Mila 18 - Leon Uris [69]
Chapter Six
DIRECTIVE
ALL GOVERNMENT PENSIONS FOR JEWS ARE HEREBY SUSPENDED.
DIRECTIVE
JEWS ARE FORBIDDEN TO PATRONIZE NON-JEWISH FOOD MARKETS AND DEPARTMENT STORES.
DIRECTIVE
TRAVEL PERMITS ARE REQUIRED FOR JEWS LEAVING WARSAW. JEWS ARE RESTRICTED TO SPECIAL COACHES MARKED “JEWISH.”
DIRECTIVE
JEWS ARE FORBIDDEN TO STAND IN RATION LINES EXCEPT AT SPECIFIED JEWISH STATIONS.
Alexander Brandel’s quest for solidarity was frustrating. There was confusion among the people. Most of them were not connected with organizations. They wanted merely to be able to take care of their families. The few men whose power and influence could have rallied everyone were marched to Pawiak Prison and shot.
Mayor Starzynski, who had made the epic fight for Warsaw and was one of the few Poles in high positions to give the Jews credit for their contribution to the defense of the country, disappeared. Like many another, he was taken off in the middle of the night without explanation and never returned.
Alex watched his fellow intellectuals disintegrate. These men who had once gushed forth waterfalls of idealism seemed unable to put their words into practice.
He courted Rodel, the Communist, who controlled an important organization. The baldheaded, chain-smoking leader of the Communists spent most of the time explaining how the Soviet Union truly saved eastern Poland by jumping her from the back while the Polish army fought for its life. Rodel was always amusing to Alex. He had an amazing range of verbal dexterity and political acrobatics. In the spring of that year Rodel had been violently anti-Nazi. In the summer, after the Russian-German pact, he decided the Germans weren’t so bad, after all—it was the Western powers who had really sold everyone down the river. Now he was violently anti-German once more but spent most of his time explaining away Russian treachery. Rodel had no use for Zionism simply because he had no use for anything that was not communism. Nonetheless, Alex needed Rodel. To ignore the Communists would be worse than to be refused by them. The Communists, with their non-Jewish members, boasted the closest-knit group for the Jews. But Rodel was having his hands full. The Communists were being hounded by the Nazis even more unmercifully than the Jews. The Gestapo had a single order covering them: FIND THEM AND SHOOT THEM.
Alex couldn’t even get to talk with the leader of the Revisionists, Samson Ben Horin. They were traditionally loners who wanted no part of a plan committing them to act with the group. Alex reckoned they were girding for street fighting.
The businessmen were racked with problems. Shelves were bare, prices were rising, there was a continuing pressure by the new directives. They considered Alex’s quest for unity as asking for charity. For them, anything outside of normal business activities was deemed “charity.” Charity could be considered only after profits, and they were doubtful these days.
The largest single entity, the religious community, simply refused to budge. They took their cue from Rabbi Solomon to resort to the traditional weapons of prayer and patience.
The Jewish Civil Authority treated Alex as though he were a leper. He was branded as a harbinger of doom by Silberberg, the playwright, who had had all the fight knocked out of him by the single blow delivered in the office of Rudolph Schreiker. Silberberg, whose plays had once reeked with slogans of courage ... The rest of them were jealous of their stations. Only Emanuel Goldman, the pianist, could be counted on.
Outside the Jewish community, pickings were lean. The gentile intellectuals were as terrified as the Jewish intellectuals. Paul Bronski proved a classic example. From the time he returned to Warsaw till the time he moved to Sienna Street, he did not receive a single call from his colleagues or students at the university.
The majority of the population wanted no part of the German-Jewish war. A minority were actively against the Jews.
The one great voice of power