Mila 18 - Leon Uris [217]
The next morning posters were nailed over the front door of the abandoned Civil Authority building and posted on the walls throughout the ghetto.
ATTENTION!
AS OF TODAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1943, THE JEWISH CIVIL AUTHORITY IS DISBANDED. THIS GHETTO IS UNDER THE SOLE AND ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY OF JOINT JEWISH FORCES, ORDERS ARE TO BE OBEYED WITHOUT RESERVATION, SIGNED:
Atlas, Commander, Joint Jewish Forces
Jan, Executive Commander
Chapter Eight
Journal Entry
THE STAR OF DAVID flies over the Warsaw ghetto!
On February 2, 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad. We feel for the first time that Germany will lose the war. But how quickly will the flood-waters recede?
None of us are so foolish as to believe we will ever live to see a Jewish state in Palestine, but we have sounded the great trumpet of the return. A Jewish army controls the first autonomous piece of Jewish land in nearly two thousand years of our dispersal. Our “nation” is only a few square blocks and we know we shall not hold it long, but, as Tolek Alterman says, “This is living Zionism.” No matter what happens hereafter, for this moment we are a proud and free people.
The first “capital” of our “Jewish state” is Mila 18. I shall describe it. There are six main rooms. These are named for the six Polish extermination camps. Rooms: Belzec and Auschwitz hold a hundred and twenty fighters of two companies, one Bund and one Bathyran. This group is under Andrei’s personal command (in addition to his other duties).
Majdanek is the room which runs alongside the Kanal. Joint Forces had voted to keep this room (and several others around the ghetto) for the exclusive use of as many children as we can care for. We have rounded up forty. Nothing takes priority over the continuation of the Orphans and Self-Help tradition. As soon as we can place these children on the Aryan side we find others to bring into Majdanek. Although Rachael Bronski lives at the Franciskanska bunker (under Wolf’s command—I am very proud of him. To think such a soldier and leader is my son), she spends a great deal of time on the “children” operation. We keep a program of schooling and games. At night they can go out for exercise and fresh air. Pray God a few of them will survive. They are our harvest.
Treblinka holds food stores and is the “hospital” for the central command (two doctors, four nurses.) Sobibor keeps relatives of the Fighters and those few intellectuals we have been able to salvage. A smattering of writers, scientists, artists, theologists, historians, and teachers, who represent the last voice of our dying culture.
Chelmno is the arsenal and munitions works. Jules Schlosberg and a dozen workers manufacture and store fire bombs and grenades. (Actual weapons—i.e., pistols, rifles—are as scarce as ever.)
The second hallway is filled with small cells which are also named in “honor” of the lesser camps.
Stutthof is a closet holding the generator; Poniatow has the office and living quarters of Simon, Andrei, Tolek (operations and training officer), and Christopher de Monti. Stutthof holds two other cots for the radio and telephone operator on watch. Trawniki is a tiny cell for the exclusive quarters of Rabbi Solomon. He is the last rabbi left in the ghetto. Father Jakub tells me the Church is hiding Rabbi Nahum, probably to preserve as a historic relic. Dachau is shared by Moritz and Sheina Katz and Sylvia and me. (What privileged characters we are!)
Our number varies, but two hundred and twenty persons is the limit. We could not fit another in sideways. Thanks to the ingenious engineering by Moritz the Nasher’s departed gang, circulation through air vents is not too bad. We use the generator for lights, sparingly. Petrol is hard to get and is needed for fire bottles. Candles are used most of the time. But candles burn oxygen.
Mila 18 has six entrances: the sewer through the children’s room, a removable stove in the house above, and four tunnels in different directions running one hundred to three hundred