Mila 18 - Leon Uris [260]
“Mila 18.”
“We may also have found the location in Mila 18 itself. A large removable oven on the first floor of the building which still stands is extremely suspicious. We did not wish to take action until we received your personal orders.”
Funk rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Four possible entrances. Good.”
In a few moments Oberführer Alfred Funk emboldened his troops by another of his personal appearances in the ghetto. Surrounded by two squads of sub-machine-gun-bearing Nazi guards, he marched alongside the exuberant Untersturmführer Plank until they came to a place which had once been a building, now a rubble heap. Manfred Plank showed where the drainage pipe had been uncovered.
“We sent a man twenty meters deep into it. It becomes a tunnel at that point and turns sharply toward Mila 18.”
Funk looked at his watch. Two and a half hours of daylight left.
A staff car at the Przebieg Gate whisked him across town to Shucha Street and Gestapo House. Gunther Sauer was in a foul mood. His dog Fritzie had developed a cataract and was going blind. Moreover, his wife wrote complaining letters about the shortages of butter and meat developing at home.
Now Funk. These SS people were impossible. Himmler’s saving grace was his love for animals. Poor Himmler couldn’t bear to see a hurt dog. It was confided to him at one of the gassings at Treblinka that he had attended with Himmler. Himmler despised Goring, who was cruel to animals.
Sauer gave Fritzie an affectionate pat on the head and looked up to Alfred Funk in his grandfatherly way.
“I want to see the three Jews from the bunker. The Moritz Katz man and the others.”
“So?”
“We have located three entrances to their precious bunker. Faced with these facts, perhaps they will talk.”
Sauer reached in the drawer and gave the dog a tidbit. “Can’t see them,” he said.
“And why not?”
“They’re dead. Tried to break them down. Turned them over to the dogs last night. There, Fritzie ... good boy ... good boy.”
“Simon, come quickly.”
He pushed down the dark corridor. Alex opened the curtain to Rabbi Solomon’s cell. The last doctor left in the ghetto knelt over the old man’s prostrate body. The rabbi presented little more than a weightless bag of bones. His eyes were opened like a defiant Elijah doing combat with the wicked priests of Jezebel. His bony fingers clutched Torah scrolls.
Simon lifted his body and placed it on the cot and closed Rabbi Solomon’s eyes, and he looked inquiringly at the doctor.
“Don’t ask me why he died. Old age, lack of air ... grief ... who knows?”
“Last night he told me he would die today,” Alex said.
“And what did he say?” Simon snapped. “To fight tyrants is to honor God?”
“No ... in fact, he said he wished he were like King David with a young wench to warm his bed.”
Simon spun around and into the corridor. “Fighters up!” he called. “We’re moving up for an attack!”
“Fighters up!”
“Fighters up!”
A hideous shriek came from the arsenal in the Chelmno room simultaneously with an explosion of the stored munitions.
Jules Schlosberg’s body was hurled into the corridor.
“Germans!”
Simon plunged over the bodies of confused, frantic civilians into the turn of the corridor. The bunker was in a dark panic. He smashed his way into the Belzec room, where half of the Fighters were housed. A blinding light probed through the secret entrance from the tunnel up to Kupiecka Street.
“Germans!”
“Juden ’raus!” a voice commanded from the other end of the tunnel.
Simon dived over the corridor to the Auschwitz room. Another light penetrated from the tunnel at Muranowski Place.
Mass screaming and wailing and praying and crushing broke loose among the scrambling, aimless ants who battered forth from the tunnels. Simon and the Fighters used pistols and clubs on them to force them back and into silence. He was crushed against a wall. A dozen broke out in the Auschwitz room up the tunnel.
“We surrender,” they cried.
Rat-a-tat! The German machine gun blasted them down.
Simon