Numb, she went to work in one of the workshops that remained open—constant exhaustion, constant waiting, worrying, beatings, bloating, and sick from hunger. The limited work was threatened, there were inspections and roundups, anyone caught idle or hiding or seeming too old or too young—death. People collapsed at their sewing machines. Selection after selection. Vladka tried to procure an official ID card when the building was surrounded. She hid in a cupboard for hours.
The ghetto was emptying, dwindling each day.
Liquidations and street closures were quotidian affairs. Janusz Korczak and Stefa Wilczynska were gone, killed along with their orphans; Vladka saw them being taken from a window in her hiding place during a night raid at a Bund leader’s home. The streets were empty except for broken furniture, old kitchen utensils, a “snow” of down, the “disemboweled intestines of Jewish bedclothes”—and dead Jews. Smuggling was no longer possible. Total starvation set in. Piercing the silence were the shrieks of children being torn from their mothers who had work cards. Vladka’s heart was most shattered by hearing eight-year-olds try to convince their mothers to go on without them, reassuring them that they would find a way to hide themselves. “Don’t worry,” went the refrain. “Don’t worry, Mama.”
*
Fifty-two thousand Jews were deported in the first Aktion in the Warsaw ghetto.
The next day, Freedom members met with community leaders to discuss a response. They proposed attacking the Jewish police—who weren’t armed—with clubs. They also wanted to incite mass demonstrations. Again, the leaders warned them not to react hastily or upset the Germans, cautioning that the murders of thousands of Jews would be on the young comrades’ heads.
Now, in the face of such mass killing, the youth movements felt that the adults were being outrageous in their overcautiousness. Who cared if they rocked the boat? They were shipwrecked and sinking fast.
On July 28 Zivia and her fellow youth group leaders all met at Dzielna.
There was no more discussion.
Without the adults or the Polish resistance, they established their own force: the Jewish Fighting Organization. In Yiddish: Yiddishe Kamf Organizatsye. In Hebrew: EYAL. In Polish: Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or, the ZOB. The ZOB was no powerhouse. It had no money, no weapons besides those two pistols, and, for the Freedom contingent, not even a local hiding place. （The group hid 140 members at a farm.） Regardless, they had a vision: to stage a Jewish protest. They were Jews fighting as and for Jews. Theirs would be a countrywide operation carried out by the connections that Zivia had already meticulously put in place. Now she would send her young female couriers on life-risking missions, not to distribute educational material or news, but to organize preparations for defense. （Though Zivia had a false ID as “Celina,” she had to stop traveling because of her conspicuously Jewish looks.） Establishing the fighting force assuaged some guilt and anxiety—Zivia felt they could finally move forward on the right path. But with no arsenal or military training, much internal squabbling ensued over how to proceed; the tension mounting as more Jews were taken away to be slaughtered.
Zivia was the only elected woman leader in the ZOB. She was part of a fighting group. She learned to use a firearm. She trained to be on guard duty. She also cooked, laundered, and was responsible for maintaining the young fighters’ optimism and spirit. Other women leaders—Tosia, Frumka, Leah—were sent to the Aryan side to forge ties and procure weapons.
While they waited for arms, the ZOB decided to mark its territory. One night, from its headquarters opposite Pawiak Prison, members headed into the ghetto silence on their first missions, divided into three groups. One group was going to inform the ghetto inhabitants about this new force that would fight on their behalf. They were to put up posters on billboards and buildings explaining that—as they had learned from messengers who had followed the trains—Treblinka meant certain death, that Jews must hide, and the youth must defend themselves. “It is better to be shot in the ghetto than to die in Treblinka!” the slogan read.