Presser sat behind his desk and tried to think. Every day he had been phoning Rudolph Schreiker to report on the rampaging of the Joint Forces. Murder in the streets, assassinations, looting, extortion. Boris was positive the actions would result in a murderous reprisal from the Reinhard Corps, but another day passed and another and another and nothing happened.
Each day his people cringed in the Civil Authority building with their families, trying to push him into a decision. Boris didn’t like decisions or involvements. He had made a career of evasiveness. The Germans had always told him what to do. He did it. He had the ready-made excuse of throwing up his hands and saying, “What could I do?”
Marinski bolted into the room, crying semi-coherently, “Stop them! They’re taking our families!”
“Stop shouting. Shouting will do no good. Get out there and delay Eden from coming in.”
Boris locked the door and ran to the phone. First Schreiker, then the Militia. The line was dead. He clicked it desperately. Nothing. Presser rubbed his throbbing temples and slipped to the window. Women and children, families of the Civil Authority, were being prodded out into the street at gun point. A ruckus in the outer office. Authoritative knocks at his door.
Stall ... play for time ... debate ... stall.
He unlocked the door. Simon Eden stood before him. Black-eyed; long, wiry frame; intense. Simon hovered over the smaller man, shoved the door wide, and looked around the office. He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him, shutting out Marinski, who was too terrified to protest the abduction of his wife and daughter.
Boris backed up, bringing everything within him to the fore to maintain control and not show his fear. “I protest this humiliation of the Civil Authority,” he said.
Simon ignored him; his eyes showed almost boredom.
“You have no right to barge in here and kidnap our families. You have no right to treat us like collaborators.” Boris prodded to find a point of argument.
Simon would not argue. “History will pass judgment of the Civil Authority,” he said dryly.
Careful, Presser said to himself, careful. Don’t anger him. “You must realize,” Boris fenced, “that I have no personal authorization to grant you recognition.”
“Just recognize what comes out of the end of this muzzle. It is quite simple. We have your families. We want your treasury.”
Beads of perspiration popped out on Boris Presser’s upper lip. To refuse would be to admit that he was truly a puppet of the Germans, for in fact Joint Jewish Forces now represented the authority in the ghetto. But if he did recognize Eden, the Germans would eventually punish him when they returned. Boris was in a vise. He opened his arms benevolently. “Surely, Simon, as a man who knows organizational structure, you are aware that I do not control our very insignificant treasury. I have no way of acting.”
“Find a way,” Simon interrupted. “In an hour we shall deposit three corpses at the doorsteps of this building. One will be a member of your own family. Each hour thereafter, three more hostages will be shot until you deliver two million zlotys to Joint Forces.”
Marinski, eavesdropping, burst in, “Give him the damned money!”
Boris was dying to drink a glass of water to relieve his parched throat, but he knew that if he lifted a glass his hand would spill it with trembling. “Let me discuss this with my board,” Boris said, continuing the role of a reasonable man. “There are many touchy legal problems. Mind you, I am certain they can be solved, but this is rather sudden. Let us thrash it out. We will come up with a suitable compromise.”
Simon Eden looked down at him with final disgust. “You have no alternative,” he said, and before Boris Presser could speak again, Simon left.
An hour later the two million zlotys were turned over to Simon, half from the denuded treasury and half confiscated as ransom from personal fortunes.
“I was in favor of dumping you at the Stawki Gate with Piotr Warsinski,” Simon said impassively. “But Alexander Brandel is a dreamer. He believes in the poetic justice of making you and your people burrow into the ground and live like rats ... as the rest of us have.”
The Jewish Fighters released the hostages. Boris Presser’s action ended any further use the Germans may have had for the Civil Authority.
Boris Presser and the rest who had served as message boys of the Germans were cast loose to spend the rest of their days despised and scorned by both their own people and the enemy.
The next morning posters were nailed over the front door of the abandoned Civil Authority building and posted on the walls throughout the ghetto.
ATTENTION!
AS OF TODAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1943, THE JEWISH CIVIL AUTHORITY IS DISBANDED. THIS GHETTO IS UNDER THE SOLE AND ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY OF JOINT JEWISH FORCES, ORDERS ARE TO BE OBEYED WITHOUT RESERVATION, SIGNED:
Atlas, Commander, Joint Jewish Forces
Jan, Executive Commander
Chapter Eight
Journal Entry
THE STAR OF DAVID flies over the Warsaw ghetto!
On February 2, 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad. We feel for the first time that Germany will lose the war. But how quickly will the flood-waters recede?
None of us are so foolish as to believe we will ever live to see a Jewish state in Palestine, but we have sounded the great trumpet of the return. A Jewish army controls the first autonomous piece of Jewish land in nearly two thousand years of our dispersal. Our “nation” is only a few square blocks and we know we shall not hold it long, but, as Tolek Alterman says, “This is living Zionism.” No matter what happens hereafter, for this moment we are a proud and free people.
The first “capital” of our “Jewish state” is Mila 18. I shall describe it. There are six main rooms. These are named for the six Polish extermination camps. Rooms: Belzec and Auschwitz hold a hundred and twenty fighters of two companies, one Bund and one Bathyran. This group is under Andrei’s personal command (in addition to his other duties).
Majdanek is the room which runs alongside the Kanal. Joint Forces had voted to keep this room (and several others around the ghetto) for the exclusive use of as many children as we can care for. We have rounded up forty. Nothing takes priority over the continuation of the Orphans and Self-Help tradition. As soon as we can place these children on the Aryan side we find others to bring into Majdanek. Although Rachael Bronski lives at the Franciskanska bunker (under Wolf’s command—I am very proud of him. To think such a soldier and leader is my son), she spends a great deal of time on the “children” operation. We keep a program of schooling and games. At night they can go out for exercise and fresh air. Pray God a few of them will survive. They are our harvest.
Treblinka holds food stores and is the “hospital” for the central command (two doctors, four nurses.) Sobibor keeps relatives of the Fighters and those few intellectuals we have been able to salvage. A smattering of writers, scientists, artists, theologists, historians, and teachers, who represent the last voice of our dying culture.
Chelmno is the arsenal and munitions works. Jules Schlosberg and a dozen workers manufacture and store fire bombs and grenades. (Actual weapons—i.e., pistols, rifles—are as scarce as ever.)
The second hallway is filled with small cells which are also named in “honor” of the lesser camps.
Stutthof is a closet holding the generator; Poniatow has the office and living quarters of Simon, Andrei, Tolek (operations and training officer), and Christopher de Monti. Stutthof holds two other cots for the radio and telephone operator on watch. Trawniki is a tiny cell for the exclusive quarters of Rabbi Solomon. He is the last rabbi left in the ghetto. Father Jakub tells me the Church is hiding Rabbi Nahum, probably to preserve as a historic relic. Dachau is shared by Moritz and Sheina Katz and Sylvia and me. (What privileged characters we are!)