One night, she and two comrades went out to make contact with the primary Freedom fighting groups on Mila, the main street in the ghetto, “stealthily maneuvering through rubble,” cutting across streets and alleyways, weaving their way close to the houses. Her heart pounded as she approached the address—there was no sign of life. Devastated, she could barely utter the code word.
And then, the camouflaged door opened. All of a sudden, comrades, old friends, were hugging her, kissing her. In their unit, which had attacked Germans entering the ghetto from behind, only one life had been lost. This bunker had a radio that blared joyful music. Then the tune stopped. “The Jews of the ghetto,” a secret Polish broadcast announced, “are fighting with unparalleled courage.”
Zivia was exhausted and needed to visit others. But the comrades wouldn’t let her go. This bunker had been prepared as the medical unit, with a doctor, nurses, equipment, first aid, medicine, and hot water. They insisted that Zivia take a hot bath; they roasted a chicken and opened a bottle of wine in her honor. They couldn’t stop talking, feeling, emotions flooding, acknowledging what they’d done. One had thrown a Molotov cocktail that struck a Nazi in the head, turning him into a shaft of fire; another hit a tank, leaving a pillar of smoke; others stripped guns from German corpses.
Additional units had similar stories of success: mines at entrances, hours of battle, getting cornered in attic passageways but bombing their way out. A detachment of three hundred Germans was “ripped to bits” by an electric mine, and “shreds of uniform and human flesh flew in all directions.” As another fighter described after his unit’s bomb detonated: “crushed bodies, limbs flying, cobblestones, and fences crumbling, complete chaos.” In one group’s battle, Nazi soldiers reentered the building waving a white flag, but the ZOB wasn’t fooled. Zippora Lerer leaned out the window and threw bottles of acid onto the Germans below. She heard them scream in disbelief: “Eine frau kampft!” “A woman is fighting!” They began to fire back at her, but she did not retreat.
Bundist Masha Futermilch climbed onto the roof of a building. She shook in excitement, so much so that it took extra time to light the match to ignite the wick of her explosive. At last, her partner flung the grenade at the Germans. A thundering explosion, falling Nazis, and then she heard one scream. “Look, a woman! A woman fighter!” Masha was awestruck. A sense of relief washed over her: she had done her part.
She grabbed a pistol and shot, down to the very last bullet.
*
Hantze prepared to leave Warsaw, as had been the plan. But woman plans, and God laughs. Days before her departure: the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Now, it was determined, Hantze was not to go abroad but to return to B?dzin and help with defense in Zaglembie. If it was meant for her to die in battle, she wanted to die alongside her sister and comrades there. On the second day of the uprising, during a break in the fighting, Hantze snuck though the ghetto’s small, winding streets toward the train station, accompanied by two armed comrades. Every second was precious. They reached the open space between the ghetto and the Aryan aside. Behind Hantze was the rebellious battlefield, the difficulty to her back. One more step.
Suddenly a savage voice: “Halt!”
The armed comrades tore out their revolvers and shot. A swarm of police reinforcements arrived. Hantze ran with all her strength. But the Nazis chased her into the yard “and caught our girl,” Renia later wrote about her dear, luminous friend. “They dragged her to a wall by her hair and pointed their machine guns. She stood motionless and stared death in the face. The bullet ripped through her heart.”
*
After the first five days of fighting, of street skirmishes and attic attacks, the ZOB was left with a shocking result: most everyone was alive. This was, of course, good news, but it also presented a challenge. Because they had been prepared to die, they hadn’t planned any escape routes or short-term survival plans, and they had no hideout and barely any food. They grew tired, hungry, weak. Now Zivia was involved in a new, wholly unexpected, discussion: How would they keep going?