Mila 18 - Leon Uris [215]
Samson Ben Horin, commander of the Jabotinski company of Revisionists, had remained outside the jurisdiction of Joint Jewish Forces, but the events of the day compelled him to look upon Eden’s army with a new respect. He dispatched a runner to Eden with an offer to keep runner contact with their bunker and join in limited cooperation.
Simon soon found an assignment much to Ben Horin’s liking.
On the last day of January, Samson Ben Horin led a combined company, half Revisionists, half Joint Forces, through the sewer pipes under the wall into the Aryan side. He picked the hour of the Vistula’s lowest tide, when the sewage was only knee-deep. Using Simon’s engineer’s map of the sewer system, he had only a mile to negotiate. Ben Horin’s party came to a stop beneath a manhole close to Bank Square near the Ministry of Finance.
Three Aryan side contacts waited. One was dressed as a sewer worker, the second sat in the driver’s seat of a parked teamster wagon, and the third watched at the corner in a position to observe the German Exchange Bank on Orla Street.
It was the day before payday for the German garrison. At precisely noon an armored truck from the ministry would stop to deposit part of the payroll at the Exchange Bank.
The watchman signaled the arrival of the armored truck.
The horse-drawn wagon moved from the curb and stopped beside the manhole. A long ladder was taken from it and set down in the sewer. Samson Ben Horin led his party out of the sewer. They scattered with startling rapidity so that both ends of the block-long Orla Street could be sealed.
A dozen German soldiers formed a guard around the armored truck before the bank. They passed the money sacks in.
Samson Ben Horin arched a homemade matzo-ball grenade. It landed at the right front tire of the truck.
Nuts and bolts flew everywhere, ripping into the bodies of the Germans.
A second grenade.
A third.
Half of the Germans were on the ground, groveling with iron in them. The truck was disabled, but guards inside fired back.
A fire bottle splattered against the side of the truck, igniting into flame and driving the defenders out.
Samson Ben Horin signaled for his men to converge. They pressed in from both ends of Orla Street. The Germans were pinned against the wall and the flaming truck. A few plunged into the bank for safety.
Half of the raiders grabbed every money sack in sight. The other half pushed into the bank and forced the vaults open. Within eight minutes of the time they had come from the sewer, they disappeared the same way with more than a million zlotys.
Simon Eden referred to the actions as practical field training to teach his army that the invulnerable enemy was indeed vulnerable.
Within a week after Andrei’s ambush at Niska and Zamenhof streets, which signaled the uprising, Joint Jewish Forces had purged the ghetto of collaborators, added millions to their treasury, controlled the streets, confiscated tons of food, wrecked the two major slave-labor factories, and freed the workers.
There were two large jobs left. The Jewish Militia, who cowered in their barracks, and the Civil Authority. The act of mere vengeance: doing away with the Jewish Militia was overruled by more practical considerations of settling with the Jewish Civil Authority.
On February 1, 1943, a hundred fifty men and women of Joint Forces surrounded the Jewish Civil Authority building at dawn. Simon Eden broke down the doors and entered with fifty more Fighters.
From his office on the third floor Boris Presser watched the scene below with Marinski, his assistant.
“Get into the outer office,” Presser said quickly. “Stall them. Keep them out of here.”
Presser sat behind his desk and tried to think. Every day he had been phoning Rudolph Schreiker to report on the rampaging of the Joint Forces. Murder in the streets, assassinations, looting, extortion. Boris was positive the actions would result in a murderous reprisal from the Reinhard Corps, but another day passed and another and another and nothing happened.
Each day