Resistance (38 page)

Zivia Lubetkin described the atmosphere of Mila 18 in her memoirs:

 

A company of fighters were stationed at the bunker in Mila 18—and perhaps its owners were really people from the underworld of Warsaw, among them thieves of some repute. Their leaders had dug deep into the earth along a stretch of three blocks of enormous buildings which had become ruins [during the Uprising] and had constructed a large and spacious bunker. A long and narrow corridor ran down the entire length, with many rooms extending from either side. Electricity had been installed and a well was dug; there was a well-arranged kitchen and even a reading and recreation room, and dozens of their followers and henchmen from their gangs stayed in this "inn."

Shmuel Asher, or Shmuel Issachar, a manly, broad-shouldered, awkward Jew, was head of the gang and behaves here in the bowels of the earth like king of the roost and reminds me of Haim Nachman Bialik's [the Hebrew poet] "Arieh, the Able-bodied." He runs everything in this place: our nourishment, sleeping arrangements, and decides when it is possible to go out on sorties and obtain necessities. At first there were all sorts of luxuries here, special rooms and even beds. Their confederates on the Aryan side [from the gangs] would supply them with fresh bread and liquor via the sewerage canals. The common folk were unbelievably loyal to their leaders and ready to go through fire and water for them.

Purely by chance, a command company of the Jewish Fighting Organization landed up here and later on, additional companies came under the same roof, and the bunker that was intended for dozens of gangsters housed 300 people densely crowding all the rooms. On the first day, the leader welcomed us warmly—we were already known in the ghetto and he and his pals treated the fighting organization with great respect. Everything we have is yours, he said, and we are at your disposal. We are strong, we're skilled in undoing locks, we can move around at night unnoticed, climb over fences and walls, and we know by heart every lane and crevice in the ruins of the ghetto. You'll soon learn how useful we can be. And indeed they were our guides in many respects, by day and by night. Especially for spying on German positions. Afterwards, when the ghetto went up in flames and it was difficult to make out the names of the streets, a notorious thief led us safely through. Like a supple cat, he would crawl, climb, disappear into stairways, holes and cellars. And thus we would pass through the streets without being seen by the enemy ... This bunker housed 120 Jewish fighters and the command.

 

Vladka Meed, who was an underground courier for the Jewish Fighting Organization, noted in her memoirs an account of the bunker's last moments based on what she heard from its survivors:

 

On the morning of May 8, the Germans surrounded the hunker at Mila 18. They demanded that everyone come outside. The collection of rag-pickers | meaning the owners of the bunker] obeyed and went out. The fighters remained within, with the weapons in hand. They were ready for the battle. The Germans were afraid to enter the bunker (the fact is that the Germans were generally unwilling to enter the bunkers), and injected poison gas while beginning to bombard them with hand-grenades.

The fighters returned fire. They could not withstand [this] for any length of time. The gas continued to penetrate the bunker and the fighters began to suffocate. But there was not a single one who was ready to fall into the hands of the enemy alive. A shot was heard from the bunker. The fighters had shot themselves. The first to call for suicide was Arieh Wilner. The rest followed suit. Miraculously, there were a few who found a way of getting out through an unnoticed opening. Thus ended the lives of people who incited the Jews of the ghetto to rebel with fearless determination. They had directed the course of the struggle by means of their courage and noble spirit.

 

Of those who escaped from Mila 18, seven to eight fighters suffered poisoning, including the outstanding figure in the underground and the fighting organization, Tosia Altman. None of them survived to witness the day of liberation.

The fighting in the ghetto did not end with the collapse of the bunker at Mila 18. During the next few days, Stroop's daily reports recorded the discovery of many bunkers, with the opposition and skirmishes continuing as before. On May 10, Stroop mentioned three wounded SS men among his troops; on May 11 he noted one SS soldier was wounded. In his last reports, Stroop refers to Jews who stayed hidden in the sewerage canals and others who abandoned the bunkers and burrowed into holes and hiding places among the ruins.

