The Remnant - Stories of the Jewish Resistance in WWII (12 page)

It was decided that my companions who had not been rounded up and I would return to German-occupied Poland and determine what life in that occupation would be like. We would keep our options open and carry on a clandestine resistance from territory we knew. The trip back was considerably more difficult and dangerous than our crossing into the Soviet sector.

We soon discovered that the borders were closed to traffic trying to return to the German sector. Of course, as soon as the borders closed the smugglers went into business. A lively business it was, too. They took those who wanted to escape the Russians into the German sector, just to turn around and take those who wanted to escape the Germans back into the Russian zone. For a sum of money, they would take us across. It was a sum greater than we could muster.

"If they can cross, so can we!" we reasoned. It was decided that we would send one of us to learn the way, then that person would return to lead the rest of us out. It was a na ve idea, but those were na ve times and we knew no better. I first voiced the proposal, so somehow I was appointed to the task. We put together all our funds and covered my fee.

I was given instructions to go to the region of the Bug River, which at that time was the border between the Soviet and German zones. This was an area known as Byelorussia. I was forewarned not to speak Polish since the Byelorussians were not at all fond of Poles and especially not of Jewish Poles. Fortunately, because of my medical school training I spoke reasonably good German; since the Russians and Germans were then allies, I traveled as a German. My major fear was that I didn't have papers to back up my charade.

My first rendezvous was a place called Malkinia Station, a small railroad terminal swarming with Russian patrols. There I was met by a peasant whose name I never learned, who took me to a small farm outside of nearby Czeremcha. Everyone there spoke Byelorussian. Fortunately, German was so foreign to them that they couldn't tell that mine was heavy with a Polish accent.

I stayed at the farm that night and was hidden all the next day. The following night a "caravan" was to cross. Seven other Poles and I were to cross over. We were only part of the merchandise being smuggled. Tobacco, food, liquor and small arms also were being taken. Of all the merchandise, we were surely considered the least important or valuable. I had no doubts that if it came to saving the goods or us we would be quickly sacrificed.

The date of the crossing was not randomly picked. These smugglers knew the habits of the German and Russian border guards. They had picked a cloudy moonless night. "Guards and patrols do not like to be out on very dark nights and if they are, their hearts are not in their work!" one of the smugglers informed me.

It was indeed a dark night. If a guard were right next to us we couldn't see each other. The guards considered it great sport to shoot people out of boats on the Bug River who foolishly crossed on moonlit nights. This was indeed an ideal night for us to cross, but it was so dark that I was afraid I'd never be able to learn the landmarks I'd need to get back and lead my comrades out of the Soviet zone.

Luckily, the crossing was not far from the farm which bordered on a narrow strip of forest which ran between it and the Bug River. It was on a turn in the river that protected us from view at a narrow just after the turn. We crossed in some flat bottom boats that were hidden in the forest and were rehidden in a forested area on the other side. It was an ideal area for smuggling and I'm sure it had served that or some other illegal purpose for centuries. The next morning I found myself on the German side of the Bug.

I spent the entire day in the woods near the crossing point for fear I'd not be able to find it again. That night, under the same moonless sky, I crossed back to the Russian side, but this time wading and swimming. The water was ice cold. When I got out on the other side, the chill made my bones ache. My soaked clothing drained what little heat was left in my body. I knew that I was in danger of going into hypothermia. I had to get dry. The forest floor was covered with dry leaves. I couldn't make a fire; I had no matches. If I had I think I would have set a fire even if it would have given me away. I was freezing, shivering painfully. I piled up leaves into a huge mound. I stripped off my wet clothes and crawled into the mound. It didn't warm me, but at least it let me conserve what little heat I still had in my body. I shivered and that warmed me a bit. I fell asleep and slept well into the next day. The sun was high and warmed me through the leafless trees. More important it had nearly dried my wet clothes. "Once more God has spared me," I mouthed to myself.

