Two days after Pearl Harbor, detachments of Waffen SS from Trawniki Concentration Camp carried out a swift roundup raid at our farm at Wework. In a fell swoop we have lost fifty of the cream of our youth. Was I wrong to keep the farm in operation, knowing this might happen? Where could we have put fifty extra people at Mila 19? I do not know. After the roundup they were put on a cattle car (along with a trainload of deportees from the Baltics).
Then unfolds a most unusual tale. The train took a crooked, uncertain course toward Germany. Obviously slave labor at the end of the line. By some miracle, Ana Grinspan was working in the ghetto of Czenstochowa at the time the train stopped there. (Second thought, Czenstochowa is quite a site of miracles; i.e., Christian versions. This is the home of the “Black Madonna,” the “Luminous Mountain,” and the “Miracle of the Mount.”) Ana (traveling as the Aryan Tanya Tartinski) learned somehow that there were Bathyrans in one of the cattle cars. She followed the train into Germany. The internees were put up at a temporary relocation camp near Dresden. Ana entered the lager armed with false papers, a tall story, and Jewish hutzpah and managed to bring out Tolek Alterman and ten of our youngsters.
This girl, Ana Grinspan, is fantastic! This is the fourth time she has crossed into Germany, walked into concentration camps, and freed key people. Her own story is recorded fully in Volume 4A of the journal. Someday when it is read I wonder if her exploits will be believed?
Tolek and Ana got back here to Warsaw. Tolek immediately went to work for Andrei. The other ten who escaped are scattered. Shall we ever hear from them again? Or the ones in the Dresden lager?
Tolek tells one story of the trip into Germany that I must record here. The train was all open cars; everyone half froze to death. It was a torturous, stop-and-start trip. It took three days to reach the town of Radomsk near the German border, where they stopped again at a siding to give priority to a military train for the eastern front. Dozens of curious peasants gathered about the train. Our people, who had not eaten or drunk for three days, were near dead with thirst. They begged the peasants to pass them a few handfuls of snow to quench the thirst. The peasants first made them throw out their rings, money, and valuables. Then ... they got a handful of snow.
Mira and Minna Farber were captured on the Aryan side of Warsaw along with our major contact, Romek. Both girls died under torture at Gestapo House. Romek is still alive, but I understand he is blind and badly crippled. This shatters our major contact on the Aryan side. I am sick about the Farber girls. They were wonderful, sweet, quiet girls. Twenty-two or -three, I believe. Cursed with non-Jewish faces which made them natural “runners.” Thank God their parents are both gone.
Ana Grinspan is staying in Warsaw to try to reset our shattered runner system. Things are black in Krakow, anyhow. Bathyran House was raided and the underground press there seized.
The day after our farm was raided at Wework all the Toporol farms were closed. We lost several hundred of our best people and irreplaceable food supplies.
A.B.
Wolf Brandel, eighteen, wisened and toughened, became the first lieutenant of Andrei Androfski. Although Andrei and Alexander made peace with each other, a certain coolness had developed between them.
Alexander had enough of a sense of history to realize that the initiative and his philosophy were slowly slipping from his control. Andrei’s approach to resistance was creeping over them. From time to time Alexander held a line, but if Andrei pressed an issue he retrenched. At first Alexander would permit no illegal activity at Mila 19. Now Andrei demanded a second secret room in the basement of Mila 19 be dug for the manufacture and storage of arms. Alex avoided a showdown, afraid of the growing power that Andrei could gather behind him. He allowed the room to be built.
This second room was carved out so that it ran beneath the center of Mila Street. Andrei brought in Jules Schlosberg, a pre-war chemist of note, for the purpose of creating weapons which could be made cheaply with accessible components. Jules’ first weapon was a bottle bomb requiring only low-grade fuel, a wick, and a plastic detonation cap. It was a foolproof fire bomb. Next Schlosberg worked to perfect a more complicated weapon: a grenade which could be built inside the casing of an eight-inch length of water pipe and exploded by contact percussion.
On the Aryan side, arms were difficult to obtain. As soon as they came into demand, the price spiraled. The Home Army had the money and the contacts to corner the market Roman evaded the frantic efforts of Simon Eden and the Jews to obtain a share of weapons.
Each purchase of a pistol became a large, involved project. A weapon such as a rifle was almost unheard of. A machine gun did not exist. For his arsenal Andrei concentrated on Schlosberg’s “inventions,” which were manufactured by Bathyrans in hidden rooms around the ghetto. While Rodel, the Communist, co-operated on matters of Self-Help, he was jealous of his arms sources. The Revisionists at Nalewki 37 remained aloof on both self-help and arms. Andrei was able to obtain ten pistols of six different calibers, each with only a dozen rounds of ammunition. Although it seemed completely ridiculous in the face of a German army that had conquered all of the world it sought, Andrei was content with his work and had a rather pleasant attitude that at the right time and the right place his microscopic might would cause a mighty roar.
Andrei’s main source of pistols was a small ordnance shed near the main train depot on Jerusalem Boulevard, where wounded German officers were transferred from the eastern front back to Germany. Their sidearms were checked in for reissue, and in a rush a few could conveniently be “lost” by the German sergeant in charge of the detail.
Immediately after American Aid folded, Alexander Brandel got a radio message to the two Jewish members of the Polish government in exile in London, Artur Zygielboim and Ignacy Schwartzbart, with a plea for emergency funds. A message in Hebrew was radioed back using passages in the Bible as reference to advise them that the funds were being flown in by British aircraft and would be parachuted to the Home Army. A later confirmation of the parachute drop came, and Tolek Alterman was dispatched from the ghetto into the Aryan side to receive the money from Roman.
When Alterman returned to the ghetto, Andrei and Ana Grinspan were called to Alexander Brandel’s office.
Tolek came in and took off his worker’s cap, appearing strange to them, as they had not yet adjusted to the shaved head. The long floppy hair that had been his trademark had been ordered shorn to give him a more Aryan appearance.
Tolek dramatically placed a bundle of American dollar bills on Alexander’s desk. “I was only able to get one third of the amount that was parachuted in for us,” he announced.
Alex’s face sagged.
Andrei sat with his legs stretched out, the heel of one boot balanced on the toe of the other. He stared at the tip of his toe.
“That arrogant son of a bitch Roman,” Tolek snorted in growing rage.
“Don’t waste your time chewing up the furniture, Tolek,” Andrei said softly. “The fact that you were able to contact that bastard Roman and even get him to admit he received the money, much less turn any of it over to you, was an accomplishment.”
“I’ll tell you why he turned over part of it,” Ana Grinspan said. “So we would not stop future parachute drops. Roman knows that so long as we get a crumb we’ll keep the money coming.”
Alex rubbed his temples, tried to think. “We need more so badly. When will the British fly in more?”