On May 12, Stroop reported that the Germans discovered thirty bunkers and captured 663 Jews, of whom 133 were shot. Also on May 12, Stroop stated that two buildings in Prosta Street which were used by the Többens workshop were attacked and set on fire. "One can assume," he said, "that a large number of Jews died in the flames." On the thirteenth of May, Stroop pointed out that in the category of losses, "there were two SS men killed, and three SS men were slain as a result of the bombing from the air." From another source we learn that there was indeed a Soviet air attack, but it is doubtful whether they died as a result of this attack; it may simply have been more convenient to report them as victims of the bombing.

On May 14, Stroop added to his daily report that on the next day he would decide whether or not to end the action against the ghetto. On the fifteenth, there was another wounded policeman, and at the end of the report Stroop stated: "I will end the
Grossaktion
on May 16, 1943, in the evening, with the blowing up of the synagogue which we have succeeded in destroying today."

As the Warsaw ghetto was coming to its end, Shmuel Zygelbojm, a Bund activist and party representative to the National Polish Council in London, found little to ease his mind and spirit. His family and friends were gone. They had taken what weapons they could and begun a more than justified battle, which was unique in the inequality of its combatants. He had heard eyewitness reports from Jan Karski, the Polish courier who relayed firsthand impressions of the Warsaw ghetto and who requested Western action. Zygelbojm had also appealed for American help. On May 12, he met with Major Arthur J. Goldberg, who later was to become a Supreme Court justice and American ambassador to the United Nations, but who was then working for the OSS in London. Goldberg brokenheartedly informed Zygelbojm that no American aid would be forthcoming. Zygelbojm weighed the odds of getting help for the Jews who were vanishing in the flames of the ghetto. He chose to become one with the ghetto fighters, setting himself on fire in front of the British Parliament on May 13, two days before Stroop announced the end of the action in the ghetto. "In my death," Zygelbojm wrote, "I wish to express my strongest protest against mankind, which looks on and accepts the annihilation of the Jewish people."

Zygelbojm left behind letters to friends, to the world, and to the Polish authorities. In one, he wrote,

 

From the news coming from Poland, it appears that the Germans are now annihilating the Jewish remnant of Poland in the most cruel way. The last act of a tragedy which has no parallel in history is being enacted behind the walls of the ghetto. The responsibility for the crime of murdering the entire Jewish population of Poland falls first and foremost on the murderers themselves, but indirectly, this responsibility also falls on all of mankind, the nations and the governments of the Allies, who have until now made no real efforts to stop the crime ... I would also like to declare that although the Polish government contributed to a large extent to awakening public opinion throughout the world, it did not do enough. It did not do anything which could measure up to the proportions of the drama now taking place in Poland ... I can no longer be silent. I can no longer live while remnants of the Jewish people in Poland, whose representative I am, are being destroyed. My friends in the Warsaw ghetto fell with their weapons in hand in the final battle. I did not succeed in dying in the same way or together with them. But I belong to them and the mass graves there.

 

On May 24, Stroop answered a series of questions about the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto which were put to him by Kruger, the head of the SS and the police:

 

Out of the overall number of 56,065 Jews who were caught in the former Jewish quarter, 7,000 were wiped out in the great action on the spot. Via the transport to Til [Treblinka], 6,929 Jews were finished off, so that a total of 13,929 Jews were annihilated, apart from the 56,065. According to our estimate, 5–6 thousand Jews were slain by bombing and fires. 631 bunkers were destroyed.

As for spoils, these consisted of: 7 Polish rifles, I Russian rifle, 1 German rifle, 59 revolvers of various calibers. A few hundred hand grenades, which included Polish and home-made grenades, a few hundred Molotov cocktails, home-made bombs and detonators, and quantities of explosives, and munitions. Among these there were also munitions for MGs. One must take into account that in most instances it was impossible to get hold of the fighters' weapons, because before the fighters and the bandits were caught, they generally threw them into hiding places which were difficult to pinpoint. They were also difficult to take possession of because the bunkers were filled with smoke from the rockets that had been thrown into them. As the bunkers had to be blown up immediately, it was impossible to take the weapons into account ... Apart from eight structures (the police hostel, the hospital, the hostel for factory guards), the former ghetto was completely destroyed. What was not accomplished by blowing up the place were a few burnt walls. What could be retrieved from the ruins were quantities of bricks and scrapiron.

