The children never said it, but she knew. She knew they were ashamed of him.
God, why did I have to see Chris? No rational human being could avoid being swayed by the thought of leaving this chamber of horrors. There was less and less she could do about the wails of the pitiful ragamuffins. Babi-Yar ... Would it happen in Warsaw? Did she have the right to deny a try for life for Stephan and Rachael?
She doubted that Rachael would leave. She had sent her own daughter to a woman’s bed at the age of seventeen. She felt it would be the greater sin to yield to society’s dogmas of morality and find some morning the boy was gone forever and her child bear a lonely and unfulfilled cross. They had so little and so little time. But Rachael would not leave the boy. Deborah knew that as surely as she knew she would not leave Paul.
Perhaps she should send Stephan away by himself. He was a tenacious little boy, so much like his Uncle Andrei. So eager to fight. He would rebel.
Suppose she asked Paul. Would he let them go, or would he let them die first? Was Paul’s weakness for survival at any price so consuming that he would bring his family to doom out of sheer fear?
Paul blinked his eyes open and saw Deborah’s black eyes searching him questioningly.
“I must have dozed,” he said groggily. “Dear, what is it? Why do you look at me that way?”
She started at the realization that she had not heard him.
“Is something wrong, Deborah? Is there something you want to ask?”
“No,” she said. “I have the answer.”
Chapter Thirty
Journal Entry
IF YOU WANT TO be in movies,
You don’t have to travel far,
The ghetto is like Hollywood,
All here, have a
STAR.
COMPLIMENTS OF CRAZY NATHAN
Ervin Rosenblum has done a magnificent job as cultural secretary of Orphans and Self-Help. We now have a full Ghetto Symphony Orchestra, fifteen theatrical productions in Yiddish and Polish, a secret school for both primary education and religious training in each orphanage; art exhibitions, debates, poetry readings, etc., etc. Several individual artists perform in roving troupes. Most well known is Rachael Bronski, who has made her debut with the symphony playing Chopin’s Second Concerto. She is called the “Angel of the Ghetto.” A pity Emanuel Goldman was not there to see her great talent.
But ... our situation continues to degenerate. The death rate, mainly from typhus and starvation, climbs upward: July, 2200; August, 2650; September, 3300; October, 3800. So far in November, 150 a day. Strange, the suicide rate continues to drop. Conclusion: The weaker ones have killed themselves already. The rest are determined to survive. Each morning families deposit new corpses on the sidewalk. No money for funerals. The “sanitation teams” come along with hand pushcarts, shovel the corpses up, twenty or thirty to a cart, and wheel them to the cemetery for burial in mass graves. The spectacle of death and starvation no longer impresses anyone. We must immunize ourselves. How crass.
Food comes in daily to Transferstelle. There is simply not enough to feed everyone. The Big Seven has shoved prices so high. Orphans and Self-Help is barely able to get bare minimum rations. The Big Seven has a virtual control on the licensed bakeries. The bakers are the “kings” of the ghetto.
Smuggling has become a way of life. No one can stop it. Napoleon tried and failed. The Germans cannot stop it. Even if they were scrupulous and honest, it would be impossible. Every guard is corrupt, Jewish Militia on the inside, the Polish Blues and the Germans on the outside. They all “play” for the right price. Why should the Germans even try to stop smuggling? Payoff money is lining the pockets of their top officials.
Smuggling runs from primitive forms to highly organized operations. In its most basic form, small, quick children dart about and move through small cracks in (or one of a half dozen tunnels under) the ghetto wall. Some of these children are sole providers for their families. They risk going into the Aryan side to scavenge in the garbage cans, barter if they have anything to barter, beg at the squares, or steal. One poor child was stuck in a crack in the wall. He was beaten by police on both sides of the wall.
The main transfer point of smuggled goods is outside the ghetto where the Jewish and Catholic cemeteries have a common wall. It has been breached in a dozen places and is a sort of “free trading zone.” Grave-diggers who work the detail for mass graves are the main contact people. However, one must be in the upper bracket of smugglers to work the cemeteries.
Needless to say, the Big Seven has the most profitable and highly organized operation. They have paid off all down the line. However, every once in a while the Germans put on a show and catch a Big Seven smuggler and shoot him. It makes Kleperman appear not to be in league with the Germans. I’m certain he knows in advance.
The Big Seven built an underground pipe under the wall to pipe in milk from the Aryan side. Sacks of flour and other goods are thrown over the wall at given times in given places. Portable ladders come up out of nowhere, go against the wall, and in three or four minutes, while the guard turns his back, in come the goods. The Big Seven has even constructed a portable ramp and brought in a live cow on it.
Epitome of the smuggler’s art is the large funeral (which only the wealthy can afford). The Big Seven controls the undertaking licenses. Their funeral vans always re-enter the ghetto with a ton or so of goods. When business is slow, I hear the Big Seven stages fake funerals with empty coffins.
To control prices, the Big Seven sells only part of its goods; a shortage raises prices. Food is stored all over the ghetto in basements. I hear that Mila 18, directly across the street from us, holds one of the largest caches. An “independent’ smuggler, Moritz Katz, runs a band from Mila 18.
Oddity. Along Leszno Street is the freak boundary of the “Polish corridor.” The wall slices the courthouse in half, so it can be entered from both sides. Jews enter from the ghetto through a basement. Poles use the main entrance on the Aryan side. Meetings are held in certain chambers, offices, and corridors. Kleperman’s “authorized” representatives have space in the courthouse much like one buys a seat on the Stock Exchange (or a London prostitute has a station). For a broker’s fee, Kleperman’s “authorized” representatives trade gold, dollars, and precious stones.
The most horrible of all sights in the ghetto are the “snatchers.” Starved children prowl near the bakeries and, driven by hunger, grab bread from people as they leave. They eat it on the run. Often children have been beaten half to death while cramming the bread into their bellies.
The Good Fellowship Club appointed a special committee to analyze the always elusive mystery of what the Germans are really up to. Information from the massacres in the east. There are definitely four main groups of “Action Kommandos,” SS men trained for massacre.
Group A. Commanded by SS Major General Franz Stahlecker in the Baltic-Leningrad area.
Group B. Commanded by SS General Artur Nebe, White Russia.
Group C. Otto Rasch (rank?) in Kiev on the southern front. The Babi-Yar massacre of thirty-three thousand in three days seems to be his brain child.
Group D. SS Major General Otto Ohlendorf (is he the noted engineer of pre-war times? Hard to believe) in central Russia.
The method is basic. Roundup, victims dig their own graves, are stripped, shot in the back. This apparently amuses the local populations, who are giving full co-operation. The SS have augmented their ranks with Ukrainians and Lithuanians. Reports of massacres so far at Rovno, Dvinsk, Kovno, and Riga. They say seventy thousand have been shot at Wilno.