Resistance (28 page)

 

In one of his orders, Rowecki explained that if the Germans take steps against the Poles in order to annihilate them en masse—which does not really fit in with their basic proclivities but is not exactly out of the question—then without taking into consideration that the hour for the Polish uprising was not ripe as yet, the forces of the underground army should begin a massive resistance action "to defend the lives of our people." This decisive stand was expressed in regard to Poles, but did not include Jewish citizens.

Wolinski's department was involved with the establishment of a cell called Zegota whose purpose was to save Jews who lived among the Poles. In his book on rescuing Jews, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who participated in Zegota, mentions a number of individuals who were its founders, among them Wolinski. This group earned much credit for aiding persecuted Jews existing in the Polish underground in Warsaw and some other cities. Zegota was an enterprise set up by various organizations and members of Polish Catholic and democratic circles in the autumn of 1942. Only at the beginning of 1943 did the underground take the group under its aegis for political motives.

The organization of Zegota was unique, but the underground leadership limited Zegota's field of action solely to rescue. It did not permit the group to deal with aspects of political opposition and aid to the Jews in their anticipated defensive campaign.

In the autumn of 1942, Jan Karski was secretly sent to London as an emissary of the Polish underground. Before leaving, he met with two representatives of the Jewish underground: Leon Feiner, of the Bund, and a second man, who, though not specified, was evidently Arieh Wilner, a spokesman for the Zionists. In London, Karski also acted as a faithful emissary of the Polish Jews as well. He met with public figures, statesmen, and the Jewish leadership in Britain, and afterward left for the United States. There he contacted and informed many leaders of the situation in Poland and was received by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Karski visited many cities and appeared at meetings throughout the country, repeating again and again his description of the situation in occupied Poland and the destruction of the Jews.

In his book
The Story of a Secret State,
published in 1944, this emissary, or "courier," as he was then termed, described his visit to the ghetto and what he was told there. The Bund representative told Karski:

 

Our entire people will be destroyed. Perhaps a few may be saved, but three million Polish Jews are doomed. This cannot be prevented by any force in Poland, neither by the Polish nor the Jewish underground. Responsibility lies on the shoulders of the Allies. Let not a single leader of the United Nations be able to say that they did not know that we were being murdered in Poland and could not be helped, except from the outside....

Tell the Jewish leaders that this is no case for politics or tactics. Tell them that the earth must be shaken to its very foundations. The world must be aroused. Perhaps, then it will wake up, understand, perceive. Tell them that they must find the strength and courage to make sacrifices no other statesmen have ever had to make. Sacrifices as painful as the fate of my dying people, and as unique ... We are organizing a defense of the ghetto not because we think it can be defended but to let the world see the hopelessness of our battle—as a demonstration and a reproach. We are even now negotiating with your commander for the arms we need. If we get them, then one of these days, the deportation squad is going to get a bloody surprise.

 

Half a year after the mass deportations from Warsaw, the Jewish Fighting Organization decided to organize a public demonstration in the streets of the central ghetto, to take place on January 21, 1943, to arrest policemen and express their condemnation of these individuals for their part in the expulsion of Jews from Warsaw. Close to the event, placards were posted on the walls which stated, among other things:

 

Jewish Masses! The hour is close. You must be ready to resist. Do not go to your slaughter as sheep. Not even one Jew is to go to the train. Those who cannot resist actively, should display passive resistance. That is, they should hide. Our slogan should be: We should all be ready to die as human beings.

 

But there was no public demonstration by the Jewish Fighting Organization, and there was no sorrow and fury at the beginning of the expulsion. Just before the intended demonstration, the Germans began the second expulsion from the Warsaw ghetto, known as the January "action." Instead of a demonstration in the ghetto, the fighting organization plunged into its first street battle, which again became the
via dolorosa
to the
Umschlagplatz.

T
HE SECOND EXPULSION,
or "action," against the jews of the Warsaw ghetto began on Monday, January 18, 1943, and lasted four days. It was not entirely unexpected. Those Jews who remained from the mass expulsion could no longer delude themselves. They knew that they were not to enjoy a prolonged or stable existence. The Germans would soon end the ghetto.

Information about the deportations and the complete liquidation of ghettos throughout Poland continued to come in from far and wide. Rumors concerning actions that were soon to take place in Warsaw spread rapidly throughout the ghetto. On Monday, January 11, Abraham Levin recorded in his diary:

 

Our mood is very gloomy and depressed. News which reached us from various places indicates that the Germans intend to finish off the Jews completely. They will not leave a single Jew alive. This was the fate of Radomsko, and other places. This news is unbearably depressing. We fear that the new "action" here within our midst will be the last for all of us.

 

On Friday, January 15, Levin wrote, "As I have already mentioned an 'action' had been predicted for the 15th of this month ... we can be content that the night passed peacefully, and today there is no news of evil or tragic events. We cannot but be in constant fear, since we are unable to help ourselves and to rescue the few remaining survivors when the day of destruction comes." The last entry in Abraham Levin's diary was dated January 16; with that entry, the diary and its author were silenced forever.

