Heritage (30 page)

He mustn't let things get out of hand, Eli thought as he left the olive grove. He'd proved his power over her, it was enough.

 

Irgun and Lehi leaders anticipated an easy victory in the capture of Deir Yassin. Given the township's non-hostile status, the villagers would be offered the chance to flee, and a truck with a loudspeaker would take the path westward, broadcasting warnings in Arabic and urging flight to the nearby Arab township of Ein Kerem. Any who remained to oppose the invading forces were to be liquidated, but the guerrilla commanders assumed such opposition would be minimal and easily contained.

The Lehi were to approach Deir Yassin from the east. One Irgun section was to advance west from the Jerusalem suburb of Bet Hakerem and approach the strategically positioned Sharafa ridge overlooking the township, and another Irgun section was to approach the village from the south.

At dawn's first light, the concealed units advanced on the town while, on the westward path, the truck's loudspeaker urged the villagers to flee.

To the east, Eli Mankowski and his unit covered good ground, undetected in their advance, but to the south their Irgun counterparts were not faring so well. A village guard had sighted them.

‘
Yahud!
'

As the guard yelled a warning that Jews were approaching, an Irgun fighter prematurely gave the starting signal, machine-gun tracer bullets announcing to the other advancing units that the battle for Deir Yassin had commenced.

The guerrillas attacked, and chaos ensued. Above the sound of gunfire and grenades, the Arabic broadcast could not be heard. The driver of the loudspeaker truck sped up in an attempt to enter the village, but the vehicle careered off the road and into a ditch. There would be no warning broadcast.

From out of the stone houses, panic-stricken villagers poured into the narrow streets, many in their nightclothes. Women who'd been working in the bakery fled up the hill to seek refuge in the
mukhtar
's house. The multi-storeyed
mukhtar
's dwelling sat at the summit of the town, and as the panic continued, others ran there, some clutching children.

The Irgun fighters, like the Lehi, were young, some of them not even twenty years old, and they ran wildly through the streets, firing at everything that moved, lobbing hand grenades in the doors of open houses, yelling the guerrilla Hebrew phrase ‘
achdut lochemet
': ‘fighting in unity'.

But there was no unified fighting. Command and control had been lost and with it any form of disciplined attack.

Many young male villagers successfully escaped to gather at the Sharafa ridge where they effectively repulsed the Irgun advance from the west. The township rallied its defence force, snipers taking up positions in the
mukhtar
's house and the higher buildings in the west of the village.

The Irgun unit was finally forced to withdraw in order to regather its troops for a renewed assault, and, as they retreated, fearing attack from the rear, they shot every Arab they saw. The elderly, the wounded, the women clutching their children, even the children themselves. They slaughtered indiscriminately.

To the east, Eli Mankowski's Lehi fighters had penetrated the village, securing themselves among the sturdy houses and stone fences. When word of their successful advance reached the others, Irgun forces joined them. Leaders conferred. It was seven o'clock in the morning, which meant the Sharafa ridge should have been taken and the township secured. But the Arabs controlled the ridge, four guerrilla fighters were dead, a number were injured – some out of reach and unable to be evacuated – and one commander lay mortally wounded. The attack had been chaotic and undisciplined.

The combined units massed for a concerted assault and Shlomo Rubens ordered announcements to be made from the salvaged loudspeaker urging the villagers to surrender. He also dispatched word to Haganah's Camp Schneller in Jerusalem. The guerrilla forces needed help, he said. If the Haganah could take the ridge, it would enable the fighters to evacuate their wounded under the cover of fire.

Then Eli gave the command. ‘
Achdut lochemet!
' he cried. The fighters surged into the street, their screams of vengeance soon mingling with the cries of women cowering with their children in houses exploding around them, or fleeing terrified through the gunfire in a desperate attempt to save the children they carried.

