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By Root 348 0

sound of machine guns, and then much louder sounds, which we would later recognize as the explosion of hand grenades. People ran in the street; other people shouted for everyone to get off the street, into entranceways of buildings or wherever else one could find cover. We ducked into an entrance gate, like many such gates in Warsaw really a porte-cochere leading from the street into the inner yard, which someone immediately began to try to shut; it was stuck and left us a view of the street. Clattering down Piwna in the direction of the Rynek was a Wehrmacht armored car, the barrel of its machine gun moving carefully from side to side, firing in regular, short bursts. We could see the tracers, then the holes that the bullets made in the buildings, and the shattering of glass. From up high, a window or a roof, someone began to shoot at the armored car, and bullets were ricocheting from its sides. The car stopped, raised its machine gun, and returned fire. This lasted awhile, until a cylindrical object, like a small glass bottle, rolled toward the rear of the armored car and under it. For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then there came a loud explosion, smoke, and the car began to burn. German soldiers got out; other men could be seen kneeling on the sidewalk and taking aim. The soldiers fell. Everybody in the porte-cochère was talking at once: we began to understand what was happening. Before our very eyes, probably throughout Warsaw, the A.K. was attacking the Germans. The uprising that Pan Władek thought was to await a new Russian offensive had begun; that could only mean that the Russians were coming. Tomorrow or perhaps within a few days at the latest, we would be free; we would never have to hide or be afraid again.

Instead, weeks passed and the fighting in the city continued. Until the Germans cut the electricity, we listened to the news. According to the BBC, the Russians were still consolidating their positions and shortening supply lines. The Wehrmacht radio told us that German reinforcements had been brought to the periphery of Warsaw. The BBC knew that but hoped that the Red Army would liberate the city before long; pending that event, airdrops of weapons and ammunition would sustain its heroic defenders. The Wehrmacht radio promised the population of Warsaw prompt extermination. We were beginning to joke that perhaps the Americans would get to us sooner than the Russians.

Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe, flying very low, was bombing and burning Warsaw in a wheel of fire; we, in the Old Town, were the hub of that wheel. Progressively, the wheel became smaller. Until the bombs began to fall regularly quite near us, we went up on the roof to watch the planes, the bombs they dropped, and the fires. In appearance these new German fireworks were not unlike those in the flaming ghetto we had earlier observed from Pani Z.’s. Only this time, we and our fellow watchers were a part of the spectacle, and no one on the roof was cheering. The university library was hit and burned; for days afterward, in addition to the steady rain of undifferentiated ash to which we were now accustomed, entire calcined pages of books fell from the sky. Sometimes they were stuck together and did not break up when they hit the ground; one could make out large portions of the text.

We had been in the house on Piwna for perhaps a week when a woman lawyer who had also found herself there because she was visiting her corset maker’s workshop on the third floor of the building began to smile and wink at Tania and then to talk to her. It was the evening; as usual we were in the cellar. Tania asked her to sit down with us on the mattress she had bought from the janitor’s wife, Pani Danuta; Tania still seethed from the unpleasantness of the transaction. To my surprise, she began to tell this stranger how, for days after she had paid the extortionate price, the janitress came to the cellar, looked the mattress over, and speaking to no one in particular explained that Tania had driven a hard bargain, acquired the precious object for half its value and was