It took me three more days to get back to the "benefactors" who paid my way with the smugglers and it took us all five days to get back to the German sector. We spent almost a full night searching the woods for the boats the smugglers used. Just before dawn we found them. They were wet. We then realized we hadn't found them earlier because the smugglers had been using them to transfer their booty. We all crossed in one boat. There was more light on the river, but the border guards must not have expected crossings so near dawn. We were home.

That first winter of occupation, 1939 - 40, was bitter cold. The streets were inundated in rubble, snow and ice. Almost all the houses were damaged from the bombings. Some were no more than grotesque skeletons, burned out, damaged beyond repair. Others had their windows boarded up against the wind and precipitation. Food was still quite available; but the money had little value and most could not afford to buy it. Barter replaced currency and as people traded off their possessions hunger began to replace their resources.

When we arrived back in Warsaw we found that in October barbed wire had been laid around the major Jewish neighborhoods, creating makeshift enclosures. We could still pass in and out of these enclosures, but it was obvious we were being separated. Many of us still lived outside these "Jewish districts."

In November the Judenrat was formed, a Jewish Council of Elders to administer our affairs. Na ve! Oh, were we na ve. The Germans actually had us believing all this was for our own good. After all, we'd been living under Polish and Russian anti-Semitism for centuries and these Germans were supposed to be a more civilized breed.

Then there came the decree that all Jews would have to wear the yellow Star of David when outside the impounded Jewish districts. In December, the Germans placed signs around the Jewish districts stating, "Epidemic Area Danger!"

Then other perils threatened. The persecutions began, first of the Jews, then of anyone displeasing the Germans. Jews were beaten and kicked, insulted and degraded, humiliated and demeaned in the streets for no reasons at all. Too frequently our own Polish countrymen chimed in with the "fun." But to the Germans, all Poles were considered subhuman and more and more non-Jewish Poles were oppressed in the streets for minor provocations. The Nazi bully took his "pleasure" at will-from a Jew if available, from any other Pole if necessary.

Na ve! We still had no comprehension of what was to come. With every new indignity we thought that was as bad as it was going to get. How often we would say, "Things can only get better."

In the spring of 1940, restrictions were gradually imposed on movements between the Jewish areas and the rest of Warsaw. With these restrictions, forced labor was imposed on the Jews. While the rest of us tried to delude ourselves that things couldn't get worse, my good friend Menochem Marek tried to convince everyone he could that we were destined for disaster. "Can't you see what's happening? At best we will be enslaved, at the worst, annihilated!"

Perhaps a period of forced labor, a form of "enslavement," true, but how long could that last? "Annihilation, who would believe such a crazy thing as Annihilation? Unimaginable!" When did we start to listen to him? In November of 1940 when the ghetto was closed some of started to believe. The barbed wire had been replaced by walls. Most Jews who had lived outside the "Jewish areas" were now herded into the walled ghetto. Over half a million of us were behind those walls. We had to wear yellow armbands with the Star of David anytime we were outside the ghetto walls, now less and less frequent; and everyone had to be inside the walls at nightfall.

In December, large signs went up at the entrances to the ghetto declaring, "Danger: Epidemic Zone!"

Conditions became harsher with each day that passed. Crowding became worse. Every day more were crowded into the space that encompassed a few dozen square blocks-over half a million jammed into an area meant for perhaps a few thousand. One family apartments were forced to house twenty to forty people, several families in every room. People slept in halls and stairways. And more would be forced in daily.

In the spring of 1940, activity and movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw, the outside world, was severely restricted and forced labor was imposed. We were thrown into slavery to the Third Reich.

I went to work at the Bersohn and Bauman Children's Hospital on Sienna Street. As crowding got worse, diseases increased to almost epidemic proportions. As more and more people died from diseases, exposure, malnutrition, stresses, suicide, our hospital became as much an orphanage as an infirmary. We had minimal medications and equipment. What we had we smuggled in from outside the ghetto. The Germans surely didn't care for us to cure or save lives. Supplies, food and equipment had to be bought or bartered on the outside and sneaked into the ghetto at risk to our sources and ourselves.