Shlomo Rubens was methodical in his attack, choosing not to waste his precious grenades on those villagers who posed no threat. The fighters were allotted only two grenades each, and Shlomo intended his for the
mukhtar
's house and the higher buildings on the western side of the village where the Arabs were maintaining a successful defence. Nor did he waste his ammunition, but killed only those who opposed him, leaving the slaughter of women and children to the younger fighters whose bloodlust was beyond control.

Shlomo had seen it before in young, inexperienced fighters: this lethal mixture of fear, anger and a blind desire to kill; but he was not critical of the wholesale murder being unleashed around him. Indeed, the original Lehi proposal had suggested the liquidation of the entire village as a warning to the Arab population in general, and Shlomo himself would have obeyed such an order. But the proposal had been tempered to specify ‘all men and any other force that opposes us' – the women and children offered no opposition.

He was deeply critical, however, of the appalling waste of ammunition and, as he dived to the ground, he inwardly cursed the young fighter who lobbed a hand grenade into a house too close for comfort. Given the current situation, with the Arab fighters holding their ground, such a cavalier use of explosives, which were short in supply, was intensely annoying.

The house erupted and, from a nearby building where she'd been hiding, a young woman ran out onto the street. She was yelling, demented; it was the home of her sister and her sister's children, she wailed.

The fighter who had thrown the grenade – it was David Stein, Shlomo noted – shot the woman twice. She fell to the ground – one bullet lodged in her lungs, another in her belly – and lay squirming, gurgling, drowning in her own blood.

A further waste of ammunition Shlomo thought, and he ducked behind a wall to view the narrow junction of streets and the surrounding buildings for any legitimate threat. Ahead of him, he could hear Eli screaming, ‘Obliterate – until destruction. We are the future!', others readily taking up the call.

Eli was encouraging his men's bloodlust, but not because he himself was out of control, Shlomo knew it. Eli's purpose was plain. He had argued keenly for the instigation of the original proposal and, despite orders to the contrary, he intended to honour it. Eli Mankowski wanted no Arab left alive. Every inhabitant of Deir Yassin was to be annihilated, including the elderly, the women and the children, and he was whipping his fighters into a frenzy to accomplish that end.

Opposite, at a corner of the junction, an Arab sniper had exposed his position on the first-floor rooftop of a cottage, kneeling to take aim at the attackers who passed below. Shlomo trained his sights on the man and fired.

The sniper disappeared from view, and Shlomo backed against the wall of a nearby building, waiting for a moment, just to be sure, eyes scanning other buildings, seeking possible danger.

From the nearby pile of rocks which had once been a house came the unsettling sound of a woman keening. Three Arab fighters lay dead, and in the centre of the small, dusty junction was sprawled the body of the young woman. She was no longer squirming, but it had taken her several minutes to die, and Shlomo noticed, for the first time, that she was heavily pregnant.

He made his way quickly up the main street, dodging around the piles of rubble, to join the battle that raged ahead.

Ruth and two other women had been following in the rear of the attack. They had dragged a wounded Lehi fighter to the safety of a deserted building to await evacuation, and they had collected two rifles and ammunition from Arab casualties.

As Ruth had pulled the rifle from the hands of one man who appeared dead, he had clutched at it, his eyes wild in his death throes. But it meant nothing to her – he was the enemy. She'd thought about shooting him, but hadn't, leaving him in the sea of his blood; he was already a dead man.

She'd heard the screams of women and children, but had taken no notice. It was natural the women and children would flee in terror; she'd concentrated on the fallen fighters, both guerrilla and Arab.

When she came upon the pregnant woman lying dead in the street, blood flowing from her distended belly, she was taken aback. The woman was young, barely eighteen, her face contorted in agony. She must have been caught in the crossfire, Ruth thought. But it looked as though both bullets had been fired directly at her – surely that wasn't possible?

The two fighters with her ignored the young woman – to them she was just one of the enemy – and set about gathering the weapons from the three Arab men who lay dead. Only one had a firearm, but they took the knives from the other two.

