Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 ||| It was a gloomy Holy Week for Warsaw. Just the day before Malecki’s encounter with Irena, on Monday the nineteenth of April, some of the Jews still remaining in the ghetto had begun to defend themselves against new German repressions. In the early morning, as SS1 detachments moved inside the ghetto walls, the ¤rst shots rang out on Stawki and Leszno streets. The Germans, who had not expected any resistance, withdrew. The battle had begun. News of the ¤rst collective Jewish resistance in centuries did not immediately get about the city. Various versions circulated around Warsaw. In the ¤rst hours it was known only that the Germans intended to liquidate the ghetto once and for all and to kill all the Jews who had survived the previous year’s massacres. The neighborhoods bordering the walls swarmed with people, for there it was easiest to ¤nd out what was happening. One after another, shots rang out from the windows of the apartment houses adjoining the walls. The Germans brought their military police up to the ghetto. Hour after hour, the intensity of the gun¤re increased. The defense, at ¤rst chaotic and random, quickly assumed the shape of a regular organized resistance. Machine-gun ¤re rang out in many places, and grenades ¶ew. Street traf¤c still functioned normally, and in many places the con¶ict took place amid a throng of spectators and the rattle of passing streetcars. At the same time, the remaining Jews were being taken away from those neighborhoods where no resistance had been raised. Few realized on that ¤rst day that the destruction of the ghetto would be drawn out for many long weeks. But for as many days as the Jews defended themselves, the ghetto would continue to burn. And so it was, amid the springtime atmosphere of Holy Week, in the heart of Warsaw, which four years of terror had been unable to 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. 8 | Jerzy Andrzejewski subdue, that the Jewish insurrection got under way, the loneliest and most agonizing of all the struggles undertaken in those times in defense of life and freedom. Malecki lived on the edge of Bielany, a distant settlement on the northern part of town. It was as he returned home from work on Monday evening that he ¤rst encountered the uprising. Just past Krasi¢ski Square, as the streetcar passed along the walls of the ghetto, one could sense an atmosphere of excitement . People pressed up against the windows, but nothing could be seen. Beyond the ghetto ramparts stretched the high gray walls of tenement houses, cut through here and there by narrow windows, like arrow slits. Suddenly on Bonifraterska Street, in front of Saint John the Divine Hospital, the streetcar came to a violent stop. Simultaneously, from somewhere high up, a short, even burst of ri¶e ¤re rang out. A machine gun responded from the street. Panic broke out in the streetcar. People quickly pulled back from the windows. Some squatted on the ¶oor, while others pushed forward toward the exit. In the meantime, shots rained down more and more heavily from the Jewish apartment buildings. A machine gun set up in the middle of the pavement at the intersection of Bonifraterska and Konwiktorska streets answered with a ferocious chatter. Along the narrow stretch of roadway between the streetcar tracks and the walls of the ghetto an ambulance rushed by. The next day, the streetcar to Ÿoliborz went only as far as Krasi¢ski Square. Malecki, having completed his work at the ¤rm more quickly than usual, was returning home early in the afternoon. At that moment, streetcar traf¤c came to a halt, and Miodowa Street was clogged with abandoned cars. Crowds stretched out along the sidewalks. After a night of gun¤re, with the morning came a short interruption in the ¤ghting. Now, however, the pounding began anew, more ferocious than on the previous day. No vehicles were allowed to pass through Krasi¢ski Square, but a restless, noisy, and excited crowd ¤lled the openings of Dêuga and Nowiniarska streets. As with all major happenings in Warsaw, when observed from the outside it was something of a spectacle. Residents of Warsaw eagerly join a ¤ght and just as eagerly observe one in progress. A swarm...