA’S RHYME

  1 “forbidden and invalid” Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. 78.

  2 “A Jew is a person descended from at least three grandparents” Ibid., p. 80.

  3 “In a corner of the great Warsaw there still stands a remnant of the medieval city” Ellen D. Kellman, Zydzi Warszawy (Warsaw: Zydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2000), p. 105.

  4 “Jew, Jew, crawl under your shack” Olczak-Ronikier, W Ogrodze Pamieci, p. 270.

  5 “It was then that I found out what was the real and macabre meaning of the rhyme” Ibid.

  6 “My grandfather wanted to be more Polish than the Poles” Joanna Olczak-Ronikier, author interview, Warsaw, December 2008.

  7 “He practiced pronunciation” Ibid.

  8 “the Hebraic-German garble” Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 2.

  9 “It’s not true!” Olczak-Ronikier, W Ogrodze Pamieci, p. 270.

  10 “She was a very proud and strong-willed woman” Joanna Olczak-Ronikier, author interview, December 2008.

  11 “I was so upset at being Jewish” Ibid.

  12 56 TUWIM AND SLONIMSKI ARE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT JEWS Anthony Polonsky in Robert Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 198.

  13 “I will never permit my Ladies” Olczakl-Ronikier, W Ogrodze Pamieci, p. 270.

  CHAPTER 9: ISAAC ON MEMORY LANE

  1 “321,700 Poles, 107,600 Jews, 75,200 Belarussians” Luczak, Dzieje Polski, 1939–1945, p. 41.

  2 fifteen thousand Jewish refugees flooded into Vilna http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_cm.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005173&MediaId=2580.

  3 “Jews constituted at least 80% of every Bolshevik organization” Joseph W. Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the American Army (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 84–85.