So, weeks later, when Shimshon did not return home for days, Gusta was beside herself. Catastrophe could strike in a second; if someone merely thought he or she recognized Shimshon, he was finished. But her husband was savvy, she consoled herself, and considered that if the resistance had put as much effort into actually fighting the enemy as it had into proclaiming its readiness to fight, it would have won many battles by now! When Shimshon finally returned, he did so only for a moment before heading back out. She was overcome with sadness. Was it better to be separated physically and imagine their reunion, or to have him close yet emotionally distant?
From Shimshon’s return, everyone knew that a momentous battle was being planned, inside the ghetto and in the forest. Everyone wanted to be involved despite cold autumn conditions. As per the underground blueprint, the Kraków group split into fives, each self-sufficient unit having its own leader, communications expert, administrator, and supply officer. Each group had its own weapons, provisions, operating area, and independent plan of action. Only members in a group knew who the other members were and knew of its plans, and even within a group, members did not know the others’ whereabouts.
All this military secrecy was anathema to their youth group culture of openness and nonviolence. But the devotion among members, who’d each lost home and family, was formidable. “The group had become the last refuge on their mortal journey,” Gusta explained, “the last port of their innermost feelings.” Though comrades were not supposed to congregate—their laughter and camaraderie were simply too conspicuous to others—they couldn’t resist. “Their displays of exuberance provided a desperate outlet for their prematurely scarred psyches,” Gusta intuited. “If someone were to ask whether they might be too immature to be effective movement fighters, then what answer could one give, since they had never had the chance to experience youth at all and never would?” The leaders forgot their movements’ ideological differences and congregated in the heart of the ghetto, even though these gatherings were exposed and risky.
Shimshon, an amateur typesetter experienced in etching and engraving, was in charge of the “technical bureau.” It was an age of “papers, clutter, stamps, passes, certifications,” Gusta observed, and Shimshon forged fictitious papers to ensure the fighters’ freedom of movement. At first, Shimshon carried the whole office “in his coat pockets,” searching furiously for a room whenever he needed to make a document and unfolding his equipment onto a tablecloth. But he needed more space and started carrying a briefcase to work out of; he would roam the ghetto, from empty room to room, with his “floating office.” Alas one briefcase didn’t suffice, so he needed two. Then more. A team of assistants trailed behind him, carrying his collection of valises, boxes, a typewriter, packages—this became a serious security issue for the entire workshop brigade. The bureau needed a permanent home.
In Rabka, a small town outside Kraków, Gusta set up an apartment in a beautiful villa. In addition to a large room with two windows, it had a kitchen and a veranda, and was “furnished modestly but tastefully and glowed with domestic tranquility.” She placed flowers on the table, hung curtains on the windows, and put up pictures on the wall—all to give the space a homey feel, like a “cozy nest,” she wrote.
Here Gusta was to “play the role of an ailing wife spending the golden autumn” in a resort region. Her six-year-old nephew Witek was with her; during the days, they would frolic in the garden, go for walks, or rent a boat on the calm river. Shimshon took the bus to Kraków each morning, becoming friendly with the other commuters. He was mysterious, wore a firm expression, and “cut an intimidating figure,” Gusta wrote. People thought he held a government job, so they gave up their seats for him. Everyone assumed the family was wealthy and that he brought work home in his briefcase to spend more time with his young wife and son. No one suspected that their villa housed the Jewish resistance’s forgery factory.
In one corner, away from the window, Gusta set up a full office: desk, typewriter, equipment. If her days were spent reveling in domestic tranquility, her nights, after Shimshon’s late arrival, were all work. When lights went out in the village, Gusta covered the windows and bolted the door. Until three in the morning, she forged documents and wrote and published their underground newspaper. Issued every Friday, the Fighting Pioneer consisted of ten typed pages, which included a list of Jewish collaborators. Gusta and Shimshon printed 250 copies that were distributed by pairs of fighters throughout the Kraków region. Then they grabbed a few hours of sleep before Shimshon had to make the seven o’clock bus back to the city—on which he had to appear refreshed.