Mila 18 - Leon Uris [272]
But Alfred Funk failed, just as all the other Pharaohs failed.
The new year will see Nazi Germany crushed. Germany’s cities are destined to be dismantled brick by brick and her people to perish in flames in much the same way as they destroyed the Warsaw ghetto.
What of the murderers? What of Horst von Epp and Franz Koenig? No doubt their ilk will die in bed of old age, for the world is a forgiving world and they will say they were merely following orders. And the world will say ... let us forget the past. Let bygones be bygones. Even the Alfred Funks may escape. Already we hear the verbal gymnastics of the Polish government in exile spouting theories of apologetics in behalf of their people who committed the conspiracy of silence.
I, Christopher de Monti, swear on the eternal soul of my late friend, Andrei Androfski, that I shall not let the world forget. I shall return to Poland. I shall find the Brandel journals and I shall make it a brand on the conscience of man forever.
Wolf Brandel and Rachael Bronski, Tolek Alterman and Ana Grinspan are fighting in a Jewish partisan unit near Wyszkow. Stephen Bronski is alive and well in the home of a woodcutter named Gajnow in the Lublin Uplands. We shall all meet again someday.
I shall close this final entry with the words of the man who wrote the first entry and who is responsible for the historical documents of the Good Fellowship Club. On our last night together in the bunker of Mila 18, this is what Alexander Brandel told me:
“If the Warsaw ghetto marked the lowest point in the history of the Jewish people, it also marked the point where they rose to their greatest heights. Strange, after all the philosophies had been argued, the final decision to fight was basically a religious decision. Rodel would decry my words; Rabbi Solomon would be outraged if I told him this. But those who fought, no matter what their individual reasons, when massed together obeyed God’s covenant to oppose tyranny. We have kept faith with our ancient traditions to defend ‘the laws.’ In the end we were all Jews.” And Alexander Brandel, always mystified by ways of God and strange ways of men, shook his head in puzzlement. “Isn’t it odd that the epitome of man’s inhumanity to man also produced the epitome of man’s nobility?” Alexander Brandel told me something else. “I die, a man fulfilled. My son shall live to see Israel reborn. I know this. And what is more, we Jews have avenged our honor as a people.”
CHRISTOPHER DE MONTI
Acknowledgments
Past experience forewarned me that I would be dependent upon the assistance of tens of dozens of individuals and organizations to research this book. Again, I was fortunate to be the recipient of selfless hours by those who transmitted to me their knowledge of this subject.
Without the devotion of the Ghetto Fighters House International Museum and Shrine, the individual members of the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz in Israel and their comrades in the International Survivors Association, these pages could scarcely have been written.
Sheer weight of numbers precludes my thanking the others, but I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the contribution of the Yad Vashem Memorial Archives in Jerusalem and the University of Southern California Library.
Within a framework of basic truth, tempered with a reasonable amount of artistic license, the places and events described actually happened.
The characters are fictitious, but I would be the last to deny there were people who lived who were similar to those in this volume.
LEON URIS
A Biography of Leon Uris
Leon Uris (1924–2003) was an author of fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays who wrote over a dozen books including numerous bestselling novels. His epic Exodus (1958) has been translated into over fifty languages. Uris’s work is notable for its focus on dramatic moments in contemporary history, including World War II and its aftermath, the birth of modern Israel,