Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 ||| A l l t h r o u g h t h e n e x t d a y the battle in the ghetto continued unabated . The insurgents defended themselves ferociously and strategically, contesting every street and individual housing block. The Nazis called in detachments of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian soldiers to aid them. They loved to get other nationalities to do their dirty work, breeding in this way mutual hatred among them. In those parts of the ghetto that had not embraced the rebellion and were not taking part in the battle, things were peaceful. Smugglers taking food into the Jewish quarter reported that life there went on as usual. In just a few days those people, too, having deluded themselves with hope to the very end, were going to die, and their homes were going to burn. Just as during the liquidation of the so-called little ghetto in the spring of the previous year, the Germans had laid a special railway spur into the Jewish section. One after another the trains pulled up, and the freight cars were loaded with defenseless people. The gas chambers of the concentration camp at Majdanek absorbed ever more transports of people. Here, however, as the battle and resistance raged, the ¤res encompassed an ever greater number of houses. In the apartment houses that had caught ¤re¤rst, the ¶ames were slowly dying out. On the Jewish side of Bonifraterska Street, beyond the brick walls, rose the skeletons of burnt-out buildings. The corner house that had caught ¤re the previous evening was still burning. It was probably abandoned by its tenants and already stripped of its furniture, for the ¤re consumed the structure very slowly. During the night barely two ¶oors had burned away; now ¶ames were licking out of the empty windows of the second ¶oor. The largest ¤res could be seen in the Muranów district and farther off toward Powøzki. The wind changed direction often, and a considerable part of You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Holy Week | 79 downtown was ¤lled with the stench of the ¤re. An enormous black cloud hung over Warsaw. Still, in the city lively traf¤c and a holiday atmosphere prevailed. It was Maundy Thursday.||| Malecki left for the city in the morning at the usual time. He was not to have a day off until Good Friday. However, when he turned up at August 6 Street,1 where the ¤rm’s small two-room headquarters were located, it turned out after the preceding day’s feverish excitement there was not much to do. Additionally, the work most in need of tending to was not going well. The¤rm’s owner, Wola¢ski, also an architect and Malecki’s acquaintance from before the war, had not yet come to work. In one of the two rooms, called the commons area (the other, where Wola¢ski and Malecki had their desks, was called “administration”), a lively discussion had been taking place for some time. When Malecki, intrigued by the raised voices, looked in, he found he had stepped into the middle of a heated debate. In the commons area he found four people: the administrative secretary Stefa, an attractive platinum blonde whose curled eyelashes and plucked eyebrows gave her face the expression of childish surprise; the typist Marta; the of¤ce boy Bartkowiak; and a young man, the only one who was not among the ¤rm’s employees. He was a tall blond with an elongated head and deepset eyes placed on a birdlike, somewhat predatory face. Malecki was acquainted with the young man, since Zalewski—or Zygmunt , as Stefa called him—had lately been paying frequent visits to August 6 Street. Before the war he had studied law, but now, among other interests, he traded in gold and hard currency. When Malecki entered the commons area, Zalewski was sitting on a table, vigorously gesticulating. “I’m telling you that at least in this one instance we can be grateful to Hitler . He’s relieved us of the whole burdensome and, let’s frankly admit, unpleasant and dirty business. Now there won’t even be a Jewish question. If Hitler hadn’t done it now, we’d have had to see to the liquidation of the Jews after the...