“But God spoke to Moses and commanded it,” Yona said. “He has not spoken to us. All we have is conscience to be our guide.”
“I would not lose a moment of sleep over harming those who seek to erase us from the face of the earth.” Rosalia’s eyes were as steely as her tone as she turned to Yona. “You don’t know what it is like to watch your loved ones murdered before your eyes, Yona. You don’t know what it is to carry that anger inside of you for months that become years,” Rosalia said, her voice softening. “You are kind and good, but I think maybe you can never understand if you are not one of us, if you haven’t suffered the things we have.”
“Rosalia, how can you say that?” Zus said at once. “Has she not risked her life for yours a hundred times? For all of us?” But in the silence that followed, Yona’s heart ached. She understood what Rosalia meant, and she wasn’t wrong.
“I’m sorry, Yona,” Rosalia said, bowing her head and then looking up with eyes full of remorse. “I should not have said that.”
“But you were right.” Yona had no place in this choice, for she hadn’t lost the same things they had, and so she looked to Zus, whose expression was troubled. “I will trust your decision.” They held each other’s gaze for a long time, and she could see the anguish in his eyes, the conflict.
“We go after the Germans,” he said at last. “Far from here, so they can’t trace us. Not for the purpose of taking lives, but for the purpose of obtaining the food and supplies we need. It’s not revenge. It is seizing what we need from the people who have stolen it from us, and perhaps letting them know in the process that we have it in us to fight back, that we are proud and free. Are we in agreement?”
Chaim nodded first, stepping forward to shake Zus’s hand. Then Rosalia murmured her assent, and all of them looked to Yona. She knew the forest better than anyone, and if there was to be an ambush, she would need to decide where it would take place.
“The road into the forest from Nowogródek,” she said at last. “It is two days’ walk from here, so they won’t know where we came from. It is one of the transport roads the Germans use.” She had seen their trucks herself when she fled Jüttner’s home and made her way back into the forest. “If we can stop a transport truck, we can take their weapons and ammunition, as well as provisions for our people.”
“Right out of the Germans’ mouths,” Chaim said, nodding in agreement. “Won’t it anger them, though?”
“That’s what the raids this summer were about,” Yona said. “The Bielski group and the Russian partisans have been launching attacks like this one. The Germans tried to strike back, and they failed. I think it is very likely they are still licking their wounds. If we stop only one truck, and if we manage to get away, the impact of it will be so small that they won’t come after us.” She knew she sounded more confident than she felt, but she was counting on the fact that the Germans would want most of all to save face.
Zus was studying Yona with a frown. “But it would still be dangerous. We could be killed.”
She looked first at Rosalia, then at Chaim, and then finally back at Zus, who had lost so much. “Rosalia is right, though. We would be fighting back at last. Maybe it is time.”
Zus finally nodded, and turned to his brother, quickly running down a list of who they could take with them and how quickly they could move. As they talked, Rosalia edged up next to Yona and put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should not have said you are not like us.”
“You were right.” Yona blinked and could see Jüttner’s face in her mind, not his cold, lined face now, but the face of a younger man leaning over her cradle all those years before, looking down at her with tenderness. She blinked again, and the image disappeared. “Who did you lose, Rosalia? I’m sorry I’ve never asked you before.”
Rosalia looked away, and when she looked back, there were tears in her eyes. Yona had never seen the other woman cry. “Everyone. Including my husband and our two sons.”
“I’m so sorry,” Yona said, reaching for Rosalia’s hands, but Rosalia pulled away. “I—I never knew you were a mother.”
“It is in the past.” Her voice was clipped, but Yona could hear it trembling, and she understood in an instant that there had always been far more to Rosalia than she knew.