Conditions over the next month worsened when we thought conditions could not get any worse. But we were thinking in terms of a civilized world at first. Until we fully realized the Germans were a totally uncivilized, barbaric and brutal people, did we come to understand that there was no limit to their cruel, sadistic savagery. They delighted in our suffering. Even the deaths of infants and children didn't disconcert them.

In November 1941, the ghetto was closed and traffic between it and the outside was punishable by certain death.

The ghetto actually consisted of two parts, the large and small ghettos, connected by a bridge that passed over Chtodna Street. Now hunger and disease really took their toll. Hunger, disease and the bitter cold of the harsh winter killed hundreds daily. Each morning, the dead were placed on the sidewalks to be picked up in carts for the burial details to place them in mass graves. There was no other way to manage the enormous problem of putting our loved ones to rest. There were no coffins, no services, no interment among family and friends. We could only place them outside for pickup like refuse, like trash, like garbage-and grieve in private. But in that terrible time, everyone had losses and we understood each other's heartache and it made an abominable routine -barely sufferable.

On 22 July, 1942 my friend, Menochem Marek's warning and prediction came true. Though by now there were fewer doubters and even with all the suffering and inhumanity the Germans had shown, what came next was still unimaginable. On this infamous date the mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto were ordered. "All Jews with the exception of those employed by the Judenrat (the puppet governing body inside the ghetto), the German workshops, Jewish police, Jewish hospital and their immediate families will be resettled to the east."

"What a relief!" many thought. "At last we'll get out of these horribly overcrowded conditions. It can't be any worse than this!" People were frantic to get on the first trains out. Indeed they went to less crowded conditions. They went to Treblinka.

We remained na ve. Who could conceive that even the brutal Nazis could invent what was planned for us. From the end of July through September 1942 The Judenrat was to deliver from 6,000 to 10,000 Jews daily to the Umschlagplatz, the switching point, where cattle cars were filled to bursting with human cargo, to be sent for "relocation to work camps" with better, more humane conditions. By the end of September, there were only 60,000 of us left in the Warsaw Ghetto and it was now designated as a work camp. Now we understood that Menochem Marek was right. The truth had finally filtered back. Treblinka was a fact we all understood. Unbelievable as it was, we knew what our intended fate was to be.

We formed ZOB, the Jewish Fighting Organization.

I knew time was getting short when they closed the Children's TB Hospital on Stawiki Street, near the Umschlagplatz. Instead of transferring the children to our hospital, they were deported; hauled off in cattle trucks. We knew it was just a matter of time now until they would "relocate our children." A drastic decision was made. We would try to smuggle out those children who were healthy enough to escape. Those who weren't would be given as much treatment as possible to get them into shape to be taken out at a later date. Those too sick to escape would be mercifully given morphine just before the Germans could take them away.

For many months, others and I had been making trips to the outside to barter for food and supplies with our contacts. Now I would lead out the first group of children able to make the journey. Under the cover of darkness, we let ourselves into the sewer system under the ghetto, our smugglers' route in and out of the ghetto and - walking and crawling through the waste water and excrement - made good our escape. Quietly we crept from shadow to shadow hoping we'd not be seen by patrols eager to make target practice of curfew breakers.

At long last, we got to a farm at the edge of the city from where the children would be taken to a convent for safekeeping. We doubted that these children would ever be raised as Jews or would find Jewish homes at some time in the future, but at least they were being given a chance to survive.

I made this same trip with three more groups of children, each less healthy than the last, but the nuns insisted that they would take them with their illnesses and hoped to heal them back to health. After the last group, I decided I would not return to the ghetto. I knew the last of the children could never make their escape and I didn't want to be there to have to administer the morphine. I have had to live with the fact that it was an act of cowardice that I left the responsibility of mercy killing of those gravely ill children to others, while I turned to the forests in hopes of killing Germans.