Then, between the bursts of gunfire and explosions only several hundred yards away, Ruth heard the voice of the woman in the bombed-out house nearby. An ululating lament, songlike and mournful, it beckoned her. She held the .303 rifle she'd taken from the dying man at the ready and approached the hole that had once been a doorway. She nodded to the other fighters, who sidled up beside her, all three of them with their backs to the stone wall, their weapons poised – it could be a trap.

Ruth listened for any signs of danger, but there was only the crying of the woman. She cocked her rifle and stepped quickly inside, moving away from the light of the entrance.

The woman was kneeling on the floor, rocking her dead infant in her arms, covered in the child's blood. Beside her stood a little girl of no more than six, silent, sad-eyed and bewildered.

At the sight of Ruth, the woman staggered to her feet, still clutching her mutilated baby, and pushed the little girl behind her with a bloodied hand, trying to shield the child, while desperately pleading for her daughter's life.

Ruth lowered the rifle and stepped outside, leaving the woman to her grief. She tried to shake off the sickening feeling that engulfed her. This was war, there were always unexpected casualties, she told herself.

But the young pregnant woman, little more than a girl herself, still lay in the street, a vile condemnation, and Ruth could not extinguish the image of the mother and her mutilated baby. These were not the enemy.

She started running towards the sounds of battle, paying no heed to the calls of her two fellow fighters who urged her to come back. She needed to see for herself. She needed to know that these hideous acts had been a mistake.

But when she reached the thick of the action, she discovered they were not. Scenes of incomprehensible slaughter unfolded before her eyes. Oblivious to the gunfire that ricocheted about her, she watched in horror as madmen killed indiscriminately. Some fighters who had run out of ammunition used knives to dispatch their innocent victims. She saw her own cousin open fire on a group of helpless women as they fled for the safety of a shop doorway. One of the women fell.

David wished he had a grenade to lob into the shop, but he'd used the two he'd been allotted. He fired another three shots through the door and another woman fell. He would have continued firing on them until they were all dead, but he was angered to discover that he'd run out of ammunition. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, took his knife from its scabbard, and charged towards the shop.

A woman gathered her three-year-old in her arms and ran out of the doorway, but she was not quick enough. She was stabbed in the chest, the knife narrowly missing the little boy, who dropped from her arms as she fell to her knees. Even as she reached for her child, the knife struck again.

David raised the knife a third time to slice the woman's throat and finish her off, although, as she vainly clutched for her child, she was already dying. But someone was grabbing his arm, screaming. He turned, ready to plunge his knife into his aggressor, but it was Ruth. For a split second he wondered why Ruth would stop him in his liquidation of the enemy, then he hurled her aside and headed for another woman who was fleeing the shop.

Ruth picked up the child and ran to the corner of a nearby building, where she sheltered against the wall, shielding the little boy as best she could.

Two of the women escaped; the other three were murdered mid-flight. One was shot and the others were knifed to death. The frenzy was at its peak.

Fifteen minutes later, the guerrillas moved on, cutting their murderous swathe through the streets of the once peaceful town. The broadcast urging the villagers to surrender had gone unheeded. It had been meaningless. Fighters and villagers alike knew there would be no prisoners and, as the fighters neared the western side of the village where the Arabs maintained a brave defence, their frustration at not successfully securing the town drove them to further acts of carnage. Children were lined up against walls and executed in the style of a firing-squad. Women were knifed to death as they tended the wounded. Frenzied fighters even plunged their knives into those who lay already dead. The slaughter and insanity continued unabated.

Ruth remained frozen. She didn't know how long she'd stood there, transfixed by the sheer horror of what she had seen, but the child whimpering in her arms brought her to her senses. Comforting the little boy, burying his head against her shoulder, she crossed cautiously to where the mother lay, still moving, her fingers stirring the dust as if seeking her child. The woman was alive. Perhaps if she dragged her to safety, she might survive.

But as she knelt beside the woman, Ruth realised that she was beyond saving. Her eyes were already glazing over, even as her fingers continued to clutch at the dust.