Mila 18 - Leon Uris [72]
Although these places functioned legitimately, each one in fact served the secondary purpose as a screen for the continued activities of the Zionist groups, which the Germans had ordered disbanded.
The Zionists had successfully changed their name but in fact were still intact. Personnel for the Orphans and Self-Help Society were all key people from the Zionist groups. They were given special armbands and special immunities. Another thousand dollars to Dr. Koenig made certain the Orphans and Self-Help Society staff was not screened.
One of the master reasons for the Orphans and Self-Help Society was to get money from American Relief to its welfare objectives without first passing through the hands of the Jewish Civil Authority for disbursement. Goldman was certain that if the Authority touched the money it would become an object of graft.
Brandel now had bases of operations, the Zionists intact, money to pay personnel to run the farms, to increase the capacity of the former Bathyran Orphanage, and to get the hungry and homeless fed and clothed.
There was a final purpose. Only some of the houses were used for welfare work. Brandel was able to get choice jobs for his people, and many of them moved into the headquarters house and worked under the authority of the Orphans and Self-Help Society and donated their wages back into a communal pool. This, Tolek Alterman proclaimed, was “living Zionism.”
Journal Entry
The Orphans and Self-Help Society is a reality. All of our key people in Warsaw are working for us.
I took the five-story building at Mila 19 as our headquarters. Twenty of our Bathyran youngsters have left their homes and are living on the premises and donating all their earnings into a communal. This makes me terribly proud! Six of the buildings were handed over to Simon Eden’s Federated Zionists as “Orphan and Self-Help Agencies”. ... Simon chose Leszno 92 as his headquarters. He also reports communals in all six of his places. We are reserving the other places, for we are certain some of the reluctant divergent groups who did not want to unify will come over to us now.
Self-help has always been our one great source of unity in the past. It will bring us together now. Incidentally, at my last meeting I asked Goldman, Zemba, and Eden if they would mind jotting down notes on things they see and hear. So many things are happening these days I cannot keep track of them all. I want their impressions to set down in the journal. May I say that they are tolerant of this historian. They all promised to collect notes and turn them over to me at our weekly meetings.
ALEXANDER BRANDEL
Chapter Seven
Journal Entry
I HAD A LONG talk today with Ervin Rosenblum. I wanted his opinion about what the Germans were really up to and who was actually running Poland.
Ervin says Hans Frank, the Governor General of Krakow, is not the real boss. His background indicates he is a civil administrator mainly here to exploit Poland for the German economy.
Lublin, not Krakow, is the real capital. The German political police, concentration-camp administrators, criminal police, special-duty squads, and all of that personal Nazi contingent of Hitler’s, independent of the German army, have their organizations and duties so intermixed it is nearly impossible to determine where one ends and the other begins. We do know that there is one boss in Lublin of SD, SS, and Gestapo for the General Government Area. He is Gruppenführer Odilo Globocnik. He is an Austrian (like Hitler) and has a background as a Jew baiter. As an SS major general, he has only to answer to three people over him—Hitler, Himmler, and the SD chief in Berlin, Reinhard Heydrich.
I think Ervin is right. It is a cinch he has more power than Hans Frank.
As for the true aim of the Germans? There is a Department 4B of the Gestapo in Berlin which handles “Jewish Affairs.” It is being run by a Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, who,