 

Not surprisingly, Stroop tried to justify the lengthy military campaign he was forced to undertake—tying up so many troops and arousing attention—against an enemy that had no real weapons. The number of Germans who fell in the struggle was exaggerated to hundreds and thousands by the Jews and the Poles. It is clear that after the first few days, the German forces encountered considerable difficulties. There are discrepancies between Stroop's figures in his daily reports and his summary in the survey forwarded to Cracow. In the latter, Stroop reports sixteen killed and eighty-five wounded. Stroop's announcement about ending the assault on the sixteenth and blowing up the great synagogue outside the ghetto was intended to symbolize the victory of the Nazis' mission. But this did not end the opposition of the last inhabitants of the ghetto. The Jews hiding in the ruins were not aware, of course, of Stroop's plan to end the mission. Nor did they know that their exact number was not known and that some estimates ran into the thousands. They continued to struggle for their lives within the ruins, as we know from Jewish and non-Jewish witnesses and documentation.

Reports by the Polish police, who were responsible for the abandoned area of the ghetto, describe what was happening in the area. A report on May 18 noted that "Jewish units emerge from under the earth and attack the Germans ... There is not a single German in the ghetto area at night. The SS people claim that hundreds of Jews are hiding in the underground haunts and ruins." On the twentieth, a report said that "there are shots in the ghetto in the daytime and at night ... and the throwing of hand grenades by both sides." Skirmishes and heavy fighting were reported between May 27 and the thirtieth, and on June 1 and 2 "it seemed as if the situation in the ghetto had become worse."

Arieh Neiberg was one of the survivors from the ruins, or the
malinas
(shelters), as they were called, after the "great action" was over (he now lives in Israel). Neiberg kept a diary in which he described events in the ghetto from the beginning of the Uprising until September 26, 1943, the date on which he escaped via the Jewish cemetery to the Aryan side of Warsaw. Through his notes, we learn of the fate of the last of the bunker dwellers, who did not know what the Germans were doing and thought that the passage of time had proved that the last few bunkers would never be discovered. Jews living in underground caves struggled to find food and drinking water. These living shadows were also fighters, and they continued to battle with all their bodies and souls. Neiberg described the scene on May 26

 

Near the wall of the house, near the waste bin, there were women and children lying in pools of blood ... a tangle of arms and legs was evidence that only a short time earlier, there were living and breathing creatures here ... we stare at the scene and cannot hold back our tears. We speak in Yiddish in whispers.

Suddenly there is a movement among the bodies. Someone is trying to stand up. We hurry over. A child about 7 years old, with a blindfold over her eyes, says to us in Yiddish: "Jews, have no fear ... give us water." And she immediately picks up a little girl of 5 from the ground: "She is also alive, not even wounded." When she has quenched her thirst, she introduces herself: "I am Irka Rubinstein, and the other girl is Halinka Eizenstadt."

Afterwards, Irka tells us what had happened: "After the Germans took us out of the bunker, everyone was stood up in the courtyard of Walowa 2." They were ordered to take off all their clothes; a search was made, and they stole the watches, and jewelry, etc. Irka's older sister refused to undress, and she was violently beaten and her clothes were torn off her. They had to stand naked from 3 in the afternoon until 6:30 in the evening.

One of the SS people told them that they would be killed in the evening. Only if someone would tell them where the Jews were to be found, would they be taken to the
Befehlstelle
[the building that housed the German command of the evacuation forces], Mundek, the wagoner, volunteered, and the Germans immediately took him away with them.