Chajka looked around: the living dead. She couldn’t take it.
“I want to breathe my last on the surface, look up at the sky once more, and swallow my fill of water and air,” she contemplated. The suffocation, the thirst, the ceaseless darkness were overwhelming. I will not go into a wagon alive.
At night, they opened the hatch. Chajka left with the boys, elated by the air, “live, healthy, fresh air.” She breathed as deep as she could, hoping to take in as much as possible, to bank it for later.
Suddenly shots.
Rockets lit the building. She retreated. Then, angry with herself for being scared, Chajka forced herself to walk outside. She saw the bright light of the barracks, the deportation center where the Germans put the Jews on trains. Searchlights. Observation posts. There was no escape. More rockets. Chajka laughed out loud: this was the front. The Nazis were launching a full-fledged war against thirsty, unarmed Jews in bunkers. A war they would, of course, win.
The boys returned with water. They’d risked their lives for it, and Chajka decided that next time, she’d go with them. They all went back into the cellar. She’d thought it would be better to get fresh air, but it had just made everything worse, because now her lungs had to readjust to breathing nothing. Plus, there was a fuss in the bunker: women were arguing about rags, with the hatch open no less. How ridiculous. Chajka was so furious that she burst into tears. Why did she have to sit here with these people? Where were the loves who had been so dear to her? David? The Pejsachson sisters? Perhaps it was better, she reasoned, that they weren’t there to see their dreams shattered. But then she thought it would have been different with them—of course it would have been—and her heart grieved more than she knew it could.
They sat underground. What was the point? They would suffocate. Surely it was Judenrein—“cleansed” of Jews—outside. The water supply was unreliable, the lack of air. They’d be found out. They were going to die in here. Each day, the group drew lots to see which couple would try to make it to the Aryan side. No one wanted to go; no one wanted to detach from the group. They had no addresses, no safe destination. They complained that they weren’t prepared to run off into the unknown. “We thought that we’d go together,” they all said. Chajka’s sadness was overwhelming. As was her anger. They were all such cowards. They did nothing. They heard from no one. Was anyone else alive?
One comrade went out seeking information. Hours later, he returned, panting. He reported that a few Jews remained and were working in a liquidation camp that had been set up to clear the ghetto of any remaining Jewish possessions.
Then one day it was Chajka’s turn. The group was dwindling. No more procrastinating. She wanted to leave with Zvi or Hershel, but Aliza Zitenfeld kept putting it off. She could go with Zvi’s brother and sister. Should she do it? Now?
Out of nowhere, a shout. Germans nearby. They were scraping at the coal. Opening the hatch.
They’d been discovered.
*
A comrade who escaped had arranged a plan with Wolf Bohm, who ran the liquidation camp. Bohm sent a Jew to get them out of the bunker and bring them to the camp, but he was accompanied by two Nazis.
Chajka, having not known about the deal, couldn’t understand how they had been found.
Commotion. People grabbed briefcases and bundles. They decided: girls and children out first. Chajka slipped a dress over her naked body, she had no shoes, nothing. Meir and Nacha opened a second exit, and Chajka was about to follow them out when—bang!—they slammed it shut. Too many guards.
Finally, Chawka went out. She quickly returned, flustered, stuttering. The Nazis had asked if Hershel was there and told her that if they all came out at once, they would be sent to a street near Rossner’s factory. Chajka guessed correctly that Bohm was behind this. A ray of hope, she thought. But what about the guns? Zvi shouted for Meir to grab his gun and leave, but he refused and hid under the cots. People were exiting, hurrying. Hershel and Zvi were confused. Hershel distributed a large stash of cash among them. “I have never seen so much money,” Chajka later wrote.