She walked out. Three Nazis stood at the entrance. They frisked each Jew and took all currency. Aliza, pale, asked quietly about moving them to the street near Rossner’s. Chajka watched from the coal cubbyhole, wondering what to do with her portion of the money, worried the Germans were taking all their savings. Where could she hide it—in her knickers?
Pesa, next to her, whispered, “What should I do with my gun? They gave it to me, thinking that they wouldn’t frisk the girls.” Chajka went cold with terror. Whose idiotic idea was that? That gun should have either been used or been hidden deep underground.
Chajka told her to put the gun in the coal. Thinking about the gun, she lost focus; the Nazis immediately took all her money.
Then the Germans walked over to the coal, reached in, and pulled out a bag covered in red blood.
The gun.
A Nazi yelled, “So, you have something to attack us with!”
The girls started crying, pleading, “It’s not ours. Somebody’s planted it.”
“Disgusting,” another Nazi muttered. “We were going to help you, and you were going to kill us.”
They were doomed. Chajka snuck back to the bunker. Zvi was panicking. He’d lost the other gun. He thought he put it in a briefcase. Everyone searched, frantic.
The Warsaw fighter came back down. “They’ve arranged everyone on the ground, and [they] threaten to execute everybody unless you come out.”
Silence.
“I’ll be the sacrifice,” said Zvi. “I’ll go.” He left the bunker.
Meir and Nacha refused to budge. Chajka decided, Okay, I’ll go.
Twelve people lay on the ground, arms outstretched. Chajka joined them.
“Is there anybody else in there?”
They sent Hershel to check. “Nobody’s there.” He would not give away Meir and Nacha.
The Nazi descended one stair, picked up a briefcase, reached inside. The gun. He took it out and burst out laughing. “Not yours, right?!” He fumbled inside the briefcase and retrieved a photo of Aliza Zitenfeld. “How dumb to have left the photograph!” they guffawed.
Aliza began to plead. “It’s not mine.”
Chajka was boiling in anger: Aliza could have at least tried to be brave.
Then he pointed right at Chajka. “And this is yours.”
Fate has passed its sentence, Chajka thought. Done deal. “What, mine?”
He said nothing, but kicked her twice and then struck her with a wooden pole. She only squealed at the end, when she saw how furious he was becoming.
From the ground, she looked up, absorbed everything, convinced it was the last time she would see the sky.
The Germans ordered them all to stand. Chajka was forbidden to put on shoes or take the briefcase. Her dress was dirty from lying on the ground.
They ordered Chajka to walk last, hitting her with a rifle butt from behind. “I will finish her off now,” one of them said.
The other Nazi said, “Let her be. Don’t do anything on our own initiative.”
Single file. They arrived at the square opposite the barracks. Soldiers, officers. Everyone was pointing at them.
Aliza was crying, pleading.
“You idiot, calm down,” Chajka hissed. “Have some dignity.”
*
The ghetto was deserted. The Aktion had been going on for a week. Soldiers who were specially trained in liquidating Jews were called in to drag them out of bunkers. Everyone was herded into covered cattle cars, except the Judenrat, who rode in hansom cabs. People tried to escape. Rossner hid five hundred people, but they were all caught. A few Jews were sent to work camps; a small number were kept in Kamionka to clear the ghetto apartments. The deportees were being held in a barrack where they could move about freely, but the resistance group was forced to sit on the ground outside, not allowed to budge, inspected by guards as if they were “in a menagerie.”