Units of the Jewish Fighting Organization and the remaining Jews in general began to prepare themselves to maintain a permanent state of readiness. Groups of workers and skilled artisans were taken out of the workshops to unknown destinations. Every report of movements by the German police on the Polish side of Warsaw, or a suspicious German move near the gates of the central ghetto, only intensified the nervousness. Mondays were the days that had to be watched, for this was the day on which the expulsions usually began or were renewed.

Nevertheless, the expulsion on Monday, January 18, was something of a surprise. The Germans had been occupied with snatching Poles and sending them off to Germany for forced labor, and it was assumed that with their resources stretched, the Germans would not be free to deal with the Jews. Ludwik Landau, in his daily notes, wrote at the beginning of his entry for the eighteenth:

 

Warsaw [Polish Warsaw] passed through a horrible day. The snatches reached unheard of proportions. The pursuit went on in the street, the municipal trams, the intercity lines, the railway stations, in the railways and the churches ... it is not surprising that the city was empty yesterday: There is not a soul in the streets, and the trams are empty ... today the city was quiet. But rumor has it that the Germans are not stopping their efforts and that they are ordering cars for today and went off. That they are seen around town is explained by the fact that they have moved on to the ghetto. And indeed they have begun the uprooting again.

 

The action began when convoys of Jews from the Placowka outpost outside the ghetto were stopped at the exit gates and not permitted to leave the closed-off area. This was taken as a bad omen, and information concerning the barred gates and concentrations of Germans who were preparing to execute the action quickly spread throughout the ghetto.

At 6:00
A.M.
the expulsions began. Armed Germans and Ukrainians, who were certain that it would be an easy job, tried to repeat the system they had used in the previous expulsion: they called out for Jews to come out of their houses and concentrate in the courtyards. But they soon learned that the ruse would not work. Jews were not prepared to obey their orders as in the past, and many work places were unoccupied.

The expulsion started in the central ghetto. Among those who were killed by indiscriminate and random shooting on the first day was Yitzhak Giterman, one of the heads of the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, a leading figure in the public underground and an active member of the Jewish National Committee.

Bernard Goldstein, an activist of the Bund in the underground, described the first moves of the January action in his memoir,
Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto:

 

Suddenly, on the 18th of January, 1943, at 6
A.M.,
some of the streets in which the forced laborers of the workshops and factories still lived were filled with the sound of vile shouting, bursts of gunfire, and the noise of motorcycles and trucks. The wild beasts thrust their way into the courtyards and began to drag out, to brutally maul and fire on anyone who would not hurry to obey the order to go out into the street and form lines leading to the
Umschlagplatz.

The workers who were gathered at the assembly points in order to go out to workshops and factories were also taken to the
Umschlagplatz
, accompanied by shouting, blows and a rain of bullets. Neither documents nor permits were acknowledged.

 

Among those Who turned up for work that day were members of the Judenrat, and some of them were also taken to the transports together with their families.

Some pursuers managed to surprise inhabitants of the houses and lay their hands on workers. Most of the people of the ghetto, however, escaped to hiding places that they had prepared in advance. Some were in improvised corners of their cellars, in attics, and in rooms disguised by cupboards or wooden walls.

Dr. Lensky wrote in his memoirs that

 

On the days of the expulsion, the 18th to the 21st of January, 1943, a group of Jewish doctors from the hospital, together with their families, sat hidden in a room behind a clothes closet. Thirty people were in that room. It was in a part of the hospital situated at Gesia Street 6–8. Ukrainians entered the place. Their colleagues had already taken the sick and some of the staff to Treblinka. When they saw that there was no one in the place, the Ukrainians hurried to fill their pockets with whatever they could lay their hands on. They sought watches, jewelry, gold and similar items. Approaching the closet behind which the people were hidden, they extracted drawers and took various items away with them.

The people in hiding behind the closet could hear the Ukrainians' voices and their every movement during their search. Fear penetrated deeply into the hearts of individuals hiding there, for there were some old people and little children in the place. The slightest movement, sneeze or cough could have given them away. But the Ukrainians who were busy plundering the place did not suspect that in the hideaway behind the closet the hearts of 30 Jews were beating madly....Of course, camouflage of this kind was inadequate and insecure.

 

The surprise German move against the ghetto had prevented the national committee from meeting and discussing whether the time was ripe for resistance action. Armed companies could not coordinate their steps. So they sprang into action independently.

The first shot was fired by Arieh Wilner when the pursuers penetrated a dwelling of members of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the vicinity of the OBW on Mila Street; the first battle in the ghetto was led by Mordecai Anielewicz. His plan was a simple one. Anielewicz chose a dozen fighters with pistols and stood prepared for the struggle. The fighters were to join the lines going to the
Umschlagplatz,
and at a certain point on the way and at a given signal, they were to burst out of the lines and attack the German guards escorting the queue.

 

LEGEND

 

— Ghetto Boundary July 22, 1942

— Reduced Ghetto

Main Ghetto