Mila 18 - Leon Uris [157]
The Krakow Gazette increased its build-up of the “final solution to the Jewish problem.” Around Poland, the feverish activity of building new camps brought in German experts in transportation and construction. But these new camps were different. They were neither for slave labor nor for the containment of enemies of the Reich. They were built in great secrecy in out-of-the-way locations, and their structures had odd shapes unlike any ever seen.
By midwinter Alfred Funk concluded his conferences in Warsaw and returned to SS headquarters in Lublin with further verbal instructions for Globocnik.
Early in March one of Ana Grinspan’s runners reached Warsaw with the information that an Operation Reinhard, named after Heydrich, was taking place for the liquidation of the Lublin ghetto. The ghetto occupants as well as transports of Jews from outside Poland were being sent to a camp named Majdanek on the outskirts of the city.
When Funk came back to Warsaw everyone speculated wildly on the meaning, but after the winter just past no one believed things could get worse.
Rabbi Solomon sat on the floor in another of the makeshift synagogues before his emaciated congregation, which had once been a proud group recognized in the religious circles of Poland. The few stragglers who remained represented the heart of European Jewry. Stephan Bronski, the rabbi’s favorite pupil, was near the learned one.
It was the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Ab, the day on which the greatest disasters had befallen the Jews. On Tisha B’Ab the First Temple of Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians, and centuries later, on the same day, the Second Temple fell to the Romans, starting a series of events which eventually spread the seed of Abraham to the corners of the world as damned and eternal wanderers and strangers.
On Tisha B’Ab an angry Moses had come down from Sinai and smashed the tablets of the commandments upon sight of the reveling tribes of Israel worshiping an idol. It was as though he had cast an eternal curse upon them, for this night of Tisha B’Ab the lights burned late in the offices of Gestapo House, Reinhard Corps headquarters, and the offices of Rudolph Schreiker.
Rabbi Solomon read from the “Valley of Tears” and the Holy Torah was revealed and he swayed and cried Jeremiah’s prophecies of doom.
“And the Lord shall scatter you among the nations and ye shall be left few in number.”
A mournful response followed his words.
“We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health and behold trouble! For, behold I will send serpents among you which will not be charmed and they shall bite you, saith the Lord ... the harvest is past, the summer ended and we are not saved ... for death is come up to our windows and is entered into our palaces to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets ... the carcasses of men shall fall as dung upon the open field.”
As Rabbi Solomon lamented, the overture to the most horrible catastrophe in a catastrophe-filled history was playing out.
Black Friday ushered in the Big Action.
The Nazis called in members of their networks of informers and bled them for information during the night. By dawn a swift, merciless sweep was plotted to denude the Jews of the last of their leadership.
With sirens screaming in hideous harmony to the rabbi’s prayers, the SS and their Litts, Latts, Polish Blues, Jewish Militia, and Ukrainians swept in from every gate and scoured the ghetto, smoking out the resistance people from secret rooms.
Tens of dozens were marched unceremoniously to the cemetery and shot by a firing squad of Nightingales.
Ana Grinspan, Andrei Androfski, and Tolek Alterman had the fortune to be on the Aryan side. Other Bathyrans hid in the basement of Mila 19 with Jules Schlosberg and Ervin Rosenblum amid journals of the Good Fellowship Club and homemade fire bombs. Simon Eden spent the day crossing rooftops, and Rodel, the Communist, cringed in a hidden